How reliable is the history in “The History of Lakeside,” published in 2001?

Making the rounds periodically on social media—and still prominent in web searches more than twenty years after it was written—the late Lawrence H. Freeman’s piece titled “The History of Lakeside” is, unfortunately, riddled with historical misconceptions and inaccuracies. The full text of the article is available on chapala.com and was recently reprinted on another Chapala-related site as “About Chapala Haciendas Fraccionamientos and Chapala, Axixic and the neighboring Ribera.”

‘Larry’ Freeman (1936-2016) was born in Toronto, Canada. After gaining a degree in industrial design from the University of Toronto, Freeman moved to California in 1961 where he qualified as a lawyer in 1970. He worked in the legal field for two decades, including a spell as a deputy public defender. In retirement, Freeman lived part-time in Mexico, and worked as an archivist at Casa Na Bolom in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, and as a reference librarian and tour director at The Lake Chapala Society in Ajijic. “The History of Lakeside” is one of several articles he contributed to El Ojo del Lago. Freeman died in California in 2016.

My critique of Freeman’s article on lakeside history follows (quotes from the original in red):

Ajijic was originally named, in Nahuatl, the Aztec language, ‘Axixic, place where the water springs forth,’ commemorating the seven fresh-water wells that originally provided the water in this area.

There are several possible derivations of ‘Axixic.’ Whatever the derivation, water did not come from wells until relatively recently; it came from springs and the lake. There is no clear evidence for seven springs, though the idea is appealing, given the legend that the Mexica (direct ancestors of the Aztecs) were one of seven tribes occupying seven caves in a mythical place named Chicomoztoc.

Before the Spanish arrived, the indigenous Cocas were living at Cutzalán, now San Juan Cosala…. By the mid-fourteenth century, the Cocas’ burgeoning population caused them to form additional lakeside villages, including Axixic.

In the 1980s, ethnoarchaeologist Dr Carolyn Baus Czitrom showed that all the indigenous people living on the northern shore of Lake Chapala at the time of the conquest belonged to the Coca indigenous group, except for those living in San Juan Cosalá, Ajijic, San Antonio Tlayacapan and Chapala, who were Caxcan.

Ajijic was not formed in the mid-fourteenth century. It was founded in 1531 by Franciscan friar Martín de Jesús (or de la Coruña), who suggested to an indigenous group led by Xitomatl (later baptized Andrés Carlos) that they move their existing community to begin a new settlement, where water was more readily available, named Axixic [Ajijic].

The town of Chapala was founded in 1510, and Axixic followed when the Spanish under Captain Alonso de Avalos, a cousin of Hernan Cortes, arrived in 1523 and persuaded the Cocas to surrender and be baptized without a fight. He was given a royal grant and his cousin Saenz was given a grant for Ajijic.

It is true that the settlement of Chapala was founded before the arrival in the area (in 1530) of the Spanish conquistadors. I am unaware of any evidence supporting a date of 1510; Chapala was almost certainly founded far earlier.

The Olid Expedition, which reached the southern shores of Lake Chapala in about 1522, involved Fernando (sometimes Hernando) de Saavedra, the older brother of Alonso de Ávalos, who arrived in New Spain a year later. The two brothers were cousins of Hernán Cortés, who granted them (and a third relative who died shortly afterwards) the encomienda (the right to collect tributes and labor from indigenous inhabitants) for a large area, which included the southern shore of Lake Chapala, and later also the northern shore. After their partner’s death, the two brothers shared tribute payments from the encomienda. After Fernando’s death in 1535, his half-share reverted to the Spanish Crown. The encomienda system did not, strictly speaking, constitute a grant of either solo or joint ownership. The tributes supplied by Ajijic every 80 days consisted of blankets and items of clothing, cotton, fish and provisions.

It is nonsense to suggest that “his cousin Saenz was given a grant for Ajijic.” I know of no record of anyone named ‘Saenz’ ever owning any hacienda near Ajijic, though a Sebastian Sainz (note spelling) acquired the Hacienda El Cuije (which included land in and around Ajijic) in about 1900, following the murder of its former owner, Hans (‘Juan’) Jaacks. Sainz had no known familial connection to Hernán Cortés. Both Sebastian Sainz Peña (ca 1851-1927) and his wife, María Dolores Stephenson Zambrano (1869-1958) were born in Spain. They arrived in Mexico in the 1890s and soon amassed an extensive property portfolio in Ajijic and Chapala.

The first major building, which still exists, was a mill built in the 1530s on the site of the Posada Ajijic. A monastery on the corner of Hidalgo and Cinco de Mayo was founded in 1535 …

The building that was transformed (in the late 1930s) into Posada Ajijic was a mill (and taberna) but nowhere near as old as the sixteenth century. It was part of the Hacienda El Cuije, established in the nineteenth century. A more noteworthy building from the same era was the residence known as El Tejabán, (one block north of the current plaza) which belonged to Hans (‘Juan’) Jaacks, the owner of El Cuije. The ‘monastery’ was a friary, not a monastery.

By the early 1550s, the lakeside area came under the domination of the Spanish evangelists and they officially founded the city of Chapala in 1538, building the church in 1548.

As already noted, the settlement of Chapala was founded many years before the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors. Its first church was constructed in 1548, but was burned down in 1557, and its replacement was burned down in 1581. Chapala was officially designated a town in 1824 and a city in 1970.

Lakeside remained a quiet fishing and agricultural community, but in the late 1700s was ravaged by a plague that resulted in over 50,000 deaths in Nueva España.

Ravaged? Perhaps in some regions, but at Lake Chapala the plague of viruela (smallpox)  in the late 1700s peaked in 1780, when 80 lives were lost to the disease in the entire parish of Chapala.

Chapala was brought to new life by the 35-year presidency of Porfirio Diaz. It became the watering hole for the upper classes and boasted a railway and steamboat service…

Díaz’s influence played a part in—but was not responsible for—bringing ‘new life’ (tourism) to Chapala. The railway did not reach Chapala until 1920 (almost a decade after Díaz had entered exile in Europe), and it closed in 1926.

It was only in 1909 that the first motor car (named ‘Protos’) arrived in Chapala, but by 1910, a cobbled road connected Chapala to Guadalajara, and it was paved by 1937.

Many cars had been drive to Chapala before ‘Protos.’ Though ‘Protos’ was not the first motor car in Chapala, it did win a hill-climbing race there in 1909. The road between Guadalajara and Chapala was not cobbled by 1910; almost its entire length was dirt until much later.

Ajijic was discovered by European intellectuals and provided a refuge for those fleeing political prosecution [sic] after WWI.

This is a stretch. Only a handful of Europeans of any kind had ‘discovered’ Ajijic prior to the 1940s, and those who had were neither ‘intellectuals’ nor fleeing political persecution following WWI.

In 1925, D.H. Lawrence was writing “The Plumed Serpent” in Chapala.

D. H. Lawrence wrote his first draft of The Plumed Serpent in Chapala in 1923, not 1925.

… Nigel Millet was managing Posada Ajijic, and in the mid-30s, a gold rush transformed the town into a short frenzy of greed. That was soon over and Ajijic settled down again while Nigel Millet co-wrote “Village in the Sun” under the name of Dale [sic] Chandos. The other half of the team, Peter Lilley, then wrote “House in the Sun.”

There was no gold rush in the mid-1930s. Gold mining in the hills behind Ajijic began much earlier: by 1885 there were already thirty silver and gold mines in Ajijic. Production peaked in the first decade of the twentieth century, with occasional short-lived revivals thereafter. The pen-name used by Nigel Millett and Peter Lilley was Dane (not Dale) Chandos. There is no doubt in my opinion that both men wrote both books, with some revisions possibly made by a third man, Anthony Stansfeld. (For more about mining in Ajijic and about Dane Chandos, see Foreign Footprints in Ajijic.)

In the 1940s… there were 14 foreigners living here.

This number is often quoted. There were certainly fewer than 14 foreigners living in Ajijic in 1940, but many more than 14 for most of the decade.

In 1943, Neill James, a world-renowned travel writer, arrived in Ajijic to recover from serious injuries suffered while exploring a newly active volcano, Paracutín [sic], located near Pátzcuaro.

Neill James did arrive in Ajijic in 1943, to recuperate from two (not one) volcanic mishaps. She spent more time in hospital recovering from the first accident (on Mt. Popocatapetl) than she did following the incident at Paricutín.

She soon purchased the property where the Lake Chapala Society stands today, and never left until she died in 1994, just a few months short of her 100th birthday. Neill James was born in 1899 on a cotton plantation in Granada, Mississippi.

Nellie Neill James was not born in Granada, Mississippi, nor on a cotton plantation, and not in 1899. She was born in Gore Springs, Mississippi on 3 January 1895. Her family was far from wealthy; her father worked as a laborer in a saw mill.

She married and quickly divorced without children. In 1929 she left the work-a-day world to pursue a life as a pioneering adventurer, world-traveler, travel writer and novelist. Heroine of many adventures, including living among Asiatic primitives and being pursued and hounded across Asia by Japanese agents, she finally came to roost in Ajijic in 1942.

Except for her trip to Mexico (and holiday trips late in her life), her world travels as an adventurer came before her brief marriage (to Harold C. Campbell) in 1937, and not after. Neill James arrived in Ajijic in September 1943, not in 1942.

The building now housing the office, multi-cultural reading room and the reference portion of the library was built and operated as a silkworm factory and a salesroom until a freak cold snap killed the silkworms.

Of the many possible reasons suggested for the demise of her silkworm business, James herself placed the blame squarely on a single negligent employee. (See chapter 34 of Foreign Footprints in Ajijic.)

As she settled in, Ms. James built a house for her sister on the property, and deeded several parcels to her friends to build some of the picturesque houses that can be seen on the edges of our grounds.

This is fanciful. For the history of how Neill James acquired her extensive estate in Ajijic, see Foreign Footprints in Ajijic, chapter 14.

Neill James articles in Life and other U.S. magazines inspired the first wave of gringo visitations. Her book, Dust On My Heart, a personal view of early lakeside life.

Life never published anything by Neill James. Her only published article, “I live in Ajijic,” appeared in Modern Mexico, the periodical of the Mexican Chamber of Commerce in New York. Dust On My Heart was not her “personal view of early lakeside life.” Of the forty short chapters in Dust on My Heart, only the final two—“Ajijic” and “Adobe Hut in Heaven”—relate to the Lake Chapala area.

Ms. James opened her first public library for Mexican children in 1945 and it has continued uninterrupted, though in different locations, since then.

Neill James’ first children’s library in Ajijic was not opened in 1945, but some years later, in about 1953.

By 1983, the Lake Chapala Society moved to the present location and in 1985, Neill James donated her property to the Society.

James had graciously allowed the Lake Chapala Society to use parts of her property from 1983. The legal transfer of her property to the society was completed in January 1990. See chapter 24 of Foreign Footprints in Ajijic for details.

In 1989, all the streets were torn up to lay sewers, and the 460-year-old cobblestones were tossed to one side …

There is no evidence that Ajijic had any cobblestone streets prior to the end of the nineteenth century.

Rumors abound that Ajijic and the Guadalajara Airport were the nexus of a recent well-known ‘undercover’ CIA operation… known as the Iran-Contra connection of President Ronald Reagan and Oliver North.

Ajijic did indeed play a part in this operation. Terry Reed had an active role in the Iran-Contra affair established a machine-tool business in Guadalajara as a front for the “guns-in, drugs-out” operation in Central America. Reed, who lived in Ajijic from 1986 to 1988, coauthored Compromised: Clinton, Bush and the CIA, an international best seller.

It is clearly high time that someone writes a more realistic short history of Ajijic. My vote for this project goes to Dale Hoyt Palfrey!

• Related post: Fact-checking “A Brief History of Ajijic” by June Nay Summers.

Foreign Footprints in Ajijic: Decades of Change in a Mexican Village offers more details about the twentieth-century history of Ajijic.

References

• Carolyn Baus de Czitrom. 1982. Tecuexes y Cocas. Dos grupos de la región de Jalisco en el siglo XVI. Mexico City: INAH.
• Lawrence H. Freeman. 2001. “The History of Lakeside.” El Ojo del Lago, Vol 17, Number 6 (February 2001).
• Daniel I. Becerra de la Cruz. 2021. “La viruela de 1780 y 1798 en la parroquia de Chapala.” Estudios Jaliscienses (El Colegio de Jalisco), febrero de 2021, 24-34.
• Neill James. 1945. “I Live in Ajijic.” Modern Mexico (New York: Mexican Chamber of Commerce), Vol. 18 #5 (October 1945), 23-28.
• Neill James. 1946. Dust on my Heart: Petticoat Vagabond in Mexico. New York: Charles Scribner’s.
• Terry Reed and John Cummings. 1995. Compromised: Clinton, Bush and the CIA. Clandestine Publishing.

Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via the comments feature or email.

Tony Burton

Tony Burton’s books include “Lake Chapala: A Postcard History” (2022), “Foreign Footprints in Ajijic” (2022), “If Walls Could Talk: Chapala’s historic buildings and their former occupants” (2020), (available in translation as “Si Las Paredes Hablaran”), “Mexican Kaleidoscope” (2016), and “Lake Chapala Through the Ages” (2008).

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