Nebraska-based photographer and journalist Jack Bailey (1901-1977) made numerous trips to Mexico in the course of his career. An article he wrote in 1964, while visiting friends in Guadalajara, is the only currently known mention of an obscure and (perhaps mercifully) long forgotten publication named the Chapala Blade.
In several articles, Bailey included detailed descriptions of many other aspects of life at Lake Chapala. The titles of the articles are, in themselves, a giveaway of Bailey’s prime focus: they include “American Colony Grows At Lake Chapala: Beautiful Monotony,” “Haven for Retired Americans,” “A Most Delightful Setting – Holiday Paradise Called Chapala,” and “An American Colony Has Sprung Up on the Shores of Lake Chapala.”
Strangely, however, almost all the photographs illustrating these articles are of other parts of Mexico, not Lake Chapala. The prime exception is this image of a modern residence in Chula Vista.
Credit: The Grand Island Independent, 11 Mar 1965, p12.
Reporter-photographer and businessman Jack Bailey was born in Denver, Colorado, on 27 April 1901, and died, following a heart attack, on 20 February 1977, while attending an Arizona State Photographers’ meeting at the Grand Canyon. He began his newspaper career on the Kansas City Journal and the Omaha Bee News before moving to Grand Island, Nebraska, in 1930 to work for the Grand Island Independent, where he went from reporter and feature writer to wire editor and, from 1950, the paper’s first “roving reporter.”
Alongside his journalistic work, Bailey opened his own photographic studio in Grand Island in 1941, and developed other business interests. Bailey and his wife, Bobbie Wasson, visited Europe in 1960 for six months. In January 1963, Bailey announced plans to spend several months in Mexico, saying that, while they had been south of the border several times before, they wanted to explore more: “This time we will seek out more of the quaint, unusual places which the average tourist misses.”
Their provisional itinerary included Querétaro, Veracruz, Acapulco, Taxco, Pátzcuaro, Morelia, Uruapan, Jocotepec, Ajijic, Chapala, Guadalajara, San Blas and Mazatlán.
Bailey’s first article about the Lake Chapala area, datelined Jocotepec, was published in March 1963, while he was staying at Granja Azul, which he describes as “one of those quaint motels which few Americans find because it is off the beaten track. Only one person speaks English and she is an elderly lady who learned when she was a child and never forgot.” The Granja Azul cost 110 pesos ($8.oo) a day per couple, including three meals!
Bailey revisited the area for extended visits the following two years. Here are a selection of excerpts from his various articles related to the area:
Sailboats seem to float lazily on the smooth blue waters while fishermen in row boats appear almost dormant as they wait for their nets to fill with the white fish for which the lake is famous…. [around Lake Chapala] hundreds of Americans have come to build their homes, remodel Mexican adobe huts and spend the rest of their lives. Faces of Americans are almost as common as those of Mexicans in this condensed section of Mexico.”
In Jocotepec, at the weekly Sunday paseo (serenade), “The boys and girls team up by twos and threes and walk around the plaza in opposite directions eyeing one another as they go. The parents fill the benches on the sidelines and watch their children seek a boy or girl who may later become an in-law.”
Ajijic
Ajijic “is strictly an Indian village with adobe block homes and cobblestone streets…. Years ago it became a gathering place for writers, artists seeking refuge from the outside world. Many of these have since left and now it is regaining its previous charm. There is one writer who remained, however, and she has created a square block wilderness of beauty where she lives, writes and has a tourist shop…. Her name is Neal [Neill] James and she has written a number of books.”
Bailey considered her home, with its “huge murals painted on some of the walls”, and her yard (open to the public), which was a jungle of bananas, papayas and many other unusual trees and shrubs, “well worth driving miles out of your way to see.”
Bailey had a word of caution for anyone thinking of moving to Ajijic:
[Many Americans] must drown their loneliness – which they refuse to admit – with drink…. Once one drives through the village of Ajijic he will understand why. The Americano’s home–a beautiful structure-is surrounded on all sides by the small drab nondescript homes of the natives who live on a few hundred pesos a year. The adobe huts are depressing and no matter in which direction the Americano looks he sees poverty while by comparison he is living in the lap of luxury…. It is depressing to say the least. And the sad part about it is promoters are luring retired Americans to come here and live.”
Chula Vista
In 1963, Bailey reported that modest five-room homes in Chula Vista could be purchased for $4,500 and six-room homes with three bedrooms for $5,000. A year later, he revised these prices upwards to between $8,000 and $20,000, and described Chula Vista, where “the other half lives,” as:
a community of between 40 and 50 families built on the side of a hill overlooking the lake… composed primarily of retired people who have come down here to spend the declining years of their lives. The village is well laid out with hard surfaced streets, a good street lighting system and a deep well which furnishes plenty of good drinking water as well as plenty for their lawns and gardens.”
By 1965, Chula Vista had about “90 homes built on the side of a mountain overlooking Lake Chapala…. The residents are all citizens of the United States, who have moved here to retire. The residents include retired army colonels and generals, business executives. retail store operators and a few federal employees on substantial pensions.”
If one had to take a choice between Ajijic and Chula Vista there is no question about which place we would choose. It would be Chula Vista because there most of the residents are in the same social strata and the poverty of the Indians is missing. We could not see how anyone could live in Ajijic beside the backward fishermen who barely eke out a living. Such a climate would quickly turn us into social workers so we could help them raise their standard of living.”
Chapala
Visiting Chapala in late February, Bailey commented that, “The beach was filled with swimmers; speedboats racing by sent waves rolling shoreward and young lovers rode the crests in small canoes.”
Bailey appreciated the dozens of beautiful lakefront homes in Chapala, “by taking the boat trip which hugs the shoreline,” but was especially enamored of the town’s rose gardens:
Chapala is famous for its roses and it is doubtful if roses anywhere grow more profusely than they do in the parkway along the lake front. The parkway runs for several blocks and is filled with nothing but roses. Many of the flowers are almost as large as plates and it is not uncommon to see from 20 to 25 blooms on a single bush. Almost every variety and color can be found in the Chapala parkway. The city has been cultivating and breeding these roses for years.”
On the other hand, he lamented, while sitting on the pier and watching visitors go by, how:
Some of the garbs worn by the female members of the tourist clan not only caused other tourists to gasp in amazement but caused the natives also to turn their heads and choke back a laugh. The crazy outfits aren’t confined to women alone. Many men, with their pot bellies, don outlandish colored shorts, jackets of purple and red and a type of sombrero a Mexican wouldn’t be caught wearing at midnight.”
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Sources
- The Grand Island Independent: 29 Jan 1963, 1; 8 Mar 1963, 3; 9 Mar 1963, 3; 11 Mar 1963, 10; 30 Mar 1964, 16; 21 February 1977, 1.
- Jack Bailey. 1964. American Colony Grows At Lake Chapala: Beautiful Monotony.” The Grand Island Independent, 23 Mar 1964, 20.
- Jack Bailey. 1964. “Haven for Retired Americans.” The Grand Island Independent, 1 April 1964, 27.
- Jack Bailey. 1965. “A Most Delightful Setting – Holiday Paradise Called Chapala.” The Grand Island Independent, 3 April 1965, 9.
- Jack Bailey. 1965. “An American Colony Has Sprung Up on the Shores of Lake Chapala.” The Grand Island Independent, 5 April 1965, 13.
Comments, corrections and additional material welcome, whether via comments feature or email.
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).