Mexico My Home: Poems by Ira Nottonson, illustrated by Peter and Eunice Huf

 1970s  1 Response »
Mar 272025
 

Of all the books associated with Lake Chapala, perhaps the one with the most curious title is Mexico My Home. Primitive Art and Modern Poetry With 50 easy to learn Spanish words and phrases. For all children from 8 to 80. With only 32 pages, and with only a few words on every alternate page, the title is almost as long as the book!

Published in 1972, the book has fifteen short, child-friendly poems written by Ira Nottonson, with illustrations opposite each poem by artists Peter Huf and Eunice (Hunt) Huf. The illustrations are Mexican naif in style, though the Hufs’ art tended more towards abstraction or surrealism.

Nottonson-booklet-artwork

Sample page from Mexico My Home

 

Nottonson first met the Hufs, then living in Ajijic, at the Hotel Camino Real in Guadalajara one Sunday afternoon in 1971, when he spotted their selection of small, painted easels at a show in the hotel. Nottonson, who also lived in Ajijic, and was at the hotel by chance, introduced himself, and asked if they would illustrate several children’s books he was working on.

Nottonson poem and Huf image

Sample page from Mexico My Home

Even though their ensuing partnership only resulted in this one book, Nottonson and his wife, Sandra (‘Sandy’) Baker Burton, became good friends with the Hufs, and with another couple: painter Beth Avary and her husband, Don. Beth also wrote some poetry. As Peter Huf explained to me over supper at his home in Germany, Ira “fancied himself as a modern poet . . . in the style of Beth Avary.” He was somewhat successful. The Guadalajara Reporter told its readers that Mexico My Home was “an unusually beautiful and practical book” of modern poetry.

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Ira Nathan Nottonson was born in Brooklyn, New York, on 14 February 1933, and died at the age of 85 in Boulder Colorado, on 27 March 2018. He graduated from Brookline High School in Massachusetts, and gained a degree in English from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, before completing a law degree at Boston College Law School. In the 1960s, he apparently wrote scripts for several short dramas produced by the Playhouse Workshop. He was also a moderator for at least one episode (“The Game of Sex”) of the long-running series “Ideas on Trial.” He married Sandra Baker Burton in about 1968.

When they moved to Lake Chapala in late 1970 with their five children from previous marriages, the Guadalajara Reporter asserted that Nottonson had ‘retired’, despite being only in his thirties. The newspaper explained that Nottonson was living on income from a Night Club he owned in Cambridge, Massachusetts; from a TV production company he owned, and from his financial interest in an advertising agency. “Income from all these projects permits this young man to sit and write children’s books, three of which are in publisher’s hands for possible publication.”

After their relatively brief time in Mexico, Nottonson and his family returned to the U.S., where he was appointed general counsel to International Industries (1973-76), and then held various high-ranking positions with Postal Instant Press (1976-86). In the 1990s, Nottonson and his wife moved to Boulder, Colorado, where he taught law and business classes and wrote a regular business column for the Daily Camera.

In addition to poetry, Nottonson also wrote or co-wrote several business-related books, including The secrets to buying and selling a business (1994); Before You Go into Business, Read This (1999); Ultimate book to buying or selling a business (2004); Forming a partnership: and making it work (2007); and Small business legal tool kit (2007).

Several chapters of Foreign Footprints in Ajijic: Decades of Change in a Mexican Village offer more details about the history of the artistic community in Ajijic.

Sources

  • Ira N. Nottonson. 1972. Mexico My Home. Primitive Art and Modern Poetry With 50 easy to learn Spanish words and phrases. For all children from 8 to 80. Guadalajara, Mexico: Boutique d’Artes Graficas.
  • Guadalajara Reporter: 12 Jun 1971; 20 Nov 1971.
  • Anon. Ira Nathan Nottonson (obituary). The Daily Camera, 15 April 2018.
  • Peter Huf, interviewed at his home in Germany in 2014.

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

Wilhelm Schiess and his 8-peso boat trip from Chapala to Ocotlán in 1899

 1920s and earlier  2 Responses »
Mar 132025
 

As we saw in a previous post—Wilhelm Schiess described Chapala in 1899—Dr Schiess (1869-1929), a Swiss doctor, visited Chapala briefly in 1899 with his brother, Ernst, and later published a detailed account of their trip.

After a quick visit to Guadalajara, and seeing Juanacatlán Falls, the brothers had taken a special carriage from Atequiza to Chapala on Wednesday 6 December, where they had lunch at the Hotel Arzapalo, overlooking the lake. One bottle of red wine later, the brothers decided not to stay overnight at the hotel, but to take a boat to Ocotlán. This turned out be be far more of an adventure than they had ever imagined.

We could have stayed overnight in Chapala and taken the stagecoach back tomorrow. The steamboat arrives in Chapala only very irregularly and is mainly intended for transporting goods from the ranchos on the southern shore, so we could not rely on it…. Ernst therefore negotiated with two boatmen who agreed to take us to Ocotlán for 8 pesos [4 dollars]. The innkeeper warned us about the boat trip, as we would be completely dependent on the unpredictable whims of the wind, and an unreliable companion might leave us stranded for days along the way. But as if by a sign from heaven, a strong west wind suddenly rose, and the two sailors assured us that we would reach Ocotlán by 8.00pm.

“At 3.40pm, we had loaded our luggage onto the boat and set sail. The innkeeper and the few remaining guests stood on the shore, waving their white handkerchiefs in farewell for a long time. Chapala is located near the western end of the lake, which is roughly the size of Lake Constance. From our wide, flat barge, we had a magnificent view of the mountain range enclosing the western side of the lake, at whose foot Chapala, with its charming villas, was beautifully situated. The sail was hoisted on the mast in the middle of the boat and secured to both sides. We had the wind coming directly from behind us, which could not have been more favorable, as these barges can only sail with the wind at their back. With the massive waves, our boat rocked dangerously in all directions, making it difficult to remain seated on the rickety little chairs that had been placed in the barge for us.

“The two mozos were barefoot, with their light manta trousers rolled up above mid-thigh. They steered the rudder and sang a few melancholic, monotonous Mexican tunes. The lake had a murky yellow color, but in the evening light, one could almost believe it was the clearest, most transparent water. Ernst and I grew quieter and quieter, a sense of unease creeping over us. We tossed our cigars overboard. I noticed my brother growing paler and paler, and I could feel the same happening to me. Cursed seasickness! We had crossed the ocean without trouble, even laughing at our suffering fellow passengers, and now—less than an hour on this lake—we had to admit that we, too, were not immune. We moved our chairs closer to the edge of the boat, and not in vain! Just as quickly as the sickness had come, it passed. The two mozos smiled slightly and advised us to smell a lemon—an infallible remedy for seasickness, they claimed. Half an hour later, Ernst’s cheeks were rosy again, and I felt as well as before.

“Unfortunately, the wind grew weaker, the waves subsided, and the lake became as smooth as a mirror. The sail was taken down. If we had already been making slow progress with a good wind, the heavy barge now barely moved at all.
The two Mexicans took up small, clumsy oars and began paddling. We stayed close to the northern shore, which was occasionally hilly, with scattered trees and a few cornfields. At 5.30pm, the sun set. In the west, long after darkness had fallen, a magnificent, grand glow remained, as if a colossal forest fire were raging in the distance. Gradually, even this fiery spectacle faded, leaving only the dark silhouettes of the mountains. Everything around us was pitch black. Aside from the monotonous, slow strokes of the oars, and the drowsy singing of the two sailors, there was no sound in this desolate expanse. The lake lay utterly calm and smooth, and we soon realized that reaching our destination that evening would be impossible.

“We consulted with our two guides about whether it might be best to land and wait until morning. However, our companions were absolutely opposed to this idea. They began telling stories of robbers—each more terrifying than the last—and no treasure in the world could persuade them to dock at the shore. One of them claimed that his uncle had been murdered by native Indians just a few days ago, and even the captain of the steamboat had fallen victim to these people only a few weeks earlier. Listening to these tales, a deep sense of unease crept over us.

“The first quarter moon stood high in the sky, occasionally casting its pale light through the clouds onto our little boat. The lake was lightly rippled again, reflecting the silver moonlight. The mozos encouraged us to lie down on the floor of the barge and sleep. But could we trust these two strong young men? The innkeeper had recommended them, and besides, they couldn’t have gotten rid of us without the crime becoming known afterward. Moreover, Ernst still had his revolver…. So, we spread blankets over the damp wooden floor, stretched out, and covered ourselves as best we could. Our hard suitcases served as pillows. A sip of cognac, a piece of chocolate, a lump of sugar, and a small slice of sausage made up our frugal supper. Suddenly, Ernst, who was sleeping right next to me, jolted up in fright. He had dreamed that a mozo was leaning over him, trying to slit his throat. Instinctively, he stretched out a hand in defense—only to realize that the mozo was merely climbing over him to hoist the sail, with no sinister intentions. But just as the sail was raised, the wind died down again, forcing the Mexicans to keep stepping over us repeatedly. Finally, around 1.30am, even they grew tired. Their monotonous singing ceased, and we drifted into a small bay without landing. The two mozos lay down to sleep—one at the front of the boat, the other at the back.”

Terry-map-Chapala

Source: Terry’s Mexico Handbook (1909)

The Schiess brothers survived the night, and woke up the following morning to find that:

Our barge lay motionless in the bay, not far from the shore. Heavy clouds covered the sky, except for a narrow blue-green strip on the eastern horizon. Then, the sun rose in an absolutely magnificent display. A vast fire spread across the entire mountain range and reflected in the lake, which took on a brilliant green hue. This dreamlike illumination lasted only a few minutes before vanishing completely. It began to rain, and for a brief moment, two massive rainbows arched across a large part of the lake in the west. Soon after, the sun disappeared behind thick clouds. The mountains darkened and were later partially shrouded in mist. We woke our two companions and continued our journey, staying close to the shore. Our only provisions for breakfast were a small tin of sardines…. With the help of the oars, we made slow progress. Whenever the lake’s shallow depth near the shore allowed, the boatmen used long poles to push off the lakebed, which helped us move forward more efficiently. Ernst played the harmonica, and the two mozos sang.

“Each time we passed an indigenous settlement, the mozos made a tremendous racket, shouting for eggs and tortillas. In front of the huts, we saw a few indigenous people, wearing nothing but cloaks made of maize straw, busy piling up corn. They paid no attention to our pleas or, at best, called back that they had nothing to spare. Several small villages, hidden among the greenery, came into view. Their huts were made entirely of maize straw. Here and there, cows grazed on the dry meadows. We caught up with a sailboat similar to ours and bought a few cigarettes from the boatmen. This boat, which we soon left far behind, had already been traveling from Chapala for three days, so we had to consider ourselves lucky to have come so far in such a short time.

“At 10 o’clock, we spotted two miserable straw huts on land and an old woman hurrying back and forth between them. Summoning their courage, the mozos asked Ernst to keep the revolver ready, then—miraculously—went ashore. They returned beaming with warm tortillas made from red maize and a few fresh eggs. We devoured this dry breakfast with great appetite, though it had been slightly dampened by the rain. It was pouring in torrents, and water streamed from our hats as if from gutters. Trees stood deep in the water along the shore, their crowns dipping far into the lake. The southern shore was no longer visible—thick veils of mist shrouded the mountains.

“Around 11.30am, we finally arrived in the bay of Ocotlán, which is bordered to the east by a rocky mountain and to the west by some hills covered with cornfields. It was too late to catch the train to Zamora that day, but that hardly mattered, as we first needed to dry off. The rain had gradually seeped through the wool blankets, leaving us completely soaked. In the bay, the lake gradually took on a lagoon-like appearance. A vast number of ducks could be seen here. Passing through trees and reeds, we reached the mouth of the Río Grande.”

They finally made it to Ocotlán at around 1.30pm:

“Here, in one of the canals, lay the steamboat, which was built similarly to the Mississippi riverboats, with a colossal paddle wheel at the back, although it only had about half of its original paddles left. We made some purchases in the plaza, including candles to have festive lighting in the evening. At the Mexican hotel, where there was only one other guest besides us, we immediately sent the landlady to the kitchen, and soon we were served something warm to eat.”

After a meal and a good night’s sleep, they continued on their way:

Friday, December 8th. At 6.45am, the thermometer showed +12°C, and it felt quite warm to us now that we were in completely dry clothes again…. We climbed up the church tower; from a platform, under the bells, and surrounded by the various domes of the church, we had a wide, open view of the entire landscape. To the south, we could see a shining strip, the Chapala Lake, and beyond it, the beautifully shaped mountains. At our feet, the Rio Grande meandered with its green banks through the plain, gradually dissolving into numerous lagoons. Before us lay the plaza planted with orange trees, where a vast number of people were currently gathered. Beyond the flat rooftops of the houses, numerous hills could be seen, only sparsely wooded…. After lunch, we took the tram to the station, about 10 minutes away. . . .

“At around 1 o’clock, it was +21°C at the station. The train took us through a flat area with many lagoons, a splendid hunting ground for duck hunters. Here and there, we could see green fields. In La Barca, where there was again a tram connection to the town, we had a few minutes’ stop. What a scene it was at the station! Mexicans and their wives, along with a large number of children, walked from one train window to another, carrying baskets and trays, hawking their goods. You could buy sandwiches with half chickens, radishes, oranges, beer, goat cheese, tortillas—all at a cheap price. Mexicans are masters at quickly devouring massive bites, and the baskets emptied out rapidly. Blind and lame beggars, singing and playing harps, were led by their wives from one compartment to another. The heart-wrenching and ear-piercing songs had their effect, as copper coins were often thrown from the windows.”

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.
My 2022 book Lake Chapala: A Postcard History uses reproductions of more than 150 vintage postcards to tell the incredible story of how Lake Chapala became an international tourist and retirement center.

Sources

  • Wilhelm Schiess. 1902. Quer durch Mexiko vom Atlantischen zum Stillen Ocean. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer.

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

Wilhelm Schiess described Chapala in 1899

 1920s and earlier  2 Responses »
Feb 062025
 

Dr Wilhelm Schiess (1869-1929) visited Chapala briefly in 1899, during a winter trip to Mexico with his brother, Ernst. His detailed account of their trip, with dozens of photographs, was published in 1902 as Quer durch Mexiko vom Atlantischen zum Stillen Ocean (“Across Mexico from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean”). It was well received at the time as an accurate, first-hand account of several little-known parts of Mexico. Sadly—and presumably because the book was never translated—Schiess’s work has received relatively little attention.

Carl Wilhelm Schiess was born in Basel, Switzerland, on 12 July 1869 to Prof. Dr. Heinrich Schiess, a well-known ophthalmologist in that city, and his wife, Rosalie Gemuseus.

Schiess had already completed his medical training before visiting the US and Mexico with his brother in 1899. The two young men entered Mexico via New Orleans, before traveling by rail to Torreón and Durango, and crossing the Western Sierra Madre to Mazatlán. From there, they took a steamer to San Blas, and then proceeded to cross the country from west to east, via Tepic, Tequila, Guadalajara, Chapala, Zamora, Uruapan, Pátzcuaro, Morelia, Mexico City and Amecameca to Veracruz, before returning north via Orizaba, Cordoba, Guanajuato, Aguascalientes and Zacatecas. Quite the itinerary to complete in just two months!

The Schiess brothers had lots of adventures along the way. Like many other early travelers in Mexico, they even climbed to the summit of Popocatepetl Volcano, and photographed the interior of its crater. They visited remote mines and explored archeological sites, including Xochicalco.

The brothers arrived in Guadalajara on Monday 4 December 1899. The following morning, they left the city to view Juanacatlán Falls. They were very impressed by their grandeur, and the book includes photographs of the falls themselves, of a group of women washing clothes below the falls, and this photo of a then pristine River Santiago (aka Río Grande), immediately above the falls. After a full day exploring, they returned to their hotel in Guadalajara.

Wilhelm Schiess. 1899. Río Grande at Juanacatlán. (opp. p. 137)

Wilhelm Schiess. 1899. Río Grande at Juanacatlán. (opp. p. 137)

The next day (Wednesday 6 December) they left the city by train en route to Chapala:

We set off at 10:20. Since our journey would not be long, we sat in second class. By 11.30am, we arrived in Atequiza, where the temperature was only 12°C. Back home, with such a cloudy sky, one would surely predict rain soon. However, no one here believed in rain at this time of year; instead, they assured us that the sun would soon shine again.

“Behind the train station, an eight-horse stagecoach was already waiting, along with a half-open carriage drawn by five mules. We took our seats in the carriage, which we had entirely to ourselves. We galloped off, and although this road seemed smooth compared to those we had previously encountered, we were still jolted and shaken considerably and had to hold on tightly to avoid being thrown from the carriage. As we sped along, one of the postillions frequently jumped down from the coach, ran as fast as he could alongside the carriage, and urged the mules to an even faster pace with his whip and shouts. The second driver swung his endlessly long whip from the coach seat.

“We raced along, always closely following the mail cart, passing over the rough cobblestones of Atequiza. The road led up and down hills, with little vegetation in sight—only a few bare trees with white blossoms here and there. An hour before reaching Chapala, we occasionally caught glimpses of the lake far below us. At a furious pace, we raced down the hill, and the two white church towers of Chapala approached with a completely different speed than the towers of Guadalajara had a few days ago. That time, we sat on exhausted animals, whereas today, five lively mules were pulling us along. At 1.30pm, we arrived in Chapala and stopped in front of the large, comfortably furnished hotel.”

The hotel was the Hotel Arzapalo, where:

In the spacious, European-style dining hall on the ground floor, we enjoyed our lunch and, from our table, had a magnificent view of the lake through the small orange garden in front of the hotel. The hotel is located directly on the shore. A bottle of red wine gave us the courage to ponder further adventures. Besides us, only a small family had taken a seat in the otherwise empty hall, giving the place a rather deserted appearance. The season had long since ended. In summer, many families, mainly from Guadalajara, come here to spend their time rowing and swimming. The sandy beach is perfect for children. The Chapala Lake is said to have a very mild climate, yet we happened to arrive on one of the least pleasant days imaginable. Now, people are even complaining about the cold!”

Wilhelm Schiess. 1899. Chapala. (opp. p153)

Wilhelm Schiess. 1899. Chapala. (opp. p. 153) The distant building on the left of the image is Villa Montecarlo, built by Septimus Crowe. In the middle is Villa Tlalocan, completed in 1896. The white residence on the right is Casa Capetillo.

Chapala itself is a small village, whose main street, consisting of closely built small houses, runs westward from the hotel, going up and down the hills along the lake. It is separated from the lake by beautiful gardens, where magnificent specimens of evergreen trees, blooming oleanders, blue morning glories, and red geraniums can be found. Small side alleys lead from the main street down to the lake. Along the lakefront, as well as partially in the water, there are trees through which one has a lovely view of the four or five stately villas of the village.

“Next to the hotel is the steamboat landing, which extends into the lake. It is planted with young trees and furnished with well-maintained benches for visitors. There is no daily regular steamboat service, even in summer. Behind the hotel rises a brown, barren hill that stretches westward along the lake. Along the village street, near the small water ponds, we noticed some women washing and bathing, who covered themselves upon our approach. The villas, with their terraces, offered a rather charming view from the lake, and in fine weather, living here must certainly be pleasant. East of the hotel, near the lake, stands the large white church, which presents a picturesque sight. Now and then, the sun shimmered through the dense clouds, bringing a bit of life to the otherwise deserted village. On the southern side of the lake, as well as in the west, high mountains could be seen everywhere. The lake has a somewhat dark and wild appearance—at least under this lighting—yet one still sees orange and banana trees. At 2.30pm, the temperature was 19°C, while the water measured 18°C. However, today we had no desire to go for a swim.”

After considering their options, the brothers decided not to stay overnight in Chapala, but to take a boat that afternoon to Ocotlán:

We could have stayed overnight in Chapala and taken the stagecoach back tomorrow. The steamboat arrives in Chapala only very irregularly and is mainly intended for transporting goods from the ranchos on the southern shore, so we could not rely on it. The only way to continue directly was to hire a sailing boat. Ernst therefore negotiated with two boatmen who agreed to take us to Ocotlán for 8 pesos.”

We will examine the book’s lengthy description of their boat ride to Ocotlán, which turned out to be far more of an adventure than they had expected, in a future post.

Links to a Swiss castle

Carl Wilhelm Scheiss is the unexpected link between Chapala and a famous Swiss castle. In 1900, shortly after his return to Switzerland, his aunt, Mrs. Rosina Magdalena Gemuseus, purchased Spiez Castle on Lake Thun in the Swiss canton of Bern, and invited Scheiss and his wife, Helene Schiess-Frey (1882–1962), to live there. In July 1900, Schiess opened a medical practice based in the castle, parts of which date back to the tenth century. He lived in the castle for several years, with office hours every morning to 11.00am, and clinics for eye diseases every Tuesday and Friday morning.

The village of Spiez grew rapidly: roads were improved and villagers added a new stone church and many new homes. In about 1906, close to the time his son was born, Schiess commissioned a firm of Basel architects to build him a large family home in the village, with an attached medical office.

In 1907, Schiess’s aunt sold him some of the outlying castle properties, including the old church, rectory, manager’s house, cherry orchard, vineyards and an area of forest. Schiess continued to live quite modestly, accustomed to making home visits to patients by bicycle. Contemporaries described him as a friendly, helpful and keen doctor, who worked tirelessly without any break during the terrible 1918 flu epidemic.

Following the death of his aunt on 3 February 1919, Schiess inherited the castle itself. But the upkeep was costly, and Schiess soon found himself having to sell valuables from the castle to cover ongoing maintenance expenses. By 1922 he started looking for a potential purchaser. In the absence of finding anyone, a group of villagers established a foundation five years later with the idea of preserving the castle for future generations. On 14 August 1929, barely two weeks after the Spiez Castle Foundation took over the castle, Schiess died unexpectedly of heart failure.

The castle and gardens opened to the public in June 1930 and are now used for conferences, concerts, exhibitions and other events. Curiously, it is apparently not known which precise rooms of the castle were once used by the doctor and his wife.

Note: Translations of Schiess’ text are by the author and were AI-assisted.

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.
My 2022 book Lake Chapala: A Postcard History uses reproductions of more than 150 vintage postcards to tell the incredible story of how Lake Chapala became an international tourist and retirement center. The fascinating stories behind the first vacation homes and hotels in Chapala are the subject of If Walls Could Talk: Chapala’s Historic Buildings and Their Former Occupants, translated into Spanish as Si las paredes hablaran: Edificios históricos de Chapala y sus antiguos ocupantes.

Sources

  • Tony Burton. 2016. “A 1902 travel account, and unexpected link between Mexico and a Swiss castle.” Post dated 25 February 2016 on Geo-Mexico.com.
  • Wilhelm Schiess. 1902. Quer durch Mexiko vom Atlantischen zum Stillen Ocean. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer.
  • Alfred Stettler. 2004. “75 Jahre Stiftung Schloss Spiez: Die Anfänge” in Jahrbuch: vom Thuner und Brienzersee, Uferschutzverband Thuner- und Brienzersee.

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

Roger Emil Neuman found “Paradise” at Lake Chapala in the 1980s

 1980s  3 Responses »
Dec 122024
 

Among several “how to live cheaply in Mexico” books hitting the market in the 1980s was Paradise found: how to live in North America’s best climate for under $300 a month, by R. Emil Neuman, published in 1986.

Neuman-cover

Roger Emil Neuman (1941-2001), born in Detroit, Michigan, on 7 June 1941, was the son of Adolph Neuman (1916-1994), who worked as a designer for Ford Motor Company for 40 years, and his wife, Elizabeth Ann Barker (1917-1995). He graduated from Allen Park High School in 1959, gained a “BS degree” in accounting, and scored in the top 5% of all candidates in his CPA exam.

Neuman died at his home in Carlsbad, California, on 6 November 2001, and was buried alongside family members at the Glen Eden Memorial Park near Detroit, Michigan.

According to one obituary, his resumé included service in the US Army. In Paradise Found, Neuman describes having worked as a Congressional Investigator in Detroit for 12 years, before moving to San Diego in 1978.

In California, Neuman became an early self-publisher and mail order marketer, setting himself up as the president and CEO of United Research Publishers (URP) in Encinitas, California. URP issued about 25 works by 10 different authors between 1978 and 2005, mainly related to either health or self-help topics. It was a highly successful business: his Detroit Free Press obituary claims it was “the most successful mail order book publishing business in the United States” at the time. Neuman, described as kind, brilliant, philosophical and funny,” made numerous generous donations to churches in Michigan and California, and also supported children’s programs in far flung parts of the world.

Neuman grave marker, Michigan

Neuman’s grave marker, near Detroit

The story line of Paradise found: how to live in North America’s best climate for under $300 a month is that Neuman decides to take his retired father to visit Lake Chapala to consider moving there. The book, which includes many photos, is written in non-specialist language (a high school reading level) and was published in relatively large print. The story is told via reported interactions with a series of individuals who explain how they came to retire to the area, and why they love living there.

Neuman offers lots of sage advice along the way, with brief, and largely accurate (at the time), accounts of how house purchases, shopping, language, expenses, migration permits, can best be managed by a newcomer.

As background, he writes that:

Wealthy Americans visited Lake Chapala in the late 1880s. Many Americans built homes and spent part of each year on the Lake. For example, Albert Braniff, founder of Braniff Airlines, built a large home near the Lake is about 1885. Tennessee Williams reportedly spent a good deal of time here writing many of his famous novels.”

Even if the details of this paragraph are not quite right, the basic sentiment is accurate. Relatively wealthy foreigners (not just Americans) certainly visited Chapala in the last decade of the nineteenth century. And there is a house known as Casa Braniff in Chapala, though it has no connection to the Albert Braniff of Braniff Airlines. Casa Braniff, designed by English architect George E King, was completed in 1905 for Guadalajara historian and lawyer Luis Pérez Verdía, who sold it two years later to Mexico’s own “Alberto Braniff,” a Mexico City businessman, with no family connection to the Braniff Airline family. As for Tennessee Williams, he only spent a single summer (1945) in Chapala, while writing “The Poker Night,” the basis for A Streetcar Named Desire.

Neuman’s informants in Paradise Found include Jack (73), who rents a home for “only $150 a month. Nice place. Two beds, full cooking facilities, a courtyard, laundry area, big swimming pool out front.” and who figures that he lives here “for under $300 a month. I mean good living too.” Adjusted for US inflation, $300 in 1986 is the equivalent of about $850 today.

Another informant, Tom, a retired truck driver aged about 55, had found Hawaii and California too expensive, Florida winters too cold, and had been living in Chapala with his wife for several years. Heat and all utilities were less than $5 a month, annual taxes were $27, they had their own cook, gardener and maid, and he “lived like a king on about $600 a month.” Tom told Neuman that he was afraid too many Americans will find out about the place and turn it into a tourist area.

Neuman claims that homes ranged in price from about $15,000 ($42,000 today) for a smaller home of 700 square feet or a fixer-upper, to $350,000 ($982,261 today) for a 4,000-square-foot “mansion.”

He also sagely recommends that “Lake Chapala is not for everyone. Before buying you should rent a home for at least six months. This will give you time to check things out thoroughly before you make a commitment to buy.”

Neuman quotes some typical hotel prices. Rooms (double occupancy) at the Hotel Real de Chapala were $20 a night (more in December), the same price as the Hotel Chula Vista. Double rooms at the Hotel Montecarlo were $22 a night, while for budget travelers, the Hotel Nido charged $7 single and $10 double a night.

Posada Ajijic menu, ca. 1986.

Posada Ajijic menu, ca. 1986. (Click to expand)

Comparing restaurant menus and prices, Neuman describes how La Viuda restaurant in Chapala, around the corner from the Hotel Nido, offers excellent food and service, and is “owned by Gus, who also owns the butcher shop next door where most American buy their meats.” Gus is Gustavo Sánchez, a direct descendant of Chapala-born photographer José Edmundo Sánchez.

Helpfully, Neuman includes menus for La Viuda, as well as the Real de Chapala hotel, El Mesón (Ajijic) and Posada Ajijic, “the main “hang out” for Americans living around the Lake… The Posada is owned by a Canadian couple who have plenty of restaurant experience. That’s why this place is so popular.” The book lists restaurant prices in pesos. At the time the book was published (1986), the exchange rate was about 900 pesos to a dollar, the following year it was 2200 pesos to a dollar. Neuman, who trained as an accountant, clearly published his book at precisely the right time for anyone thinking of moving south!

At the back of the 148-page book are a several pages of simple Spanish vocabulary, and a basic map of Lake Chapala. This map was originally surveyed and drawn in about 1816 by Spanish cartographer José María Narváez (1768-1840), and was subsequently used, with only minor changes, in many later publications, including Terry’s Mexican Handbook (1909), which is the version Neuman reproduces (without credit) in Paradise Found (1986). Few maps can boast such longevity!

Other works written by Roger Emil Neuman include Write Perfect Letters for Any Occasion (1990); You can collect $$$ from Uncle Sam (1975); How to Collect Big $$$ From Uncle Sam (1985); The Complete Handbook of Health Tips: based on the latest dietary and scientific findings and traditional remedies (1985); How You Can Achieve Financial Independence in Mail Order (1986); and The Complete Handbook of U.S. Government Benefits: How to Collect Big from Uncle Sam (1989). Many of these titles were released in more than one edition, and some had foreign language editions.

The books were promoted via nationwide advertising campaigns, which stressed the advantages of ordering direct from the publisher. For example, an advert in 1987 for Paradise Found informed readers that:“You can order direct from the publisher and save. Send only $12.95 plus $1 postage and handling to: United Research Publishers, 249 South Highway 101, Dept. UP-6, Solana Beach, CA 92075.”

The “departments” in the address presumably enabled Neuman to gauge the relative success of different market areas and ad styles.

While Paradise Found is much derided by modern readers as hopelessly out-of-date and wildly inaccurate in terms of prices quoted, the real question is whether or not these claims were valid when the book was written and first marketed. In my view, they were not as wild as often assumed. For example, the somewhat staid Frommer’s Guides to Mexico published, in 1986, one titled Mexico on $20 A Day, which equates to about $600 a month, the same figure quoted by Tom the truck driver.

On the other hand, some of the claims made by Canadian business consultant Thomas McLaughlin in The Greatest Escape, or How to Live in Paradise, in Luxury, for 250 Dollars Per Month, first published in 1983 (and reprinted in 1985), and competing in the same market sector, strike me as far more dubious. McLaughlin (who died in 1987) divided his time between Ontario and Lake Chapala for several years, marketed his book aggressively with the help of a retired business consultant in Ontario, Gerry Gailius, and organized tours to the lake.

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

My 2022 book Lake Chapala: A Postcard History uses reproductions of more than 150 vintage postcards to tell the incredible story of how Lake Chapala became an international tourist and retirement center.

Sources

  • North County Times: 12 Nov 2001, 14; 8 Jan 2002, 32.
  • Detroit Free Press: 18 Nov 2001, 18.

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

Historian Luis Pérez Verdía and his iconic house in Chapala

 1920s and earlier  6 Responses »
Nov 282024
 

The iconic landmark right in the heart of Chapala commonly known as Casa Braniff (Paseo Ramón Corona 18) was originally built by influential Guadalajara lawyer and historian Luis Pérez Verdía. The building has significant historical and cultural connections.

Construction of this magnificent edifice began in 1904 on the site of Chapala’s sixteenth century friary, close to the parish church. By the end of the nineteenth century, the friary buildings had fallen into disrepair and were used by the Hotel Arzapalo as stables for the teams of horses that pulled their stagecoaches.

Romero ? / S. Altamirano. c 1925. San Francisco Church and Casa Braniff.

San Francisco Church and Casa Braniff, c. 1925. Photo: Romero (?). Publisher: S. Altamirano.

To design his new home, Pérez Verdía commissioned British architect George Edward King, who had previously built Villa Tlalocan for the British consul, Lionel Carden, and who, with his son, had offices in several Mexican cities, including Guadalajara. Expected to cost $30,000, the “fine residence” was to be “a modern structure in every way.” By June, with work well underway, the estimated cost of the house had already risen to $40,000. Contrary to later conjecture, the bricks for Pérez Verdía’s house were not imported from Europe; they came from King’s own brickyards, located alongside the Central Mexican Railway on the southern outskirts of Guadalajara.

When the house was completed early in 1905, the state government agreed to exempt the property from all municipal and state taxes for a period of ten years.

Two years later, in March 1907, Pérez Verdía offered José Yves Limantour, the federal finance minister, the use of his house over the upcoming holidays. Apparently, the letter only reached Limantour after he had already arrived in Chapala. Shortly afterwards, Pérez Verdía sold the house, complete with its furnishings, for $57,000 to Alberto Braniff, a wealthy Mexico City businessman, who bought it as a gift for his widowed mother.

The quixotic design of the house, now the Restaurant Cazadores, was perfectly encapsulated in words by American poet Witter Bynner, who first saw it in 1923 while in Chapala with D. H. Lawrence: “We came by a pretentious Victorian brick villa, in the convulsive style of architecture—bay windows, turrets, cupolas, stained-glass windows.”

Casa Braniff (with church behind). Photo: Tony Burton, 2007.

Casa Braniff (with church behind). Photo: Tony Burton, 2007.

Who was Luis Pérez Verdía?

Pérez Verdía, born in 1857, grew up in the intellectual milieu of Guadalajara and was a member of the Ateneo Jalisciense, Jalisco’s leading artistic-scientific society. The society, active at the very start of the twentieth century, brought together a host of distinguished writers, artists and musicians, including photographer José María Lupercio, violinist and painter Félix Bernardelli, and artist and author Gerardo Murillo (Dr. Atl).

In the 1880s, Pérez Verdía was the lawyer in Guadalajara who represented Ferrocarril Central Mexicano (Mexican Central Railway) as it acquired land and overcame all obstacles to build its spur line, completed in 1888, connecting the city to existing tracks at Irapuato.

Pérez Verdía was the official representative for Jalisco at the 11th International Americanistas Congress in Mexico City in 1895, an event also attended by Cora Townsend and her mother, Mary Ashley Townsend (Cora bought Villa Montecarlo as her mother’s Christmas present that year!),  British consul Lionel Carden, who had already begun building Villa Tlalocan, and anthropologist Frederick Starr.

Pérez Verdía was involved in various development projects in Chapala. In 1896, he reportedly bought Isla de Alacranes (Scorpion Island) from the federal government for “the nominal sum of twenty-one dollars.” He planned to pay a bounty to rid the island of scorpions and “convert the Isla into a pleasure resort like Coney island.” About five years later, he sold the island to Ernesto Paulsen, who intended to build a “general sporting resort” there. The island, a site revered by the indigenous Huichol people, is partially protected today.

Pérez Verdía was also a member of the group of powerful and well-connected individuals that formed the Jalisco development company in 1902, with grandiose plans to build an electric railroad from Guadalajara to Chapala, hotels, supply electric light to all settlements from Jocotepec to Chapala, and finance large scale irrigation works, and install a public potable water system in all towns.

A similarly powerful group, including Pérez Verdía, founded the Chapala Yacht Club in 1904, though it would take another six years before it finally realized its goal of constructing a lengthy pier with boathouse and clubhouse.

In 1905, the Chapala council empowered Luis Pérez Verdia to represent them in their efforts to get help from the Jalisco State government to combat the proliferation of lirio (water hyacinth) that had invaded the harbor during the rainy season. Documents in Chapala’s archives show that a contract was drawn up with Jesús Cuevas for daily cleaning of the beach, with all lirio to be removed by boat for disposal elsewhere.

Besides working as a lawyer, and later as a magistrate and state congressman, Pérez Verdía founded Jalisco’s college for teachers (Escuela Normal). He took up a diplomatic post as Minister of Mexico in 1913 in Guatemala, where he died the following year.

Pérez Verdía’s three-volume Historia Particular del Estado de Jalisco (1910) was an astonishing labor of love which remained an important source of state history for decades, prior to being superseded by the monumental four-volume multi-author Historia de Jalisco in 1982.

Pérez Verdía’s many other published works include Apuntes Históricos de la Guerra de Independencia en Jalisco (1886); Compendio de la Historia de México (1892); Biografía del Sr. Don Prisciliano Sánchez (1881) and Estudio biográfico del Sr. Lic. D. Jesús López Portillo (1908).

Pérez Verdía claimed custody of his granddaughter

Luis Pérez Verdía married Trinidad Pérez González Rubio in Guadalajara in 1877. Their daughter, Aurora Pérez Verdía, fell in love with José Ignacio Arzapalo Pacheco, the son of businessman and hotelier Ignacio Arzapalo (who had opened his eponymous hotel in Chapala in 1898) and his second wife, María Pacheco. Aurora and José married in 1900, and their only child—María Aurora—was born the following year. Tragically, Aurora died shortly after giving birth. A few years later, in 1904, the little girl also lost her father. She was then cared for by her paternal grandparents.

But tragedy struck again. Her grandfather, Ignacio Arzapalo Sr., died in 1909, only a year after he had opened his second elegant hotel in Chapala, the Hotel Palmera. According to Arzapalo’s will, both hotels plus his life insurance and some property in central Guadalajara were left to María Aurora (then aged 7), with Lic. Enrique Pazos appointed as María Aurora’s guardian to manage her affairs until she came of age. This inheritance was worth at least US$300,000 at the time (equivalent to $7.5 million today); for whatever motives, Luis Pérez Verdía, her maternal grandfather, immediately challenged the arrangement.

When the ever-impatient Pérez Verdía decided that his legal challenge was proceeding too slowly, he took matters into his own hands. He kidnapped María Aurora in broad daylight from her nurse in a public park in Guadalajara, and contested Pazos’ right to be her guardian and administer her share of the estate. Not surprisingly, this sequence of events led to sensationalist press headlines.

One version, “Wealthy Orphan Vanishes,” claimed that orphan Aurora Arzapalo, heiress to millions, had been kidnapped and that the police had arrested several suspects among her relatives, “all of whom are wealthy but would fall heir to some of the Arzapalo millions if the child were out of the way.”

The drawn-out legal case, which caused a scandalous rift between two of Guadalajara’s most distinguished families, who had at least two direct ties by marriage, eventually wound up in the Supreme Court, where Pérez Verdía finally won. But this success was short-lived. While serving as Mexican ambassador in Guatemala, Pérez Verdía died there in 1914. María Aurora, still barely a teenager, then lived in Chapala with her paternal grandmother, María Pacheco.

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

Sources

This article is based on several chapters of If Walls Could Talk: Chapala’s Historic Buildings and Their Former Occupants translated into Spanish as Si las paredes hablaran: Edificios históricos de Chapala y sus antiguos ocupantes. For detailed references, please refer to the notes in that book.

Note

The author is proud to announce that the Asociación de Cronistas Municipales del Estade de Jalisco, A.C. (Association of Municipal Chroniclers of Jalisco) recently awarded him the Luis Pérez Verdía medal for his research into the history of the Lake Chapala area.

Presea Luis Perez Verdia, 2024

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

Harry Furniss and a circle of Canadian writer friends at Chapala in the 1970s

 1970s  2 Responses »
Nov 142024
 

Among the many Canadian visitors to Lake Chapala in the 1970s were Harry Furniss and his second wife, Enid. Late in life, Harry, the grandson of English artist and cartoonist Harry Furniss (1854-1925), wrote a three volume memoir, full of off-beat memories and humor, interspersed with small line drawings. It includes a chapter about visiting long-time friends Leslie and Eleanor Powell in Chapala, who first settled there in 1973.

Harry and Enid Furniss

Furniss cover

Raised in Montreal, Harry Furniss (1920-2015) wrote radio dramas in his spare time, and served in the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) during World War 2 (when he was captured by the Germans), before being appointed Director of Public Relations (RCAF) Overseas, in London, U.K. He married his RCAF-Womens Division aide, Enid, in London, in 1947. Enid (1911-2016), of English, Spanish and French heritage, had driven ambulances in London during the blitz.

After they settled in Canada, Harry spent a decade as a journalist for the Toronto Telegram, Reuters news agency, and The Vancouver Province, and then established his own corporate public relations consultancy. After decades of building and cruising pleasure boats on the rugged coast of British Columbia, Harry and Enid lived their final years in Victoria on Vancouver Island. Married for 68 years, Harry died there on 26 November 2015, at the age of 95, and Enid the following year on 27 December 2016.

The third volume of Harry’s memoir, Family & Friends, includes a chapter about visiting friends, Leslie and Eleanore Powell, who had settled in Chapala some years earlier.

Leslie and Eleanore Powell

U.K.-born Leslie Cooke Powell (1908-1999) was working at the Montreal Gazette when the second world war erupted. He joined the RCAF public relations department during the war, and served in North Africa, Italy and Northwest Europe, before being appointed Director of RCAF Public Relations (Overseas), based in London, England, where—in 1946, a year after the war ended—he married Canadian journalist Eleanore Roberta Martin.

Back in Canada after leaving the armed services, Powell worked as the Montreal Gazette’s aviation and military editor, before starting his own public relations company. He subsequently became the national PR director of the Canadian Red Cross Society, and of Canadair.

Eleanore Powell was a reporter for the Ottawa Citizen during the Second World War. After joining the women’s division of the Royal Canadian Air Force, she worked as a public relations officer in Ottawa, Newfoundland, and later for the RCAF Overseas headquarters in London, England. In 1999, following her death, her estate established the Robert and Alyce Martin journalism scholarships (named after her parents) for students entering the Master of Journalism program at Carleton University in Ottawa.

What was Chapala like in the 1970s?

The Powells’ first visit to Chapala was in 1973, and they subsequently visited the lake many times (and had a house there) in many of the next 17 years. Chapter 4 of Furniss’s book includes excerpts from letters he and Enid had received from the Powells describing their time at Chapala.

Sketch by Furniss

Sketch by Furniss

On their first trip, in 1973, the Powells drove down and stopped for a couple of nights at the Rincón del Montero hotel in Parras de la Fuente en route to to Mexico City. A week later, they drove west along Highway 15 to Morelia and then branched off along the southern shore of Lake Chapala to Jocotepec, where they stayed at La Quinta, then run by Bob Whipple: “It took us nine hours to drive from Mexico City to our ultimate destination, Jocotepec. An excellent road, much of it toll, with beautiful scenery.”

They stayed in a two room unit at La Quinta, which cost, for two, including three meals a day, $310 Cdn a month, plus 10% for service. After two weeks, the Powells “chanced upon an idyllic little house nearby at Chapala” and signed a one-year lease. Needing help with the Spanish in the lease, they were referred to a fellow Canadian (Bill Strange) who lived nearby. He wasn’t home, so Powell asked an English-speaking lawyer to check the contract. The lawyer refused any payment when he learned that the two men shared a mutual friend: “my old hometown pal and once-Mayor of Montreal, Pax Plante, who now lives in retirement nearby!”

Pacifique Plante

French Canadian lawyer Pacifique “Pax” Plante (1907-1976) became known as “the “Elliot Ness” of Montreal, after fighting city crime in the 1940s and 1950s and organizing the prosecution of many notorious gangsters and mafia members. Plante retired to Mexico in 1958 and lived there to his death in 1976. Understandably paranoid about the need for privacy and security, Plante built his retirement home high on the hillside east of Jocotepec. It had a commanding view over the only access route which winds up from the highway, and was designed to be mistaken from a distance for a chapel, not a private dwelling.

In one of those strange coincidences in life, Bill Strange turned out to be Captain William Strange, who had been Director Public Relations (Navy) Overseas when Powell held the equivalent position in the RCAF. Strange, and his wife, architect Jean Strange, had retired to Chapala in 1965, and the coincidences did not end there. Powell later learned that Strange had married his WREN assistant, just as he had married his RCAF-WD aide.

Once they had their casa (rent $64.00, all prices in Canadian dollars), the Powells were able to slash their living expenses. Return trips to Guadalajara on the air-conditioned coach were $1.45 for two. Pork was $1.80 a kilo, a pint of strawberries 40 cents, a cleaning lady charged 40 cents (then five pesos) an hour. For relaxation, the waters at San Juan Cosalá beckoned for $1.28 a day. They estimated that two people could easily live in Chapala at that time on $200.00 a month.

When the Funisses visited the Powells in 1975, they discovered that other mutual friends—John and Lenore Clare—were already occupying the Powells’ guest quarters, so they took a room at the Hotel Nido for $6.80 a night for two, including dinner.

John and Lenore Clare

Clare-coverJohn Purvis Clare (1910-1991), who studied at the University of Saskatchewan, served as a public relations officer for the Royal Canadian Air Force in North Africa. During his lengthy journalistic career, Clare worked for The Saskatoon Star Phoenix, The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Telegram, and was the war correspondent for the Toronto Daily Star, as well as managing editor of MacLean’s Magazine and an editor at Chatelaine and Geos. His short stories were published in The Saturday Evening Post, Collier’s and many other magazines. He also wrote The Passionate Invaders, a humorous novel, published in 1965, about ‘the first armed invasion of the United States from Canada in more than a hundred years.’

Lenore Reinke Clare (1907-1991) worked for the T. Eaton Company before accepting a position with RCA Victor, with involvement in all phases of casting, writing, producing and recording. She then built and managed a recording studio for Harry E Foster, and continued to work there through the war. She married John Clare in 1945, joined the CBC in 1957 and was a supervising script editor at CBC, in charge of the script department, from 1959 to 1972. Her wide-ranging interests helped take CBC’s radio plays to a whole new level.

After a few days catching up with their friends, the Furnisses then took a self-contained casita in a U-shaped motel in Ajijic, which cost $160 a month. They stayed for a month or so, exploring Ajijic and its environs.

Later letters to the Furnisses from the Powells include references to a “bang up July 1 (Canada Day) party at the Chula Vista Motel” given by Hector Márquez (who owned the main farmacia in Chapala), a paragraph musing on the possibility of becoming the Honorary Canadian consul in Chapala, and delight following the 1976 devaluation of the peso that everything was now even cheaper than previously. In 1977, the Powells rented a different house for the winter for $75 a month.

The Powells returned to Chapala in 1984, after a gap of four or five years, and rented a two-bedroom casa with huge garden for $160 a month. The following year, they rented a place for the winter in Guadalajara. Their last trip to Mexico was over the winter of 1989-90.

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.
Foreign Footprints in Ajijic: Decades of Change in a Mexican Village explores the history of the artistic community in Ajijic.

Sources

  • Harry Furniss. 2003. Family and Friends, A memoir, vol 3. Canada: Trafford Publishing.
  • The Times Colonist (Victoria, BC): 5 Dec 2015; 13 Jan 2017.
  • North Bay Nugget: 28 May 1991, 12.
  • Telegraph Journal: 19 Dec 1949, 3.
  • The Toronto Star. 1991. Clare, Eleanor (Reinke). (obit). The Toronto Star, 29 July 1991, 50.
  • Le Devoir: 11 August 1976, 6.

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

Thomas Rogers and the Mexican Central Railway in 1892

 1920s and earlier  2 Responses »
Oct 312024
 

Relatively little is known about the life of Thomas L. Rogers, the American author of Mexico? Sí, señor, based on a trip to Mexico in July 1892, and published the following year by the Mexican Central Railway. The book provides an up-beat accessible account of all the places and regions that the then-expanding railway network was opening up for travelers.

At that time the Mexican Central Railway was the principal railway of the Republic, with 1846 miles of line; it was the only standard gauge line connecting Mexico City to the U.S. First class rail fares at the time were very reasonable: return fares to Mexico City were $50 (dollars) from El Paso; $88.60 from Chicago and $135 from New York or Boston.

The book covers the sights along not only the Mexico Central Railway’s main route from Ciudad Juárez to Mexico City, but also along its two major branch lines: the first to Tampico, and the second to Guadalajara via Irapuato. The completion of this latter branch in 1888 spurred a significant growth in tourism at Lake Chapala, and was the route used by many of the early visitors to Chapala, including eccentric pioneer Septimus Crowe, English  writer Maud Pauncefote, British consul Lionel Carden, American writers Charles Embree and Mary Ashley Townsend, and anthropologist Frederick Starr. American photographer-hotelier Winfield Scott , who lived for many years near Ocotlán, was commissioned by the Mexican Central Railway to document the company’s network in Mexico.

Rogers’ writing style is informal and chatty. Mexico? Sí, señor is well illustrated with small sketches, photographs and several maps. Chapter XVI includes one of the earliest published photographs (untitled) of Ocotlán, as well as images of the Atequiza hacienda, the Río Lerma, and the famous Juanacatlán Falls. (Note, however, that the photograph he includes titled “On the Lake Shore’ (by A. Briquet) depicts Lake Cuitzeo, not Lake Chapala.)

Excerpts from chapter XIV of Mexico? Sí, señor

Ocotlán is situated on a plain which slopes southward a few miles into the shore of the lake. With its pretty plaza, beautiful church spires, its portales, and its two bridges (one over the Sula, south of the village, and one west over the Lerma), Ocotlán is very picturesque.

The water front of the city is on the Sula, just above the bridge. Here a novel sight is seen on the levee. No great steamers are moored there, but scores of great canoes are loading and unloading, or waiting for the spirit of their captains to move. These canoes have hitherto done all the business on Lake Chapala.

The water works of Ocotlán are not extensive, but such as they are, they can be seen at the bridge across the Lerma, over which passes the highway to Guadalajara. They consist of one large wheel and a pump. The wheel is on a frame under one of the arches of the bridge. The current of the river runs the wheel, and the wheel, of course, runs the pump. But rivers in this region rise and fall, and there are times when this wheel is six feet above the water. Whenever the current cannot reach the wheel, the people of Ocotlán get their water by carts and carriers.

The steamer “Chapala” is a flat-bottom stern-wheel boat, very like those that are common on the shallow rivers of the West; the only boats adapted to shoal-water service. Everything about the steamer appears new, but one of the things not new on the “Chapala” is Juan Perez, the pilot. He is not necessarily old, but he is a veteran in service….

The steamship Chapala. From Thomas Rogers (1893), p222.

The steamship Chapala. From Thomas Rogers (1893), p222.

The sail along the north shore from Mescala to the town of Chapala is delightful. We seem, at times, to be shut in, but the pilot finds a way out and duly brings us to a pretty little city which nestles at the base of a sugar loaf mountain, and which is the largest town on the lake. A fine old church is one of the attractions of the town for visitors, but the hot springs which boil up not far from the plaza have given Chapala fame as a health resort. The springs, although not numerous… have made Chapala a favorite resort of the people of Guadalajara and vicinity, and when better known will attract people from a greater distance. “Charming” is the word to describe Chapala; I doubt if there is another town in Mexico more prettily situated. A short distance from shore is a large island, which is made use of as a picnic ground. The view from the hill immediately back of the town is one of great beauty.

It is an interesting sight to see the water works of Chapala in operation. No wheels, no pumps, no fountains; only dippers. The lake is the reservoir, and women are the dippers. They wade out as far as they please, fill their jars as full as they please, shoulder them and march home. No scooping with gourds as at Zacatecas, for water is plenty, and no one has to wait for another.

Chapala is sure to become more and more a favorite watering place. Already there are some fine summer “seaside” cottages there, and in the offing you can see a yacht! With a combination of delightful climate and hot springs, with mountain climbing, boating, bathing, and fishing as recreations for visitors, why shouldn’t charming Chapala become the finest health and pleasure resort in Mexico?

The next port is Xocotopec, at the extreme western end of the lake. The town lies in a pretty valley three miles back from the lake, and is the center of an extensive rural trade. Returning along the south shore we find no towns of commercial importance, but do find a succession of beautiful views which charm by their variety. We pass San Martin, San Cristobal, Tuscueca, and see, partly hidden by groves of orange and lemon trees, the flourishing city of Tizapan which reposes on the hillside two miles from the lake, along the little Rio de la Pasion.

We sail over what is supposed to be an oil well, some signs of which appear on the surface of the lake; we touch at the fisherman’s village with the pretty name, La Palma, and thence complete our eighty mile circuit of Lake Chapala by a direct return to Ocotlán, where we resume our railroad journey.

Who was Thomas L. Rogers?

Thomas L Rogers was born at Pownal, Vermont, on 2 August 1851, and died in Brookline, Massachusetts at the age of 59 on 19 June 1901. He was survived by his wife and six children.

Rogers was a prominent Baptist minister, and publisher of The Watchman (formerly The Christian Watchman), who graduated from the Newton Theological Institution, before serving in Cleveland and Scituate. He spent the winter of 1880-81 traveling in Arizona, southwestern California and Mexico. He was appointed Vice-President of the Board of the California Southern Railroad in 1881. The President of that railroad was his father-in-law Thomas Nickerson.

Rogers’ railroad links were probably a key reason why he was offered the commission to write Mexico? Sí, señor.

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.
The text is an edited excerpt from chapter 36 of Lake Chapala Through the Ages: an anthology of travelers’ tales which explores the history of Lake Chapala from 1530 to 1910 based on more than fifty original sources. The significance of the Mexican Central Railway in fomenting the nascent tourist industry at Lake Chapala at the end of the nineteenth century is explained, with a detailed route map, in chapter 2 of Lake Chapala: A Postcard History.

Sources

  • Thomas L. Rogers. 1893. Mexico? Sí, señor. Boston: Mexican Central Railway Co.
  • Boston Evening Transcript: 20 Apr 1881, 2; 20 June 1901.
  • Los Angeles Evening Express: 4 May 1881, 3.
  • Los Angeles Times: 8 Jan 1882, 1.

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

Italian writer Adolfo Dollero on Chapala in 1909

 1920s and earlier  2 Responses »
Oct 172024
 

Educated Italian traveler Adolfo Dollero (1872-1936) resided in Mexico for many years. Though not published until 1911, his book México al día relates to travels in Mexico in 1907-10. The work is a large volume (almost a thousand pages) and covers almost the entire country, with details of activities, ranches, villages, towns and cities, together with a partial listing of hotels and significant stores and services. Dollero was interested in the economic opportunities Mexico offered, and considered that improved transport routes would allow the nation’s natural wealth, mines, caves, lakes, coast and rivers to be fully exploited.

Dollero title pageDollero was born in Turin in November 1872. He moved to Mexico in 1895, but continued to make regular return trips to Europe. In 1898, he married Maria Luisa Paoletti, countess of Rodoretto (the daughter of the Italian vice consul to Mexico) in Mexico City. Eight years later, in 1906, the couple—now with two children, Ernastina and Lamberto, and a Mexican servant—are named on the passenger manifest of a boat back from Europe. The couple added twin boys to their family in 1912.

Towards the end of 1914, the difficult political circumstances in Mexico caused the family to  relocate to Cuba, where they remained until 1921, when they returned to Mexico. The family also lived for periods of time in Colombia and Venezuela. Dollero died in Mexico City in September 1936.

In migration records, Dollero described his profession variously as “publicist”, “publisher”, “author” or “press.” A Colombian book by Rito Rueda Rueda describes Dollero as a historiographer who agreed with the opinion of the geographer Eliseo Reclus “that all the native Americans belong to the same ethnic group despite their diversity of customs and their four hundred languages.”

The title page of México al día refers to future English, French, Italian and German editions of the book; however, only the Italian edition ever saw the light of day, and not until 1914. Dollero also wrote books on Cuba (1916, 1919, 1921), Colombia (1930) and Venezuela (1933).

His account of the Lake Chapala area, which he visited in 1909, includes descriptions of the towns, climate and fertility of the lakeshore, as well as the gold and silver mines in the area, and the names of the major landowners. The only hotel listed for the “bathing resort of Chapala,” is the Hotel La Palmera, managed by Francisco Mántice, and the only store he lists is Juan Sanchez é hijos, selling ‘Ropa y Abarrotes’ at the intersection of calle Muelle (now Avenida Francisco I Madero) and calle Agua Caliente (now Avenida Hidalgo).

Dollero stayed at the Hotel Palmera—designed by Guillermo de Alba for owner Ignacio Arzapalo— which had opened in 1908 adjacent to the Hotel Arzapalo. (One section of the Hotel Palmera later became the Hotel Nido, which was acquired by the Chapala municipality in 2001 for its main municipal offices.)

José María Lupercio. c 1907. Chapala. (Dollero p 435)

José María Lupercio. Chapala, c. 1907. (Dollero p 435)

Dollero’s account of the Chapala region is illustrated with four small photographs: one (above) credited to “Jup.” (sic) (= José María Lupercio) and three—The Isla del Presidio, aka Mezcala Island; a chalet on the lakeshore (Casa Capetillo); and boats in Ocotlán—credited to Winfield Scott.

The following excerpts from México al día (translations by author) give a sense of what most interested Dollero:

Chapala is a village of no more than 3000 inhabitants, but its privileged location and truly unbeatable climate have made it the meeting place for the most important Mexican families, especially those from the Republic’s capital and Guadalajara.

On the shores of the lake, or at the foot of the hills that are reflected in its water, are magnificent chalets. The President of the Republic, General Porfirio Díaz, himself likes to spend some vacation time here at the end of Lent in the company of his close friends. Then the lake acquires a special liveliness: hundreds of steam launches and boats plow through the water in every direction; everywhere there are high society parties and lots of money is spent. It is a shame that this liveliness has been, up to now, very short lived; it has always been restricted to a few months of the year, perhaps on account of the communication difficulties.

From the station at Atequiza, we were shaken for more than two and a half hours in an uncomfortable diligence, which was certainly not very agreeable. They assured us, however, that within a short time a branch line of the railroad would be started to remove the only obstacle which up to now has prevented Chapala from being a place of happiness year round.

We were staying in the hotel La Palmera, belonging to a congenial Italian citizen Mr. Francisco Mantice. The hotel was first rate and the cooking, distinctly French and Italian, was therefore very satisfying.

Chapala has, in general, good land, especially that which is on the shores of the lake; some fields are less fertile than others. Besides dedicating themselves to agriculture, the inhabitants also fish; fine fish are abundant, as are turtles and various species of aquatic birds, some of them valued highly for their very fine feathers.

Lake Chapala measures some 100 kilometers in length and its maximum width is 24 kilometers.

There are some mines for gold and silver in Ajijic, but, judging by what has been discovered in them up to now, they are not very rich. Some traces of petroleum have been found in the lake, but tests have shown it to be insufficient for exploitation.

The sand of the lake contains lots of quartz and silica and could be used for the manufacture of glass: there was already one bottle factory, which was closed down for lack of capital. Several thermal springs also exist in Chapala: one of them is ferruginous and another one sulfurous.

After two days in Chapala, Dollero departed for Ocotlán on board the small steamship Raúl:

Our voyage lasted four hours and proved extremely interesting. Black storm clouds were gathering on the horizon, and from time to time a ray of sunshine shone through them for a few moments to fleetingly illuminate the top of this or that greenish hill before becoming hidden again behind other clouds, still blacker and heavier . . . .

We passed a short way off the island of Alacranes and afterwards very close to Presidio Island, where we could clearly distinguish the old walls, almost destroyed, of the gaol that existed there long ago… The island appeared to be abandoned. Only a very short time after we had passed Presidio Island, we saw a huge vertical column shaped like an enormous serpent appear on the horizon.

We had the opportunity to see for the first time the phenomenon of a water spout, which greatly interested us, though we would have preferred to meet it on board a large steamer rather than the extremely fragile Raúl. However, the little steamer’s owner, who had not put down the telescope, calmed us down shortly afterwards, assuring us that the wind from the North that was blowing strongly at the time would have changed the direction of the water spout or would have destroyed it. In truth, some twenty minutes later, the column of water did become less dense, becoming gradually like a bow before disappearing completely. . . .

The left bank gradually acquired an extraordinary liveliness: house followed house; then came ranches and haciendas which they told us belonged to American citizens who had changed them into poetic residences with an abundance of flowers, fruit and cattle. A more enchanting landscape could not be planned.

At last, we entered the River Zula and then clearly saw the small churches of Ocotlán and to the right the Hotel Rivera Castellanos and the haciendas of El Fuerte, also extremely pleasant places, and very popular with North Americans, great lovers, as is known, of natural beauty.

Dollero then describes Ocotlán:

Ocotlán is a small town of 5000 inhabitants with a lot of commercial activity. The products of all the lake arrive here. Given this, it attracted our attention that there was no wharf and that the small steamers and different vessels had to moor alongside the trees on the banks! We were told, however, that a Mr. Ramón Flores, a person of initiative and capital, had requested authorization from the Secretariat of Communications and Public Works to build a suitable one within a short period of time.

Ocotlán is a true granary: since all the region is fertile, canoes come here from all directions with loads of cereals, fruit, matting of tule (an aquatic plant that is very abundant in these parts). On some occasions, the dozens of warehouses belonging to the Railway Company and private owners, and the wagons of the Tram Company, which sometimes transport up to 3000 loads a day—an enormous quantity considering that Ocotlán is more a town than a city—are not sufficient.

The countryside is splendid: irrigation, already practiced on a vast scale, will soon be on an even larger one, once the magnificent project of Mr. Manuel Cuesta Gallardo, for which the Federal Government has made important concessions, has been carried out.

Dollero then describes the proposed irrigation system, noting that the irrigation company will make a ‘fairly good profit’ by selling parcels of the land ceded to it by the Government, and that Cuesta Gallardo had reached ‘extra-judicial agreements’ with the most important of those landowners who had initially opposed the scheme. Dollero also commented on the likely high agricultural productivity of the reclaimed, irrigated land, for fruit trees, grapevines, chickpeas, corn and cattle.

In a later section, Dollero turns his attention to the resources found on the southern shore of the lake, and makes some pertinent observations:

The District of Jiquilpan, to which Cotija also belongs, is very rich. A short distance from Cotija are large deposits of iron oxides, zinc sulfides, copper sulfate and carbonate: the mountains have mica, talc or anhydrous magnesium silicate, and kaolin (hydrated aluminum silicate) for the manufacture of porcelain, etc.

There are also fine construction woods, many fruit trees, a large variety of medicinal plants, and the terrible weed that causes temporary madness, that is to say marijuana (Cannabis indica).

Near La Palma, on the shores of Lake Chapala, part of which belongs to the State of Michoacán, a lot of stone suitable for blade-sharpening is also found.

Source

  • Dollero, Adolfo. 1911. México al día. (Impresiones y notas de viaje). Paris-Mexico: Librería de la Vda. de C. Bouret, 435-441, 456.
Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

This post is based on chapter 51 of Lake Chapala Through the Ages: an anthology of travelers’ tales, which focuses on the period 1530-1910. For more recent history of the region, see Lake Chapala: A Postcard History.

Comments welcomed via email or via comments feature on this post.

Count Giuseppe Antona visited Lake Chapala in the 1890s

 1920s and earlier  1 Response »
Oct 032024
 

What was Italian Count Giuseppe Antona doing at Lake Chapala in 1895? Shooting as many teal ducks as possible! And he wrote all about it for The Detroit Free Press.

Who was Giuseppe Antona?

Count Alessandro Giuseppe (sometimes Guiseppe) Valerio Antona was born in Asli, Italy, on 10 May 1865 and died in Detroit, Michigan, on 27 January 1931. According to a short piece about him in The Detroit Free Press shortly after he moved to the US in 1893, he had previously worked for the Italian government, and came from an old Piedmont family.

His grandfather was “the Count of Casale and Montebello until the Austrian domination in Italy obliterated the title with many others in Piedmont.” Following the death of his elder brother in February 1894, Giuseppe theoretically succeeded to the “earldom and estates of Barraggio, including one of the largest and most valuable vineyard tracts in all Piedmont,” in the event that his family’s title was ever restored by King Umberto I, as was widely expected to happen at the time. Unfortunately for Antona, the King was assassinated in 1900.

In April 1894 a Mexican newspaper reported that “Sra Annetta Josefa Valerio-Antona and Sr Alessandro Giuseppe Valerio-Antona, Italian writers who have lived in US for some time” were staying at the Hotel Humboldt for a couple of months, with plans to write articles for US news outlets and a book about Mexico. This report was not entirely accurate. Annetta Josefa Halliday (1866-1949) was American, not Italian, and went to Mexico as a special correspondent for the Chicago Times. Giuseppe did not marry Annetta until 26 June that year; the newlyweds received a cable of congratulations from President Porfirio Díaz and his wife.

Despite being offered a post as Secretary to the Italian Royal Legation in Cairo, Egypt, Antona chose to remain in Detroit, and do some writing alongside investing in real estate, construction, a chemical business and the wine trade. Annetta continued her established career in writing and lecturing. Less than a month after their marriage, Annetta gave a presentation on “Mexico, the Egypt of the New World” at the Chateau Frontenac in Quebec City, Canada. Annetta also taught history and art at the Ganopel School of Musical Art. She was also reportedly working on a book about Mexico, titled The Florence of Mexico, based on her knowledge of Mexico and Mexican customs. Whether by coincidence or not, this was precisely the same title as a work by Mexican diplomat Eduardo A Gibbon published a few years earlier. She also published articles in Town Topics, Smart Set, Munsey’s, McClure’s, Scribner’s, Collier’s, Good Housekeeping, Outing and the New York Tribune.

The Antonas’ only child, Janice, was born in Michigan on 15 June 1901. Eleven years later, in 1912, Detroit society was shocked to the core when the “Count and Countess” were arrested in relation to the sudden death of their housekeeper, and were held behind bars for several days. According to press reports, their housekeeper, Miss Lizzie Fleming died at the age of 63 on 4 July after a short illness, and her body was cremated the following day. Suspicions were arisen because a few days prior to her death, Fleming made a will leaving virtually everything to Mrs. Antona. Her relatives in Ohio, who did not learn about her death until a few weeks later, claimed that Fleming had often expressed a horror of cremation and had already purchased a cemetery lot for her burial, and demanded an investigation.

What did Giuseppe Antona write about Chapala?

Antona opens his article with an exaggeratedly poetic description of Lake Chapala, setting the scene for the spring morning when he set off with three friends (one of them the son of the American consul) to shoot waterbirds at the lake. After taking the train from Guadalajara to Atequiza, the four gun-toting sportsmen’s plans to take the stage coach to Chapala were thwarted—”rendered impossible by the conductor’s illness”—so they “procured horses with some difficulty for ourselves and one extra for provisions and ammunition,” before riding south to the lake.

Antona’s article is illustrated by two unsigned sketches, which may well be the author’s own work: one of the village of Chapala, and the other of an unidentified tiny lakeshore village.

After riding through “Rancho del Mirador” and three small haciendas—San Nicolas, Labor and Buena Vista— the group approached Chapala, entering the village through a “rustic wood gate” designed to keep village livestock (and people) off the adjoining hacienda land. (Mexican Herald correspondent Owen Wallace Gillpatrick, who rode from Atequiza to the lake about three years later, claimed to have ridden through about a dozen ranches, separated by gates which were opened “at the rate of a centavo a gate, which is cheap as gates go.”)

In the 1890s the village of Chapala was tightly sandwiched between the Hacienda del Cuije (to the west and north) and the Hacienda de la Labor (to the east). As Antonio de Alba wrote decades later in Chapala, the northern limit of the village until some years into the twentieth century was approximately along the line followed by calle Degollado. It was several years after Antona’s visit before the local haciendas lost their territorial power, and Chapala had room to expand.

Antona’s visit predated the opening of the Hotel Arzapalo in 1898, so where did he stay? Arriving in Chapala, Antona and his friends “dismounted at the Inn of the ‘Nueva Purissima,’ [which] was more suited to be called a stable than anything else.” According to Antona, the rooms had no windows, a description which does not match the small inn where Eduardo Gibbon had stayed a few years earlier. Antona’s hostelry was the (no longer extant) building called “Mesón de la Purísima,” located where the Plaza Chapala Hotel (Avenida Madero #232) is today.

Antona-Image

Giuseppe Antona (?). The Detroit Free Press, 1895.

Antona and his companions walked down to the beach, where:

The view was most fascinating: with rolling hills, steep mountains, the perfect sky, and the villas scattered here and there; one called Monte Carlo was kept by an English man named Crow[e] and nestled among the rocks like a little fortress.”

Antona’s mention of “villas” (plural), the Montecarlo, and of its then owner, Septimus Crowe, all dovetail perfectly with my own view of when and how Chapala first began its courtship with tourism. Chapala’s development certainly began some years before 1895, the date often used (even today) in some Spanish-language accounts.

The beach reminded Antona of his native land: “The smooth, sandy stretch of beach touched by the fringe of the waves, recalled the lake regions of sunny Italy.” But it was not tourism that brought Antona and his friends to Chapala, it was the local wildlife, including:

the wild teal duck, which made their homes in the tangle of matted vegetation on the shores, and render Chapala a veritable paradise.”

After bathing in the lake, they:

procured a native boat and an Indian who served both as a steersman and oarsman, and embarked just before sunset well provided with ammunition and Parker guns, our zest for sport heightened by the tract of morass visible in the distance… which our greed told us could not but abound with prey.

Our craft, made from a hollowed tree trunk, had for oars and rudder a single pole, such as might be called a slender flag-staff in the states, and used for such on national holidays, and which our Indian boatman and guide, Feliciano, maneuvered much like a laundryman attempting to fill a receptacle of soiled clothes.

Antona-Image-2

Giuseppe Antona (?). The Detroit Free Press, 1895.

By moonlight, with the stars twinkling overhead, the men:

gradually and cautiously approached the feeding grounds, and leaving the smallest of wakes behind us, slid gently through the reeds and grasses and anchored behind some great logs near a mud bank.”

As hundreds and hundreds of ducks started feeding in front of them, the men opened fire:

Out of the reeds and sedge flew the terrified fowl, hundreds of wounded concealing themselves in the rushes, others half-swimming, half-wading away in their fright, the loud flapping of wings of the thousands in flight seeming like distant thunder, while dull thuds and loud splashes made known where our shots had told upon water and upon land.”

After waiting a few minutes—and as surviving ducks returned to feed—the men opened fire again… and again:

Each man emptied his barrels as quickly as possible into the black clouds, loading up again every three minutes as long as ammunition lasted.”

When the dawn light came up, the men collected “200 ducks, or 50 apiece, all blue-winged teal.” The ducks were taken to shore, and a Mexican boy hired to carry them back to the village, while the men rowed their boat back.

In addition to his article about Lake Chapala, Giuseppe Altona also published pieces about Alaska and America-Russia relations.

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

Lake Chapala: A Postcard History uses reproductions of more than 150 vintage postcards to tell the incredible story of how Lake Chapala, at the end of the nineteenth century, became a significant international tourist destination. Most chapters of If Walls Could Talk: Chapala’s Historic Buildings and Their Former Occupants (also published in Spanish as Si las paredes hablaran: Edificios históricos de Chapala y sus antiguos ocupantes) relate to the early tourist history of Chapala.

Sources

  • Guiseppe [Giuseppe] Antona. 1895. “Shooting Teal Duck at Lake Chapala.” The Detroit Free Press, 3 March 1895, 11.
  • Antonio de Alba. 1954. Chapala. Guadalajara: Banco Industrial de Jalisco.
  • The Detroit Free Press: 10 Dec 1893, 23; 3 Jun 1894, 9.
  • El siglo diez y nueve: 17 April 1894, 17.
  • Eduardo A Gibbon. 1893. Guadalajara, (La Florencia Mexicana). El salto de Juanacatlán y El Mar Chapálico. 1992 reprint, Guadalajara: Presidencia Municipal de Guadalajara.
  • The Omaha Evening Bee: 26 Mar 1895, 1.
  • Muncie Evening Press: 31 Jul 1912, 2.
  • Quebec Morning Chronicle: 4 July 1894, 2.
  • The American: 29 Mar 1895, 1.

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

Travel writer Ernest Bilbrough went waterbird shooting at Lake Chapala in the 1880s

 1920s and earlier  3 Responses »
Sep 192024
 

Though E. Ernest Bilbrough (1861-1891) died tragically young, he certainly had some adventures before departing this world.

One of the three children born to Thomas Priestley Bilbrough and his wife, Gertrude Elizabeth Bates, Edward Ernest Bilbrough was born in Liverpool, UK, on 6 March 1861. Details of his education are unknown, but he became a writer and photographer. He published his first book, Twixt France and Spain; Or, A Spring in the Pyrenees, in 1884, and the following year the UK-based periodical The Field printed Bilbrough’s account of sport and travel in Mexico. This article includes a description of his experiences at Lake Chapala. Also relating to Mexico, though as a photographer, Bilbrough was credited for some of the photos illustrating an article in The Graphic in 1886 about the Mexican National Railroad.

By 1887, Bilbrough had moved to New Zealand and been awarded a “certificate of excellence” in an Auckland Society of Arts competition for a set of six landscape photographs. At about this time, he was elected Secretary of the Athenaeum, a newly formed Auckland literary and debating society.

On 13 June 1889, Bilbrough married Mary Jane MacKellar (1865–1922), the Shanghai-born daughter of “Mrs MacKeller of The Pines, Epsom, and the late John MacKellar Esq. of London and Calcutta.”

Bilbrough’s second book, Brett’s Handy Guide to New Zealand., was published in 1890, only months before his untimely death in Auckland on 27 March 1891, shortly after his 30th birthday. Bilbrough was buried in the city’s Purewa Cemetery. His obituary in the New Zealand Herald explained how the well-known manager of Cook’s Tourists’ Agency in Auckland had been in failing health for several weeks, despite completing a trip to England the previous year.

Unusually, it was only after the death of his mother—Gertrude Bates Bilbrough—almost thirty years later, that his estate in the UK was settled, with probate (for effects valued at £1151) then granted to Bilbrough’s widow, Mary Jane.

Gertrude Bates Bilbrough, who died in Hong Kong, had close ties to “Wonsan Korea and Victoria Island Lower Burma.” Probate for her estate, valued at £1249, 2s, 5d, was granted to Bilbrough’s brother, Charles Francis Stanhope Bilbrough. Robert Neff has written several interesting articles about the family’s links to Korea:

What did E Ernest Bilbrough write about Mexico and Lake Chapala?

Bilbrough opens his article, published in England, by claiming that, “Of all the civilized countries, Mexico is undoubtedly the least known, especially to dwellers on this side of the Atlantic.” He then points out that Mexico has four railways already built, and several more under construction. The four existing lines were the Mexican Railway (Mexico City to Veracruz), the Mexican Central (Mexico City to the northern border and New York), the Mexican National (Mexico City north, but not yet reaching the US border), and Inter-oceanic (“so called because it approaches neither ocean.”)

The author considered Mexican roads “frightful,” and recommended overland travel by horseback, “preferably on a steed of your own, though others can be hired from place to place if desired.” Horses could be hired for one dollar a day, but it was necessary to add another dollar for the horse’s attendant. Travel by stage coach brought its own perils, and Bilbrough advised, in the event of a hold-up, not to flee, and “never carry arms unless you intend to use them.”

He also recommended that travelers forget about regular hotels—”in the interior, hotel charges may be reckoned generally at from two dollars per diem to four, in the capital and chief towns from three dollars to six dollars, according to your room, your restaurant, and your liquor”—and consider staying in haciendas:

Accommodation can almost invariably be procured at the haciendas for the night—that is to say, as a guest—even without a letter of introduction of any kind; and right good-hearted men some of the “hacendados “ are too, giving you of their best, and giving freely.”

The main purpose of his article was to describe the opportunities Mexico offered for hunting. Bilbrough thought the methods for shooting wildfowl at Lake Texcoco were unsportsmanlike because:

the sport consists in erecting batteries of guns on three different levels close to all the favourite feeding grounds. The first discharge is directed at the birds on the water, the next just as they rise, and the last sweeps about two yards from the surface, so that it is a lucky bird that gets away. These ‘sportsmen’ have a lofty contempt for the individual who allows the bird to rise before firing.

Eastern end of Lake Chapala. (For complete map, see "Lake Chapala Through the Ages")

Eastern end of Lake Chapala. (For complete map, see “Lake Chapala Through the Ages”)

He contrasted this with the situation at Lake Chapala, where “some splendid sport is to be had, not exactly on the lake itself, but on the land which receives its overflow, and is known as ‘cienega,’ a marsh.”

These ciénegas were at the eastern end of the lake, and are marked on the map as “former wetlands.” Some of these ciénegas were drained and converted to farmland twenty years after Bilbrough’s visit.

Bilbrough was sufficiently astute to recognize that the ciénegas played an important role in the local ecosystem:

These ‘cienegas’ form the most valuable pasturage for cattle and horses when drained, partially levelled, and well ditched; but are excessively dangerous to man and beast in their natural state, being nothing less than bogs with a thin crust of treacherous, safe-looking soil. Their value, however, is really derived from the very same cause which makes them dangerous: this being the porous or penetrable state of the lower strata, which receives the overflow from the lake at a period of the year when there is no rain, and promotes the growth of the grass when nothing but surface irrigation, at immense expense, would otherwise produce such an early crop.”

Bilbrough then described in detail his visit “last winter” to an area of ciénega belonging to an hacienda some twenty miles from Lake Chapala, where he enjoyed some varied and excellent shooting:

The best—that is, the most abundant sport, was duck and geese shooting. Of the former, mallards, green teal, blue teal, redhead, wood-ducks, tree-ducks, and pintails were the most numerous varieties; while grey and white geese were in tens of thousands on some fields where the grass was sprouting. Snipe were fairly plentiful (one morning I shot eight, and three the same afternoon), hares and quail likewise. Curlews, sandsnipe, glossy ibis and white ditto, green shanks, pelicans, grey cranes (Grullas pardas), spoonbills, avocets, and stilts were numerous; water hens (which are never eaten there) and thrashers (yellow-throated and red winged) very abundant.”

Ground squirrels were plentiful in the hedges, and I believe rabbits flourish during the rains (May to October), when hares are also more prolific. There were several coyotes, but I never managed to get near enough, unfortunately, to kill one; though common owls, which hooted over my room at night, I used to shoot by moonlight, and some fine horned specimens were bagged also.”

But of all the varieties of sport, none had the same interest as the pursuit of white cranes, called also soldier cranes (Grullas blancas), which are the shyest birds and the wariest it has yet been my lot to stalk. Deer are much less difficult to approach, for a sharp cry or whistle will generally make them halt long enough to give you a chance to get your rifle to bear. Not so white cranes; the least sound, the least movement, and they are off.”

The rifles at the hacienda were not true enough for such sport, and I was obliged to use ball in my gun. Even thus handicapped, pelicans, grey cranes, greater ibis, geese, etc., were added to the bag, but not till the last days of my stay did a white crane crown the whole. It was feeding with four others (they never go alone, but seldom more than a pair of old birds and their young will be seen together, while grey crane always are in flocks) among the maize stalks about one hundred and fifty yards from the nearest hedge, and these stalks, being so numerous and thick, make shooting very difficult. This time, however, I had a fair shot, and saw the bird fall, shot through the wing and body. He was a fine specimen—5ft. 3½in from tip of beak to toe, 7ft. 1½in. across the wings, and weighed 14½lb.”

Other travelers and explorers profiled on this site who have written about hunting at Lake Chapala include:

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

Illustrated by reproductions of vintage postcards, chapters 6 and 8 of Lake Chapala: A Postcard History look at history of the eastern end of the lake, and the area’s environmental change.

Sources

  • E Ernest Bilbrough. 1884. Twixt France and Spain; Or, A Spring in the Pyrenees. Sampson Low and Co.
  • E Ernest Bilbrough. 1885. “Sport and travel in Mexico.” The Field, 24 October 1885, 585-6.
  • E Ernest Bilbrough (editor). 1890. Brett’s Handy Guide to New Zealand. Auckland: H. Brett.
  • The Graphic: An Illustrated Weekly Newspaper: 24 Apr 1886, 8.
  • The New Zealand Herald: 25 Feb 1887, 11; 8 Apr 1887, 6; 24 April 1891, 9.

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

Leland H. Ives visited Chapala in about 1904

 1920s and earlier  1 Response »
Aug 222024
 

In 1905 keen traveler Leland Ives published an article about Chapala in Four Track News, a periodical begun a few years earlier by the New York Central Railroad. The short article contains a memorable description of his stage coach ride from Atequiza to Chapala, and all manner of valuable nuggets of information which indicate Ives was a keen observer and listener. Ives had traveled fairly widely in Spanish-speaking countries before visiting Mexico, so (unlike most modern tourists) could readily manage the language barrier.

Ives took the train from Guadalajara to Atequiza. On stepping down from the train, he remarks that

generally it isn’t every day that the tourist can taste the joys and miseries of coach travel; but the fourteen-mile journey to Lake Chapala is the genuine article…. The roof of the huge box is piled high with baggage, freight and mail, and [three?] lucky passengers fill a seat on deck behind the driver, while inside eight others lurch around hanging to straps.”

In addition to observing closely the attire of the driver and his assistant, Ives had a keen eye for the behavior of the mules pulling the stage, summarizing their lack of discipline by commenting, “If they have ever been broken, their tuition fails to show.”

When they finally entered the village, and the stage coach driver was “urging the mules to a final gallop,” Chapala appeared to be half asleep:

The village isn’t much. There is a good hotel which is the terminus of the route; across the way a typical native inn, a remarkable stately church, and a plaza shaded by sour orange trees [while] along the lakefront in the outskirts are residences built as recreation retreats by merchants in Guadalajara and Mexico City, and one at least belongs to a foreign [family].”

At the hotel, Ives scanned the list of guests, but recognized few of the names “in the hotel register, for Chapala is yet but little known. Until within a very few years it lay nearly eight hundred miles from any railway, and while explorers and geographers have long been acquainted with it, tourists are but just finding out how attractive it is.”

Ives then turned his attention to the local fishermen and the various kinds of boats on the lake. Making regular trips between Ocotlán and Chapala was:

a gasoline launch which was brought from “the states” on a flat-car, and plies [the waters] regularly in charge of its owner, a young Canadian. Off the stone pier a little steamer rides at anchor, which was packed piecemeal over the mountains from San Blas on the Pacific, long before the advent of railroads. “

The “gasoline launch” Ives refers to is almost certainly the Carlota, brought by the Crompton brothers from Canada when they moved to Chapala in 1900. They also brought a 30-seat “electrical yacht” named Carmelita, which made regular runs two or three times a week between Chapala, Ocotlán, La Palma and Tuxcueca to support the booming Hotel Arzapalo, with pleasure trips to Mezcala Island on Sundays. The brothers sold their launches to the Lake Chapala Navigation Company (managed by Julio Lewels) in 1904. (See chapter 2 of If Walls Could Talk.)

Ives’ description of a “little steamer” appears to conflate two distinct vessels. The first steamboat on the lake, launched in 1868, was the Libertad, built in California and carried in pieces over the mountains to the lake. However, it had capsized near Ocotlán in 1889 with a heavy loss of life; it was later refloated, renamed and sent to Lake Pátzcuaro. In the interim, several other small steamships had taken its place, including the Chapala, launched in 1881 and the San Francisco.

Who was Leland Howard Ives?

Leland Howard Ives, the son of John and Wealthy Sage (Merwin) Ives, was born on 16 October 1859 in Meriden, Connecticut. Ives and his parents were active lifelong members of the First Baptist Church Society of Meriden.

Ives entered Yale in the class of 1883 but never graduated. He worked for a dry goods commission house in New York City from 1885 to 1889, before leaving for Europe, to meet friends in London and tour the UK, France and Belgium for six weeks. He later shared his talents and financial acumen with various businesses in his home town of Meriden.

Leland Howard Ives.

Leland Howard Ives.

Ives traveled widely from a relatively young age, and submitted his accounts of his travels to his local newspaper in Meriden and to magazines such as Outside and Four Track News. Ives also gave lectures about his foreign travels in New York City and elsewhere, illustrated with his own photographs.

He had lengthy trips to the West Indies (1892), Cuba (1893), the north coast of South America (1895) and Puerto Rico (1899).

It is not entirely clear when he visited Chapala. He was definitely in Mexico City in 1901, with plans to also visit Tampico, but there is no record of his time in Chapala beyond the article he published in February 1905 in Four Track News, which was clearly a very personal account. The April 1905 issue had another piece by Ives titled “After Ducks in Mexico.”

Ives’ mother died in 1914 and his father died the following year.

On 12 May 1920, Ives married Mrs. Florence W. Fisk; the couple continued to travel regularly. Ives had no children, and after he died on 31 January 1943, his assets were held in trust for the benefit of his wife and his sister. Following the deaths of his wife in 1950 and his sister in 1951, Ives’ sizable estate was shared between various charitable organizations.

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

My 2022 book Lake Chapala: A Postcard History uses reproductions of more than 150 vintage postcards to tell the incredible story of how Lake Chapala became an international tourist and retirement center.

Sources

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

Temple Manning described Chapala in 1944

 1940s  1 Response »
Jul 112024
 

I recently came across a short, but interesting, piece describing Chapala in the mid-1940s. I currently know nothing about its author, Temple Manning, beyond the longevity of their syndicated byline, first used in the 1920s and still going strong in the 1960s.

Here are a few excerpts from Manning’s description of “Chapala — A Mexican City.”

MEXICO is certainly a tourists’ paradise, visited by people from all over the world. Yet some of the loveliest places are nearly always entirely overlooked by visitors in a frightful hurry to reach the popular tourist objectives. But those who love Mexico strive to avoid the beaten track even in memory and let their feet or their fancy wander in the direction of some of this earth’s loveliest places.

Illustration (artist uncredited) from The Waukesha County Freeman, 30 October 1944, 4

Illustration (artist uncredited) from The Waukesha County Freeman, 30 October 1944, 4.

Chapala itself is one of the most delightful spots we know in which to do nothing and thoroughly enjoy the process. It isn’t a sightseeing town, there are no ancient churches or colonial buildings ruins to be viewed, which is a very rare state of affairs for Mexico. The town is built along the shore of the lake which is about 75 miles long and from five to 25 miles wide. The lake shores for miles in either direction are lined with lovely parks and charming villas, and the lake itself is a favorite bathing spot…

One of the most delightful experiences at Chapala is a launch ride around the lake. It is the best way to see the wild bird and fowl for which the district is famous. Lake Chapala and nearby ponds are among the few remaining haunts of the snowy egret whose feathers used to adorn the hats of the smartest abroad. The lake also teems with large turtles, harmless fellows since the bathers never take any notice of them. The launch ride, too, offers a good vantage point from which to view the lovely villas and gardens.

Building goes on apace at Chapala. To prevent speculators from buying land and holding it for a rise in values, an ordinance has been passed that requires a house to be built within a year of buying a lot. And since there are strict regulations about the type of house that may be erected, the result is a colony of artistic houses set in lovely, carefully tended grounds.

Chapala is famous for fine food and also for strolling bands of singers and players, some of whom sing and play exceptionally well. To eat fine food whilst being serenaded by an impromptu orchestra that plays for you and your party alone, is one of the more pleasant experiences of life, and at Chapala it can be enjoyed for a very modest outlay.

The town is also famous for its flowers. On one hill alone two thousand bougainvilles have been planted. After you have visited Chapala, you’ll always think of it in connection with beautiful flowers.

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Source

  • Temple Manning. 1944. “Chapala — A Mexican City.” The Waukesha County Freeman, 30 October 1944, 4.

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

Álvaro Ochoa Serrano’s history of “La Ciénega de Chapala”

 Other  2 Responses »
Apr 182024
 

When not writing about mariachi, historian Dr Álvaro Ochoa Serrano has dedicated much of his life to writing about Lake Chapala. His latest book, titled La Ciénega de Chapala, published in 2023, is an extraordinarily well-researched account of the history of the eastern end of Lake Chapala, told through four detailed and elegantly written case studies.

Alvaro-Ochoa-portada-1

The first, centered on the settlement near Jiquilpan named Tototlán (Totolán), walks readers through its development from early colonial times, with an accessible account of how the population, land tenure and economy were influenced by demographic factors, disease, banditry, land transfers and disputes, against a backdrop including the numerous political upheavals of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The second part, about how the War of Independence played out in the wider region, provides an insightful analysis of the insurgents’ defense of Mezcala Island, and of how the war impacted the existing haciendas and settlements east and south of the lake.

Guaracha, the largest of these haciendas, is the subject of the book’s third part, which looks at the changing and sometimes violent relationships between the hacienda and its neighboring settlements from the mid-nineteenth century to modern times. Guaracha lost its proximity to the lakeshore after the first decade of the twentieth century, when the eastern end of the lake was drained for agricultural use.

The fourth part is a masterful account of the area around Briseñas, Buenavista, Cumuato and Maltaraña, haciendas on a deltaic area formed, over thousands of years, by the Río Lerma where it enters the lake. This section skillfully incorporates details of land transactions, ownership, and reclamation while explaining the significant influence of the Castellanos family in the nineteenth century, and the short-lived meteoric rise to political power of Manuel Cuesta Gallardo at the end of the Porfiriato.

Ochoa is a consummate, award-winning historian. His text includes detailed footnotes, a selection of photographs and maps, an extensive bibliography and a full index for names of people and places. His books are available via Spanish-language bookstores and online via http://www.libreriacolmich.com/ amazon.com.mx and bookstore sites such as https://www.gandhi.com.mx (tip: search using “Alvaro Ochoa Serrano”)

La Ciénega de Chapala: un cuarteto de textos a flote is currently available only in Jiquilpan and in Morelia:
– Jiquilpan: Librería del Portal frente a la Plaza; and from Tere Sánchez, Unidad Académica de Estudios Regionales de la UNAM (9 to 3, and 5 to 7).
– Morelia: Librería “La Galaxia de Gutenberg,” calle Ortega y Montañez, casi esquina con Martínez de Lejarza en el barrio de Capuchinas.

Book: Álvaro Ochoa Serrano. 2023. La Ciénega de Chapala: un cuarteto de textos a flote. Tlalpujahua: Editorial Morevalladolid.

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

Chapter 6 of Lake Chapala: A Postcard History is an English-language account of some of the major changes that occurred in this general area during the twentieth century.

Comments, corrections or additional material are welcomed. Please use the comments feature at the bottom of individual posts, or email us.

Writer, poet and movie producer Hans Oppenheimer lived in Ajijic in the 1960s

 1960s  1 Response »
Mar 142024
 

While trawling through the archives of the Guadalajara Reporter many years ago, I stumbled across a one-line reference to the German-born film producer Hans Oppenheimer. Anita Lomax, the weekly newspaper’s Ajijic correspondent, commented in 1964 that “Hans Oppenheimer, writer and poet” had just left Ajijic for a visit to Mexico City.

Oppenheimer-title-page

Earlier that year, Oppenheimer’s short story “The Value of the Ear” had been published in the Spring issue of the prestigious Southwest Review. In the introduction to that issue, the editor noted the wide range range of locations from which material had come, including Oppenheimer’s which had been submitted from “Ajijic, Jalisco, Mexico.”

Interestingly, several other Lake Chapala-based authors had work published in Southwest Review, including Paul Alexander Bartlett, Willard “Butch” Marsh, and Witter Bynner, whose “Beach at Chapala” was published by the magazine in 1947.

Oppenheimer’s “The Value of the Ear” is a moralistic tale of a young shoeshine boy, Pedro, who is desperately striving to keep his family afloat in the face of poverty and deprivation. Pedro explains to his family that an eccentric ‘gringo’ has just given him five pesos to take the day off, and has promised that “if you will cut off your ear, so I can see it, I will give you a thousand pesos.”

The upside of this barbaric self-mutilation would be acquiring the means to buy a bicycle—enabling Pedro to sell newspapers—and also pay for his sister to get married and have “a good house, with room for pigs in the back.”

Before and after his decision, Pedro seeks advice from the local butcher and the local Padre. While the village is never named—and no clues offered about its location—the setting can readily be imagined as Ajijic or one of its neighboring lakeside communities.

According to an online movie database, Hans Oppenheimer was born in Berlin, Germany, on 25 April 1892, and died in Edinburgh, Scotland, on 19 August 1965. He produced several movies, including Wir Kellerkinder (1960), So toll wie anno dazumal (1962), Ich kann nicht länger schweigen (1962), Stop Train 349 (1963), Code Name: Jaguar (1965), and The Thief (1966).

As I tried to find out more about his life and writing career, I ran into an unexpected roadblock. Hans Oppenheimer is credited as a co-author of “An Evening With Robert Burns,” released by Columbia records in 1956, and featuring the Saltire Singers. According to a normally reliable music reference site, “The Saltire Music Group was a Scottish chamber music ensemble based in Edinburgh and co-founded in 1950 by composer and violinist Isobel Dunlop (1901—1975) and German opera conductor Hans Oppenheim (1892—1965).”

However, its biography of the distinguished musician and conductor Hans Oppenheim (not Oppenheimer) gives precisely the same birth and death dates as the movie database attributes to Hans Oppenheimer the producer.

Are Hans Oppenheim and Hans Oppenheimer one and the same person, or are they two different individuals whose biographical details have somehow become confused?

Please get in touch if you can help sort this out this mini-mystery!

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

Several chapters of Foreign Footprints in Ajijic: Decades of Change in a Mexican Village offer more details about the history of the artistic community in Ajijic.

Sources

  • Guadalajara Reporter: 16 July 1964, 8.
  • Hans Oppenheimer. 1964. “The Value of the Ear,” Southwest Review, Vol. 49, No. 2 (Spring 1964), pp 174-178.

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

José de Olivares and his account of a perilous boat trip on Lake Chapala in 1901

 1920s and earlier  1 Response »
Feb 012024
 

In 1901, José de Olivares—author, poet and US diplomat—wrote a newspaper column about his adventures when visiting Lake Chapala. The column has several geographical inconsistencies which suggest that the author may have slightly embellished his real life experiences for dramatic effect.

Jose-de-Olivares-Title

Olivares opens his column by explaining how he first saw Lake Chapala after a week riding in the mountains south of Guadalajara hunting for wild goats, assisted by an invaluable but thieving mozo to look after their pack animals. Uncertain of their location, late one afternoon, as the sun was setting, they gained the crest of a high ridge and spotted “a vast sheet of water which stretched away from the range of hills… like a placid, billowless sea.”

Olivares is pleasantly surprised: “I had heard of this lake before… [but] my most generous ideas had pictured it as little more than a duck pond, and now it was revealed to me as a majestic inland sea.”

The two men rode down to the shore and bivouaced for the night near where the River Lerma empties into the lake. Olivares learns from his mozo that “at Chapala… some 60 miles to the westward, I could secure marine transportation facilities in any form from a canoe to a modern steamboat.” The following morning, Olivares set off at a gallop for the village of Chapala, leaving the mozo to follow at a more leisurely pace. He finally reached Chapala, after an enjoyable and scenic ride through beautiful agricultural country:

Just at dusk the picturesque little pueblo of Chapala came into view, the tall, white spires of its ancient cathedral silhouetted against the green foothills in the background. This quaint hamlet contains but a few hundred inhabitants, yet its magnificent sanctuary would be a credit to a city many times its size. There is no public inn at the place, and I availed myself for the night of the hospitality proffered me by one of the native residents.”

As a Navy man, Olivares very much wanted to hire a boat to explore the lake, but discovered that all the local boats were on the other side of the lake in Tizapan el Alto, which was celebrating a fiesta. Walking along the shore, he discovered:

“a dilapidated old shallop, long since consigned to “rotten row,” as naval parlance goes, but which I immediately set about to make sea-worthy. I calked her many seams as best I could, stepped a mast forward in her bow, and fashioned a rude pair of oars and broad sweep aft, in lieu of the regulation steering-gear.”

As soon as the mozo and cargo arrived and the boat was loaded, they set sail for Tizapan, where they spent the night. The following morning they set out for Jiquilpan. (Following the embankment and draining of the easternmost third of the lake in the first decade of the twentieth century, Jiquilpan is now far removed from the lakeshore.)

The first few hours of their trip towards Jiquilpan went smoothly, but in the early afternoon the wind suddenly changed direction, whipped up the waves, and threatened to blow them miles off course. “The mozo had completely lost his head and was upon his knees in the bow wildly crossing himself and calling upon his patron saint for deliverance,” when the boat capsized, throwing both men into the water. They managed to scramble onto the overturned keel of their vessel, but were well out of sight of any land.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, “a shrill whistle sounded close at hand” and they saw that a “small steamer was wallowing and diving toward us.” They were welcomed aboard and generously cared for by the captain, “who had sighted us by accident,” and a mere two hours later were safely back in Chapala, setting foot once again on terra firma.

The column was illustrated with several photographs (the number varied from one newspaper to another), with such captions as “On the river bank,” “Ancient Cathedral by the lakeside,” and “A country seat on Lake Chapala.” These photos are not known to have ever been published elsewhere, so they may well have been taken by Olivares himself. Another photo shows the Hotel Arzapalo still under construction and must date from 1897; the hotel opened the following year.

"A country seat on Lake Chapala"

“A country seat on Lake Chapala” (Villa Montecarlo)

José de Olivares

The writer and Spanish-American War veteran best known as José de Olivares was born as Jesse Scott Oliver in Oxford, Ohio, on 26 November 1867. Olivares himself, much later in life, claimed on a passport application to have been born as José de Olivares (with the same November birth date) on his father’s estate in southern California.

According to Prabook (an unreferenced online Wiki for biographies), Olivares’s education included classes at the Liceo de Varones (Boys’ High School) in Guadalajara, as well as in business college and at the Berlitz School of Modern Languages.

As Jesse Scott Oliver, he enlisted in the US Navy at Mare Island in California in 1886, at the age of 18, while still technically a minor, and without “the consent of his parents or guardians,” an enlistment was contested unsuccessfully in a legal action the following year. Oliver (Olivares) was a member of the California National Guard (1884-1886), the United States Navy (1886-1893, and in the Spanish-American War of 1898), and the California Naval Reserve (1894-1896).

In 1897, “Jesse Scott Oliver… Los Angeles, Cal. deputy sheriff” was indicted in New York for attempted assault on a 15-year-old girl whom he had met at Coney Island. His counsel argued that he had done so while intoxicated, had since lost his job (and according to one account attempted to take his own life), and asked the judge for clemency. Oliver got off lightly with a fine of $150.

This event may have been the impetus to change his name and make a fresh start. From about this time, he used the name José de Olivares, perhaps to suggest a more personal Latin American background for his writing than the truth.

Olivares married Bertha Lillian Owen in Los Angeles on 2 November 1895, with whom he had two children, both born in California: Leonore Constance de Olivares (born in 1897) and Caspar Louis de Olivares (1901). His wife died when Caspar was only 3 years old, a few weeks after returning to San Francisco from Panama in October 1906. The following January, Olivares (stationed in Panama at the time) gave his marital status as “widower” when he applied for a passport for himself and his children. The following month he married Nicaraguan-born Maria Teresa Ramírez y Jerez.

All of Olivares’ writing for US newspapers was either non-fiction or poetry. The subjects of his columns, some of them syndicated, included “California’s Curio Industry,” “Mescal. A Story of the Southwest,” Mexico’s War with the Yaqui Indians,” and “Daniel Boone’s Western “Palatinate.”

His best known work by far was Our Islands and Their People, published in two large format volumes by Thompson Publishing Company in 1899. This book, lavishly illustrated with hundreds of photographs and numerous color plates, gave readers detailed accounts of the lifestyles, customs and landscapes of the islands ‘acquired’ by the US following the war of 1898, including Cuba, Hawaii, and the Philippines.

Olivares was a correspondent for the 1900 Paris Exposition, and was made an official representative of the Saint Louis Exposition at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo (1901). He won medals for his work as Commissioner of the Saint Louis Exposition to Spain, Portugal and Latin-American countries (1902-1903) and as Commissioner to the Argentine Republic for the Louisiana Purchase Exposition (1904).

In 1906, Olivares was appointed US consul at Managua, Nicaragua; he also served in consular positions at Madras, India (1911-1914), Hamilton, Ontario, Canada (1915-1924), Kingston, Jamaica (1924-1929), and Leghorn, Italy (1929-1932).

Olivares retired on 30 November 1932, and died a decade later in Santa Barbara, California, on 30 September 1942.

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

Several chapters of Foreign Footprints in Ajijic: Decades of Change in a Mexican Village offer more details about the history of the artistic community in Ajijic.

Sources

  • José de Olivares. 1901. “California’s Curio Industry.” The San Francisco Call, 7 March 1901, 4.
  • José de Olivares. 1901. “Mexico’s Beautiful Inland Sea.” The Sunday Oregonian (Portland), 2 June 1901, 32.
  • Los Angeles Herald: 17 April 1901, 11.
  • Nebraska Legal News: 2 September 1905.
  • Santa Barbara News Press: 1 October 1942, 1.
  • The Brooklyn Daily Eagle: 5 August 1897.
  • The San Francisco Call, 6 August 1897.

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

Norwegian anthropologist Carl Lumholtz found votive offerings at Lake Chapala in 1902

 1920s and earlier  2 Responses »
Dec 212023
 

Carl Sophus Lumholtz (1851–1922), born in Lillehammer, Norway, was a scientist, traveler and anthropologist in the generalist Humboldtian tradition. After graduating from the Theology department of the University of Christianía in Oslo, Lumholtz went to Australia as a naturalist. While living with cannibalistic aborigines in northern Queensland, he became fascinated by the study of primitive peoples, and spent the rest of his life enthralled by the anthropology and ethnology of native tribes in many different parts of the world.

Lumholtz-CoverLumholtz made six separate trips to Mexico, with the express purpose of studying indigenous people and their beliefs and customs. This approach was in stark contrast to that adopted by previous travelers, who had tended to regard the contributions of native Indians to the overall picture of life and work in Mexico as relatively insignificant.

His visits were supported by generous, wealthy patrons, as well as by the American Geographical Society and the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Helped by letters of introduction from politicians in Washington, Lumholtz was able to obtain logistical support from President Porfirio Díaz, who Lumholtz considered to be “not only a great man on this continent, but one of the great men of our time.” Díaz helped organize a translation of Lumholtz’s work into Spanish. This was published, in 1904, only two years after the original English edition.

Lumholtz first entered Mexico with a team of some thirty scientists, with specializations ranging from geography to physics and from botany to mineralogy, and 100 horses. By the fourth trip, he had abandoned the team approach in favor of traveling alone, since this allowed him to explore some of the remotest parts of north and west Mexico, and live for extended periods of time with isolated Indian tribes. His respectful, patient attitude allowed him to gain the confidence of his hosts, and be permitted to take some of the earliest known photographs of them and their activities.

He was particularly impressed by the Indians’ practical skills:

“In all kinds of handicraft, for instance, in carving on stone, wood, and so forth, the ancient people of Mexico have no equal today for accuracy of execution and beauty of outline.” His sense of priorities is perhaps summed up best by his statement that he felt he had to protect the “Indians from the Mexicans, the Mexicans from the Americans”.

To his eternal regret, Lumholtz’s work in Mexico was interrupted by the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution in 1910, and he felt forced to turn his attentions to other parts of the world, including India, Borneo and south-east Asia.

A prolific author, with dozens of works to his credit, Lumholtz died in 1922 while planning a research trip to New Guinea.

Unknown Mexico is an account of Lumholtz’s first four trips to Mexico, representing a total of five years in the country between 1890 and 1900. Even today, it remains a classic of anthropological literature. Illustrated with dozens of drawings and photographs, it provides a wealth of detail about the lifestyles, customs, native remedies, music and beliefs of some of the indigenous tribes.

This illustration from Unknown Mexico shows the excavation of ancient jars near Atoyac (a short distance west of Lake Chapala):

Lumholtz. Unknown Mexico, vol 2, opposite page 318

Lumholtz. Unknown Mexico, vol 2, opposite page 318.

The book includes drawings of two ceremonial hatchets “used at sacred sites” and found in the “neighbourhood of Chapala”:

Lumholtz: Two ceremonial hatchets found near Chapala

Lumholtz: Two ceremonial hatchets found near Chapala

I made also an excursion to the beautiful lake of Chapala, the largest sheet of fresh water in Mexico, fifty miles long and from fifteen to eighteen broad. Its name is Nahuatl, which should really be Chapalal, in onomatopoetic imitation of the sound of the waves playing on the beach. The stage runs to a small village of the same name, lying on the shore, where some pretty country houses have been built.

In this lake, especially at its western end, are found great quantities of ancient, roughly made, diminutive jars, and a number of other objects. Near the village of Axixic (Nahuatl, “Where water [atl] pours forth”) the people make a business of diving for them, threading them on strings, and selling them to visitors to the village of Chapala. I gathered several hundreds of them, and the supply seemed inexhaustible. No one knows when or why they were thrown into the lake. Most likely they were votive offerings to the deity of this water, to secure luck and health and other material benefits.

Lumholtz. Unknown Mexico, Illustration from Vol 2, page 357

Lumholtz. Unknown Mexico. Illustration from Vol 2, page 357

Note: This is based on chapter 48 of my Lake Chapala Through the Ages: An Anthology of Travelers’ Tales.

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

Sources

  • Carl Sophus Lumholtz. 1902. Unknown Mexico. 2 vols. 1973 reprint: New Mexico: Rio Grande Press.
  • Luis Romo Cedano. “Carl Lumholtz y el México desconocido.” Ch. 13 of Ferrer Muñoz, Manuel (coordinator) La Imagen del México Decimonónico de los Visitantes Extranjeros: ¿Un Estado nación o un Mosaico Plurinacional? Mexico: UNAM, Instituto de Investigaciones Jurídicas, Serie Doctrina Jurídica, Núm. 56.

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

Chapala 1912-1922: Excerpts from Bertha Kaiser’s diary

 1920s and earlier  2 Responses »
Nov 232023
 

Bertha Kaiser was the third wife of Swiss printer and shopkeeper Juan Kaiser, who—in addition to selling accounting books and ledgers via his store “Al Libro de Caja” in Guadalajara—also published beautiful early postcards of Chapala and Guadalajara featuring the work of such distinguished photographers as José María Lupercio and Winfield Scott.

Front cover of "Mein Rind. Tagebuch der Mutter" (Bertha Kaiser's diary)

Bertha’s diary, written in German in the first quarter of the twentieth century, was unknown outside her immediate family until relatively recently. Excerpts of the diary were published in 2012 as Tagebuch Von Bertha Kaiser-Peter Fur Ihren sohn Hans Paul Kaiser.

The diary contains frequent references to the members of the small Swiss community in Guadalajara, most of whom had close friendships and ties to the much larger German community in the city.

While the diary is mostly about the family’s experiences in Guadalajara and an extended trip to the US (via train to Manzanillo and steamer to California), there are some significant Chapala links scattered through the diary.

The excerpts begin in mid-1912 when Bertha and Juan’s son, Hans-Paul, was born in Guadalajara. Following his baptism, a celebration for family and friends was held at the Hotel Cosmopolita, before the Kaisers returned to their home in Jardines Seattle.

The Hotel Cosmopolita had been owned until a few years previously by German-born Francisco Fredenhagen (1849-1932), a close friend of the Kaisers, who, in about 1900, built one of the earliest weekend ‘cottages’ in Chapala at (or very near) the property which now has the address of Avenida Hidalgo #260.

Fredenhagen was a partner in a Mexico City brewery (“La Compañia Cervecera Limitada”) when he bought the Hotel Cosmopolita in 1885 and moved to Guadalajara. One of Fredenhagen’s grandchildren later married into the Seimandi family, which included one of the early managers of Chapala’s emblematic hotel—the Hotel Arzapalo—which opened in 1898. This marriage was very much in the tradition of the time that influential families consolidated their status and wealth through intermarriage.

In the mid 1890s, Fredenhagen drew anthropologist Frederick Starr’s attention to the many little pottery objects found in and around Lake Chapala, about which Starr subsequently wrote a short monograph. Fredenhagen also informed Starr about a “dwarf race” living in the hills near Ajijic, which the anthropologist planned to investigate with the assistance of Archbishop Gillow. Gillow is a particularly interesting figure in Mexican history; his story is told in Mexican Kaleidoscope: myths, mysteries and mystique.

After Fredenhagen sold the Hotel Cosmopolita in 1909, he announced plans to move to Chapala where he and his wife owned a cottage, before retiring to Germany. Events in Europe apparently caused them to rethink that idea; Fredenhagen died in Guadalajara in 1932, and his wife died there eight years later.

Members of Kaiser family in Chapala. Reproduced by kind permission of Verena Kaiser-Ernst.

Members of Kaiser family in Chapala. Reproduced by kind permission of Verena Kaiser-Ernst.

Bertha’s diary records a visit to stay with the Fredenhagens in Chapala in April 1915. Paraphrasing Bertha’s text, on February 17th the family celebrated Juan’s birthday quietly at home. Juan was not feeling well (he had a chronic illness), and they were invited to visit the Fredenhagens at Lake Chapala. They left Guadalajara on April 15th in a privately hired stagecoach (diligencia), pulled by “five lively mules” over the “sometimes very bumpy roads.” It took seven hours, but “the beautiful journey” was a “reminder of how people made long journeys in stagecoaches before the coming of the railroad.”

They spent a month with the Fredenhagen family. Bertha and Juan took a pleasant walk in the mountains every morning, before having a swim, a leisurely lunch and a siesta. They took a row boat out in the late afternoon. After dinner, they entertained themselves playing jazz.

Hans-Paul (“Juanito”) and his nanny also had a good time at Chapala. Juanito played every day on the sandy beach, bathed, and loved his time in Chapala, especially after one of his Guadalajara friends arrived with her parents.

Group at Casa Nigg, Chapala, August 1922. Reproduced by kind permission of Verena Kaiser-Ernst.

Group at Casa Nigg, Chapala, August 1922. Reproduced by kind permission of Verena Kaiser-Ernst.

Bertha recognized that Chapala was facing a difficult time. While the lake and its shores were as beautiful as ever, the unrest in the country had led to everything being neglected: “The beautiful private villas are mostly uninhabited, the hotels are poorly maintained. In former quiet times people flocked to Chapala from everywhere.” When the trip came to an end, they returned to Guadalajara by stagecoach, “taking the most beautiful memories home with us. Mr. & Mrs. Fredenhagen were such dear hosts.”

In the summer of 1915, the Kaisers undertook an arduous journey to California to combine having a family holiday with seeking specialist medical advice.

“It was a terrible journey to Colima…. It is one of the most dangerous routes in the world, wonderfully romantic in quiet times, but in revolutionary times the line was usually out of order, the trains in terrible condition, it was a horrible ride and ridiculed any description.”

Manzanillo was even worse: “The heat was unbearable, the mosquitoes plagued the children, particularly, day & night, bad food, nothing to drink.” About 40 people from Guadalajara were waiting in the port for the steamer “Peru” to San Francisco. After several days, the steamer finally arrived and the nine day journey to San Francisco was underway.

Bertha’s diary covers their California trip in considerable detail, including Juan’s chance meeting at a German music festival in Los Angeles with a fellow postcard publisher, “Mr Ruhland, an old friend whom he hadn’t seen in 12 years.” Emil Ruhland and his partner, Max Ahlschier, founded Ruhland & Ahlschier, the first company in Mexico permitted to publish and market illustrated postcards, in 1897. After selling the company in about 1903, Ruhland had moved to the US.

The Kaisers’ return home to Guadalajara is also described in great detail in Bertha’s diary. From Manzanillo, the “extra train” which arrived to take them to Guadalajara, “didn’t have passenger wagons but only freight wagons. Awful was the ride on this old railroad train that was fueled by wood… [with] the biggest rain of sparks, which was especially bad for the eyes when going fast.” To add insult to injury, Juan’s personal suitcase, containing clothes, cash and business notes, was stolen.

The dangerous stretch between Colima and Guadalajara lasted two days and a night. All too visible in the barranca below at one point were the wrecked locomotives and passenger cars from a train accident in which hundreds of people had died.

Unfortunately, Juan never recovered from his illness and died early the following year (1916). Given the uncertain future for the business, most employees resigned. Fortunately, with the assistance of a business administrator, Emil Keller, the company remained in operation while Bertha negotiated its sale to Juan’s brother, Arnoldo.

The following year, Keller asked Bertha to marry him. Bertha, greatly conflicted but wanting the best for her 5-year-old son, said ‘Yes” and the couple were married in a small civil ceremony at Bertha’s home on 24 October 1917. The newly weds left Juanito with his nanny, and drove to Chapala for a two week honeymoon.

After a week of wondering every day how Juanito was doing, “my husband decided to go back to Guadalajara and bring the little one to me as a surprise, which of course made me very happy… Now we could stay peacefully another week and enjoy the beautiful place.”

Bertha and her husband became accustomed to spending part of every summer in Chapala. Several photos in the diary provide glimpses into the social life of Bertha and her friends. In 1922, for example, Bertha was at the farewell party for the retiring Swiss consul, Juan Nigg. Nigg invited the entire Swiss community for a steamer ride on the lake and lunch at his lakeside home. (Nigg’s successor as consul was Dr Sutter, director of the Faculty of Medicine at the Autonomous University of Guadalajara, who also had a home in Chapala.)

Silver wedding of Sres Jochimsen, Chapala, November 1922. Photo by José Edmundo Sánchez. Reproduced by kind permission of Verena Kaiser-Ernst.

Silver wedding of Sres Jochimsen, Chapala, November 1922. Photo by José Edmundo Sánchez. Reproduced by kind permission of Verena Kaiser-Ernst.

In that same year, Bertha and Emil attended the silver wedding celebration in Chapala of Mr and Mrs Jochimsen. The group photo showing the invitees was taken by Chapala-born photographer José Edmundo Sánchez, whose postcards of Chapala are an invaluable source of social history.

The diary also includes this photo of the Lehmann family posing on the beach at Chapala.

The Lehmann family at Chapala. c 1925. Reproduced by kind permission of Verena Kaiser-Ernst.

The Lehmann family at Chapala. c 1925. Reproduced by kind permission of Verena Kaiser-Ernst.

Not long after the period described in the diary, Bertha and her family left Guadalajara to live in Switzerland.

Acknowledgment

My sincere thanks to Hans-Martin Kaiser and Verena Kaiser-Ernst for bringing this valuable diary to my attention, and for graciously allowing me to reproduce the photos used in this post.

Help needed

Verena Kaiser-Ernst, editor of Bertha Kaiser’s diary, is interested in having the diary translated from German to Spanish for possible publication in Guadalajara. The book has approximately 20,500 words of text and about 40 photo captions. Please contact me if this is a project that appeals to you!

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

My 2022 book Lake Chapala: A Postcard History uses reproductions of more than 150 vintage postcards, including several published by Juan Kaiser,  to tell the incredible story of how Lake Chapala became an international tourist and retirement center.

Sources

  • Verena Kaiser-Ernst. 2012. Tagebuch Von Bertha Kaiser-Peter Fur Ihren sohn Hans Paul Kaiser. Stuttgart: T H Schetter.
  • La Tierra: 1 June 1901, 125.
  • The Mexican Herald: 28 June 1909, 11.
  • The Two Republics: 13 Jan 1885, 4.

Comments, corrections or additional material related to any of the writers and artists featured in our series of mini-bios are welcomed. Please use the comments feature at the bottom of individual posts, or email us.

Ornithologist-artist Andrew Grayson and his early literary mention of Lake Chapala

 1920s and earlier  No Responses »
Oct 122023
 

With the exception of Bernardo de Balbuena’s mention of Chapala in his epic poem “El Bernardo,” (written between 1592 and 1602 and published in Madrid in 1624), one of the earliest literary mentions of Lake Chapala is in a story by Andrew Grayson published in 1870. Grayson, an ornithologist, rarely wrote fictional pieces and is far better known for his non-fiction natural history articles, published in numerous US magazines and newspapers in the first half of the nineteenth century.

William Jewett. 1850. Portrait of Andrew and Frances Grayson, and their son, in California. (Terra Foundation for American Art).

In “Ixotle,” posthumously published, the author made good use of his knowledge of Western Mexico, and describes how he is making “collections of Ornithology” when he encounters an elderly local priest who turns out to have an extensive knowledge of the birds of Western Mexico. The priest recounts a local legend explaining why the Tres Marias islands, a birding hotspot, were never settled. The legend revolves around the God of the Storms of the Sea, Tlaxicoltetl, and a beautiful, intelligent 16-year-old girl, Ixotle (“blooming flower”), who has been chosen by her people to be sacrificed to their ancient gods. The girl refuses and prophesies that:

a people with white faces and long, red beards are coming — they are already on the march. They carry in their hands the lightning and the thunder, with which they will demolish your great temples. They are sent by the true God. Not a stone will be left; and on their sites will be erected white temples—the pure temples of the true and only God. Beware, then, and let this be the last of human sacrifice!”

One short section of the story relates directly to Lake Chapala:

From this locality [San Blas] a large, well-beaten trail extended through Tepic on to where Guadalajara now stands, and where then stood a large city, which was called Chapala.

The lake near Guadalajara is still known by that name; and the Indians found near its borders, who yet live in a semi-barbarous state, are called to this day Chapalo Indians, and are a very degraded, thieving race. But previous to the conquest, they were a numerous and industrious people—well skilled in the manufacture of articles of utility. Cotton cloths, both coarse and fine, were largely manufactured by them, as also various kinds of pottery; and their dressed deer-skins were of a superior quality. These kinds of goods were bartered with the Tepic Indians for fish, pearls, etc.

Their principal town was where the beautiful city of Guadalajara now lifts its numerous church-spires proudly over the once heathen temples of human sacrifice. It was then a large city, and continues to be second only to the Capital.”

Click here for the full text of “Ixotle.”

Andrew Grayson. Green Parakeet. (Image believed to be in public domain)

Andrew Grayson. Green Parakeet (a Mexican endemic). Image believed to be in public domain.

Andrew Jackson Grayson was born in Louisiana in 1819 and died in Mazatlan in 1869. A sickly child, he spent most of his childhood roaming the countryside, watching and drawing local birds and other wildlife. As an adult, after failing to run a store profitably in Louisiana, he married Frances Jane Timmons in 1842 and two years later the couple moved to St. Louis, in preparation for the overland trek west to California. They arrived in California in October 1846, where Grayson bought several lots in San Francisco and the surrounding area.

Seeing an exhibition of bird paintings by James John Audubon in San Francisco in 1853 reignited Grayson’s childhood passion for drawing birds. Grayson became a self-taught painter and taxidermist, working first in San Jose, then Tehuantepec, Mexico (1857), and the Napa Valley (1859) before moving to Mazatlán where he owned a general store and began working towards a book he envisaged titled “Birds of the Pacific Slope.”

Grayson spent the next decade submitting articles, mostly about natural history, to a number of newspapers and magazines in California and Mexico. He also supplied the Smithsonian Institution with birds and bird biographies. Despite making exhaustive efforts to find a sponsor for his book on Pacific Slope birds, the work remained unfinished when Grayson died of “coast fever” in Mazatlán in 1869. Shortly after, his wife returned to California, where she later remarried.

156 of Grayson’s stunning bird paintings were eventually published in a collectors’ edition by Arion Press in 1986, accompanied by a detailed biography of the ornithologist-artist.

An archive of Andrew Jackson Grayson papers and paintings is held by The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

Sources

  • Andrew J. Grayson. 1870. “Ixotle.” Overland Monthly, vol. V, #3, (Sept 1870), 258-261.
  • Anon. Guide to the Andrew Jackson Grayson Papers, 1844-1901. The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
  • Robert J. Chandler. 2011.”Andrew Jackson Grayson: The Birdman was a traitor.” The California Territorial Quarterly. #88 (Winter 2011), 46-51.
  • Lois Chambers Stone. 1986. Andrew Jackson Grayson: Birds of the Pacific Slope: A Biography of the Artist and Naturalist, 1818-1869. Arion Press.
Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

Several chapters of Foreign Footprints in Ajijic: Decades of Change in a Mexican Village offer more details about the history of the literary community in Ajijic.

Comments, corrections or additional material related to any of the writers and artists featured in our series of mini-bios are welcomed. Please use the comments feature at the bottom of individual posts, or email us.

What did journalist Frederic Haskin make of Lake Chapala in 1916?

 1920s and earlier  3 Responses »
Apr 272023
 

Frederic Jennings Haskin was born 1873 in Shelbina, Missouri. With only the most rudimentary formal education, his first job, at the age of ten, was as housekeeper for a weekly publication called Torchlight. Many years later, Haskin became its publisher, and a correspondent with papers such as the St. Louis Globe Democrat and the Kansas City Star. In the course of his career, Haskin traveled very widely, reporting on the sights and sounds of places as diverse as the Yukon and Japan, though it is unknown whether or not he ever saw Lake Chapala with his own eyes.

Haskin wrote several books, including The American Government (1912); The Immigrant: an Asset and a Liability (1913); The Panama Canal (1913); 5000 New Answers To Questions (1933); and The American Government Today (1935). But he was best known for an information column that appeared in The Star and more than 100 other newspapers, where, aided by a team of researchers, he answered readers’ questions, more than 25 million in total according to some estimates.

Haskin title page

So, how did Haskin describe Lake Chapala? In 1916 he wrote that it was:

a shallow and uncertain body of water, given to sudden bursts of wrath without warning, rising suddenly in storm under the whip of a squall, and making life miserable for the Mexican fishermen in their little open boats.

They are poor sailors, anyway, and their methods would awaken the contempt of a Gloucesterman, but they continue to fish in spite of the danger, contenting themselves with a preliminary prayer in their little village church, and in burning a candle for the souls of those whom the squalls have overtaken.

All round about Chapala lies what was one of the rich districts of Mexico under the old regime.”

Then, after a brief discussion of how the hacienda system meant that most of the land was controlled by only a small number of people, Haskin commented on the impact of the Revolution:

Much of that old-time life had been swept away in the storms of revolution. The shores of Chapala are changing, passing through a time of stress that may lead to better things than the picturesque feudalism of yesterday. But the restless lake that saw the coming of the Aztecs and the Mayas, that watched the Spaniards take the land and is watching them lose it back to the Indians is ever the same. Under the moon it whispers its old secret to the pebbled beaches.”

Haskin, a charter member of the US National Press Club and its third president in 1912, died at his home in Washington, DC on 24 April 1944.

Sources

  • Frederic J Haskin. 1916. Buffalo Evening News, 27 Nov 1916.
  • National Press Club Archives. Finding Aid for the Frederic J. Haskin Collection (1911-1969).
Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

The 11 chapters of Lake Chapala: A Postcard History take a visual look at the lake’s past from many different perspectives.

Comments, corrections or additional material related to any of the writers and artists featured in our series of mini-bios are welcomed. Please use the comments feature at the bottom of individual posts, or email us.

Journalist Bill Reed reported on Ajijic in 1967

 1960s  4 Responses »
Apr 132023
 

What was Ajijic like in 1967? Fortunately for us, that was the year when long-time journalist Ellis E. ‘Bill’ Reed reported from Ajijic on the status of the village’s sister city relationship with his home base of Studio City, California.

Reed, then the Executive Editor of the Valley Times in San Fernando, first highlighted the size difference between the two communities, explaining that Studio City had six times as many inhabitants as Ajijic, which he described as “a picturesque fishing village on beautiful Lake Chapala… now a community of 5,000.” He then explained to his readers how two Dane Chandos books—Village in the Sun and House in the Sun, both published in the 1940s—had introduced Ajijic to the English-speaking world: “Ajijic first gained fame as a Bohemian Center, but this has generally been replaced by a colony of serious writers and artists.”

Had this influx of foreigners had any impact on Ajijic? Reed noted that “Far from taking over the Americans have blended into the landscape and the only way you can tell their homes form those of the natives is by the screens on the windows. They have, however, brought in telephones and electricity.”

Valley-Times-26-Dec-1967

He also commented that “The bar at the Posada Ajijic is now in the earnest hands of former Hollywood producer Sherman Harris” and that “Climbing a hill at Chula Vista… is a Palm Springs-like subdivision of more than 100 lots, about 75 of them with occupied houses bearing names like ‘Dream’s End.’”

Photos accompanying Reed’s article illustrated a concert in a lakeshore park; fruit vendors, and two women cooking over an open fire on the beach.

images-Valley-Times-26-Dec-1967

Two of the images illustrating Bill Reed’s Valley Times article

The sister city program was one strand of the People-to-People initiative started by former US president Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1956. The executive board of People to People held a lunch meeting at the Villa Montecarlo in Chapala in 1964, a meeting attended by Eisenhower’s son (John D. Eisenhower), Mexican President Adolfo López Mateos, former president Miguel Alemán, the Jalisco state governor Juan Gil Preciado, who listened to a keynote address by Walt Disney (who claimed “Jalisco” was his favorite song).

In writing about the sister city connection between Ajijic and Studio City, Reed recalled how a contingent of Studio City residents and merchants had traveled to Ajijic in 1964 and decided that their efforts should be concentrated in youth programs, where the need was greatest. Funds were raised in Studio City funds to help remodel the boys school in Ajijic and provide uniforms for a youth soccer team. The following year a ten-person delegation from Ajijic visited Studio City. The Studio City Chamber of Commerce sponsored a letter writing exchange between students of the twinned communities and helped initiate a daily school breakfast program for 200 children in Ajijic. See also:

Long after Reed’s visit, this sister city connection was still going strong. For example, in 1977, Studio City residents organized a donation of medical supplies, including adjustable hospital beds, examination tables and assorted operating room equipment for Ajijic’s first public health clinic. They also raised funds to speed up construction of the village’s first purpose-built secondary school, which opened in 1983.

And who was Bill Reed?

Bill Reed had edited several other publications before joining the Valley Times, including the Daily Star-Progress in Brea-La Habra and the Daily Independent in Corona. Prior to living in California, Reed had worked as an editor and public relations executive in New York, where he had also taught marketing classes at New York University.

In an unusual claim to fame, Reed directed the first postwar tour of the landing beaches and battlefields of France in 1946, following which the entire group was invited by the Duke and Duchess of Windsor (Wallis Simpson) to visit their chateau on the French Riviera. Reed had also been secretary of the International Management Congress in Brussels and a consultant to the United Nations Economic and Social Council.

Though I have yet to locate any details, Reed also apparently wrote several plays, texts on marketing and a regular syndicated column, “Broadway to Main Street.”

Sources

  • Citizen-News, 24 April 1967, A-9.
  • Ellis E. (Bill) Reed. 1967. “Quaint Lake Community Wins Fame.” San Fernando Valley Times (North Hollywood, California), 26 Dec 1967, 14.
Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

Foreign Footprints in Ajijic: Decades of Change in a Mexican Village offers a detailed account of the history of Ajijic, focusing primarily on the great changes that occurred between 1940 and 1980.

Comments, corrections or additional material related to any of the writers and artists featured in our series of mini-bios are welcomed. Please use the comments feature at the bottom of individual posts, or email us.

The Hotel Ribera Castellanos, Lake Chapala’s writers’ resort that is no more

 1920s and earlier, 1930s  2 Responses »
Mar 302023
 

This year (2023) marks the centenary of D H Lawrence’s visit to Chapala, where he wrote Quetzalcoatl, the first draft of The Plumed Serpent. At some point in the trip, almost certainly en route to Chapala, Lawrence stayed at the Hotel Ribera Castellanos (located on the lakeshore between Ocotlán and Jamay). This hotel, often called simply Hotel Ribera, no longer exists, but has numerous literary claims to fame dating back to the mid-nineteenth century, when the property was owned by Ignacio Castellanos and his wife, poet Esther Tapia de Castellanos.

In The Plumed Serpent, Ocotlán became Ixtlahuacan (chapter V) and the Hotel Ribera Castellanos the Orilla Hotel (chapters V, VI).

“The hotel consisted of an old low ranch-house with a veranda — and this was the dining-room, lounge, kitchen, and office. Then there was a two-storey new wing, with a smart bathroom between each two bedrooms, and almost up-to-date fittings: very incongruous.

But the new wing was unfinished — had been unfinished for a dozen years and more, the work abandoned when Porfirio Diaz fled. Now it would probably never be finished.” (chapter V)

In the following chapter, Lawrence explained how the “Orilla, which had begun to be a winter paradise for the Americans” had suffered badly during the Revolution but that “In 1921 a feeble new start had been made” and “the hotel was very modestly opened again, with an American manager.” (chapter VI)

That American hotel manager (named Bell in chapter VI) was hotelier-photographer Winfield Scott, who had actually become manager of the Hotel Ribera in 1919. By the time of Lawrence’s visit, Scott had moved on to manage the Hotel Arzapalo in Chapala. When Lawrence and his wife rented a house in Chapala, their traveling companions—Witter Bynner and ‘Spud’ Johnson—took rooms at the Arzapalo. Scott needed little prompting to regale Lawrence and his friends with all kinds of stories of the old days.

Dwight Furness. c 1907. Hotel Ribera Castellanos. (Fig 6-6 of Lake Chapala: A Postcard History.)

Dwight R. Furness. c 1907. Hotel Ribera. (Fig 6-6 of Lake Chapala: A Postcard History)

But when and why was the Hotel Ribera first built? In 1902, American entrepreneur Dwight Furness, who had numerous business interests in Guanajuato, bought the estate from the Castellanos family. Having seen the obvious success of the purpose-built Hotel Arzapalo which opened its doors in Chapala in 1898, Furness envisioned an even grander resort hotel on this lakeside property near the main Mexico City-Guadalajara railroad line, alongside a modern “summer colony” of vacation homes for the wealthy. Plans were announced to add a health spa, golf links and bowling alley. Construction of the first homes and the Hotel Ribera began in 1904. One of the first to build a cottage close to the hotel was Arturo Braniff, from Mexico City, who also bought a much grander house, the Casa Pérez Verdía, in Chapala for his widowed mother.

The Hotel Ribera advertised with the the tagline, “The Riviera of Mexico” and claimed to be a “Sportsman’s Paradise.” It quickly became a highly desirable and popular destination, where all manner of politicians and celebrities would hob-nob over the next decade. Shortly after Furness added 60 more rooms in 1909, journalist Winifred Martin vacationed there; she remarked on the colorful flora and fauna and described the hotel as “picturesque and charming with lawns sloping steeply to the water’s edge… the long rambling building with its tiled roof fits well into the setting.”

When pioneering female travel writer Marie Wright, author of two non-fiction books about Mexico, visited in 1910, she lauded the Ribera as “a fine new hotel of modern equipment.” The following year, Juan Kaiser, the Swiss-born store owner and publisher (responsible for some of the finest early postcards of Chapala and Guadalajara) stayed at the hotel to recover from a relapse of malaria. Not long afterwards, veteran traveler writer Harry Franck arrived by boat from Chapala and stayed a couple of nights, before taking the hotel launch across the lake to La Palma to continue his herculean hike through Mexico.

In February 1911, prolific American children’s writer Emily Huntington Miller (1833-1913), who founded “The Little Corporal”—the first serial magazine for children published in the US—stayed at the Hotel Ribera.

In 1916, Janet M Cummings photographed Lake Chapala for National Geographic. Cummings was one of the first female photographers ever to have work published by that august magazine. She took the image titled “Water carriers at Lake Chapala” in Ocotlán, presumably during a short stay at the Hotel Ribera.

When the Mexican Revolution prompted Dwight Furness and his family to leave Mexico, the Hotel Ribera was sold to Enrique Langenscheidt Schwartz, a prominent German businessman living in Guanajuato. Tragically, his son, Enrique Langenscheidt Jr., was murdered there by bandits in 1919. Despite Scott’s best efforts to revive business, the hotel gradually lost popularity and clientele.

By the time travel writer Edna Mae Stark argued in 1930 that “The most modern town on the shores of Lake Chapala is Ribera Castellanos, which is destined for popularity as a vacation resort. With a good hotel as headquarters, guests may fish, or hunt, swim or ride horseback, go motoring or sailing,” the hotel was in terminal decline. All that remains today of this once-grand lakeside resort are  a few ruined walls.

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

See chapter 6 of Lake Chapala: a postcard history for an extended history of the Hotel Ribera Castellanos.

Comments, corrections or additional material related to any of the writers and artists featured in our series of mini-bios are welcomed. Please use the comments feature at the bottom of individual posts, or email us.

Artist-author Henry F Edwards lived in Ajijic in the 1960s and 1970s

 1960s, 1970s  No Responses »
Mar 232023
 

Artist and author Henry F. Edwards lived in Ajijic, with his wife, Corinne, and their numerous children, for many years in the 1960s and 1970s.

Henry ‘Hank’ Edwards was born on 9 May 1933 and completed studies at the University of New Mexico; San Diego State University; and the University of California. He served in the Navy on the aircraft carrier USS Shangri-La and then worked for a decade in the space industry, as a scientist-engineer on advanced satellites. Having made profitable investments, he retired young to travel the world; the family lived in several different countries before settling at Lake Chapala for more than a decade, most of the time in Ajijic, and a much shorter time on the southern shore of the lake.

Henry F Edwards - book cover

Edwards published and republished several books. The one most directly related to Ajijic is titled The Sweet Bird of Youth . This book, published in 2008, consists of two parts: “Fall of the Globo” and “Living the Lucky Life,” previously published in 1977 and 1997 respectively.

“Fall of the Globo” is a fictionalized memoir of his time in Ajijic. Ajijic is renamed Tzipan in the book, and Jocotepec becomes San Pedro, while Henry and Corinne become Harold and Colleen. The book is a roman à clef, where many of the characters are only thinly disguised. It includes stories about building the Edwards’ family home, nicknamed “El Castillo” because of its castle-like turret, a couple of blocks north of Seis Esquinas. They had previously rented a property at Independencia #41, where artist John K Peterson later lived for a time.

Parts of Playing Prince in a Palace (2009) also relate to the family’s time in Mexico, while The View from Across the Lake (originally published in 2002) is about life on the southern shore of the lake before they then decided to move to Guatemala.

Edwards also penned an article titled “On Lake Chapala” for the Lake Chapala Review, which offers a chatty account of what life in Ajijic was like when he and his family lived in the village. The illustration accompanying that article was drawn by Simón Velásquez, son of long-time village artists Enrique and Belva Velásquez.

What was Ajijic like when Hank Edwards was living there? Well, it was a lot smaller than it is today, as evidenced by this simplified sketch map drawn by Hank and included in The Sweet Bird of Youth:

Sketch map of Ajijic, c. 1970, by Henry F Edwards.

Sketch map of Ajijic, c. 1970, by Henry F Edwards.

The ‘paved road’ is the current carretera, completed in the early 1950s, a decade before Edwards arrived in Ajijic. (A 1976 US newspaper quotes Edwards as planning to spend summers on San Juan Island, “and the winters in Ajijic where we have lived for the past eight years.”) The line labelled ‘End of Town’ on the map is especially instructive in that there was apparently very little construction north of the carretera, even in about 1960. The “Castillo” was on the edge of the town.

Edwards pursued his art interests while in Ajijic, and held a one man show of 36 oils, done over five years, at what was then the Jalisco state gallery in La Floresta.

Edwards exhibited in a group show in March 1976 at the “José Clemente Orozco Gallery” in Ajijic, a gallery directed by Dionicio Morales at a location three blocks from the plaza on Guadalupe Victoria. Other artists in that show included Jonathan Aparicio, Frank Barton, Antonio Cárdenas, Antonio López Vega, Dionicio Morales, Julian Pulido, Sid Schwartzman, and Havano Tadeo.

Hank and Corinne (Bush) Edwards co-starred as the leading couple in the farce “Here Lies Jeremy Troy” presented by the Lakeside Little Theater in April 1976 at the Chula Vista Country Club. Corinne had performed in Victoria, BC, Canada, and in several previous Lakeside Little Theater productions.

At the time of “”Here Lies Jeremy Troy,” Hank Edwards apparently sponsored the short-lived Wes Penn Gallery (named for the deceased artist ex-husband of author Jan Dunlap). The gallery was trying to organize a two-person exhibit of paintings by Peter Huf and his wife, Eunice Hunt Huf, who, after living in Ajijic for many years, had moved back to Germany. A short press comment adds that, “Hank Edwards and Corinne Bush plan to leave Ajijic at the end of April, at which time the Wes Penn Gallery will be managed by Cristina Rigby of Jocotepec.” Cristina Rigby, it is worth noting, was the wife of British Hollywood writer Ray Rigby (The Hill).

Henry Edwards. c 1970. Street scene.

Henry Edwards. c 1970. Street scene.

Hank and Corinne left Ajijic in May 1976, after throwing a medieval costume party for Frank and Kathy Barton who had taken over “El Castillo,” but returned the following year, when Hank became an active member of the informal cultural group TLAC (Todas las Artes Combinadas).

At the end of the 1970s, Edwards and his wife moved back to the US, where they lived in Oregon and Arizona. Corinne died in about 2016. When I was last in touch with Henry, several years ago, he still owned an island in the middle of Lake Atitlan in Guatemala, an island where he and his wife had once hoped to build a castle . . .

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

Several chapters of Foreign Footprints in Ajijic: Decades of Change in a Mexican Village offer more details about the history of the artistic community in Ajijic.

Acknowledgments

My sincere thanks to both Alan Pattison and Henry Edwards for sharing their memories of Ajijic with me via phone, in July 2014 and November 2016 respectively.

Sources

  • Henry F Edwards. 2008. The Sweet Bird of Youth (BookSurge)
  • ___2009. Playing Prince in a Palace (BookSurge)
  • ___2009. The View from Across the Lake (BookSurge)
  • ___2007. “On Lake Chapala,” Lake Chapala Review, April 2007
  • Guadalajara Reporter: 13 March 1976, 21; 3 April 1976, 31; 3 April 1976; 22 May 1976, 22; 16 Apr 1977, 19.
  • The Islands Sounder: 10 Nov 1976, 19.

Comments, corrections or additional material related to any of the writers and artists featured in our series of mini-bios are welcomed. Please use the comments feature at the bottom of individual posts, or email us.

Historian Álvaro Ochoa Serrano, Lake Chapala and mariachi

 1980s, 1990s onwards  No Responses »
Mar 162023
 

This post considers the extraordinarily productive career of historian Álvaro Ochoa Serrano, who has dedicated much of his life to writing about his two main loves: Lake Chapala and mariachi (in its broad historical sense of music, folkloric dancing and partying).

These two interests are not necessarily as unrelated as you might think since some linguists believe that the word mariachi derives from the indigenous Coca language, spoken at the lake centuries ago.

From birth, Ochoa was destined to become a historian of Lake Chapala. Having been born in 1948 in La Barca, Jalisco, his birth was registered in Jiquilpan, Michoacán, so he started life with one foot in each of the two states that border the lake.

Alvaro-Ochoa-portada-1

Ochoa gained his bachelor’s degree at the Escuela Normal Superior De Mexico (1978), and then completed his masters in history at the Iberoamerican University (1988) and a PhD in history (1998) at the Universidad of California, Los Ángeles. He is a member of Mexico’s National Researchers’ System, and of the National Commission for the Preservation of Mariachi.

For many than 35 years, Ochoa has been a professor and researcher in the Zamora-based Colegio de Michoacán, where his major projects included one titled “Personajes y tradiciones populares del Occidente de México”. (Characters and Popular Traditions of Western Mexico). The Colegio de Michoacán, which was directed for many years by distinguished environmental anthropologist Brigitte Boehm Schondübe (1938-2005), has a long tradition of outstanding academic research related to Lake Chapala.

Alvaro-Ochoa-portada-2

During his distinguished academic career, Ochoa has contributed articles to dozens of journals and has co-authored Breve Historia de Michoacán (2011) and Cancionero Michoacano 1830-1940, Canciones, Cantos, Pirekuas, Coplas y Corridos (second edition in press).

Alvaro-Ochoa-portada-3

Books of his sole authorship include Los Insurgentes de Mezcala (1985); Viajes de michoacanos al norte (1998); Los agraristas de Atacheo (1989); … Y nos volvemos a encontrar: migración, identidad y tradición cultural (2001); Resplandor de la Tierra Caliente michoacana: paisaje y sociedad en la era colonial (2004); Los Insurrectos de Mezcala y Marcos. Relación crónica de una resistencia en Chapala (2007); La música va a otra parte. Mariache México-USA (2015); Mitote, Fandango y Mariacheros (2018); Afrodescendientes, Sobre Piel Canela (2020); La Ciénega de Chapala. Cuatro textos a flote (2023).

Ochoa’s work related to mariachi gained him a prestigious Vicente Mendoza Award. Ochoa’s superbly illustrated short book (122 pages), Mariachi: diversidad y conextos (Manual del Mariachi, tomo 1) was published in 2023 by the Secretaría de Cultura of the state of Jalisco. And his beautifully written paper—directly connecting Lake Chapala and mariachi—titled “Chapala, otra cuna del mariachi” (Chapala, another cradle of mariachi) was published in the collection Mariachi: práctica musical y construcción de comunidad (El Colegio de Jalisco, 2023).

Ochoa’s books are available via Spanish-language bookstores and online via http://www.libreriacolmich.com/ amazon.com.mx and bookstore sites such as https://www.gandhi.com.mx (tip: search using “Alvaro Ochoa Serrano”)

Note

Though we never met in person, I am greatly indebted to Brigitte Boehm Schondübe, whose very kind words in print helped inspire my own efforts to disseminate a greater understanding of the ecology and history of the Lake Chapala area.

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

Chapter 6 of Lake Chapala: A Postcard History is an English-language account of some of the changes that occurred in the area near Ocotlán during the twentieth century.

Comments, corrections or additional material related to any of the writers and artists featured in our series of mini-bios are welcomed. Please use the comments feature at the bottom of individual posts, or email us.

Prolific American author Robert Lewis Taylor lived in Ajijic in the 1970s

 1950s, 1960s, 1970s  No Responses »
Feb 162023
 

Robert Lewis Taylor (1912-1998) worked as a journalist on the St Louis Post-Dispatch before joining the staff of the New Yorker magazine. He wrote numerous books in a productive literary career which spanned four decades and included a Pulitzer Prize in 1959 for his novel The Travels of Jamie McPheeters, a novel about the travails of a 14-year-old boy and his father during the 1849 California gold rush.Travels cover

Taylor was a frequent visitor to Ajijic from about 1973, and kept a home there (“Casa Sastre”) until at least 1978. Bill Atkinson, a longtime Chapala resident who knew Taylor, once proudly showed me the copy Taylor had given him of his biography of W. C. Fields, with a personal inscription dated 1974.

During his time in Ajijic, Taylor focused on writing books. Interviewed by a journalist in 1978, Taylor, then 65 years old, explained that he preferred research (“digging is such good fun”) to writing, and that he had devoted the past five or six years to writing books:

Every morning I get up at 5:30 a.m. and, oozing pain from every pore, I drink some coffee and then I start writing and keep it up until about 1 p.m. without leaving my desk.

At our home in Ajijic, Mexico (he and his wife also have homes in Connecticut and Florida which they use frequently) I’ve got the housekeeper trained to keep people away from me. She’s marvelous! When she’s there no one gets to see me before I’m through working.”

In the afternoons he relaxed by playing tennis, swimming, lifting barbells and shooting pool.

Adapted for TV, 1963

Adapted for TV, 1963

Robert Lewis Taylor, was born in Carbondale, Illinois on 24 September 1912. After graduating from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign he worked at the Carbondale Herald and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch for three years and had articles published in the Saturday Evening Post and Reader’s Digest. Taylor joined the New Yorker in 1939 and continued to write for the magazine until 1961, even submitting copy during the years he served in the Navy (1942-1946). He married Judith Martin in 1945.

None of Taylor’s writing was specifically about Mexico, though two of his novels do relate to Mexico as it was in the early nineteenth century. A Journey to Matecumbe (1961), the story of a boy on a journey from Illinois to the Florida Keys, was adapted in 1976 as the Disney movie Treasure of Matecumbe. Two Roads to Guadalupe (1964) recounts the adventures of two brothers who served with Alexander Doniphan’s Missouri Volunteers in the Mexican War of 1846-48.

Taylor’s other published books include: Adrift in a Boneyard (1947), Doctor, Lawyer, Merchant, Chief (1948), W.C. Fields: His Follies and Fortunes (1949), The Running Pianist (1950), Winston Churchill: An Informal Study of Greatness (1952), The Bright Sands (1954), Center Ring: The People of the Circus (956), Vessels of Wrath: The Life and Times of Carry Nation (1966), A Roaring in the Wind: Being a History of Alder Gulch, Montana (1977), and Niagara (1980).

His obituary in the New York Times remembered him in his prime “as tall and good-looking, a brilliant comic writer and sharply—some say caustically—witty.”

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

Several chapters of Foreign Footprints in Ajijic: Decades of Change in a Mexican Village offer more details about the history of the literary and artistic community in Ajijic.

Sources

  • Barbara Stewart. 1998. “Robert Lewis Taylor Is Dead, Novelist and Biographer, 88.” (obituary). New York Times, 4 October 1998.
  • Brownsville Herald: 4 November 1976.
  • Contra Costa Times (Walnut Creek): 19 February 1978, 35.
  • Michael Hargraves. 1992. Lake Chapala: A literary survey; plus an historical overview with some personal observations and reflections of this lakeside area of Jalisco, Mexico. Los Angeles: Michael Hargraves.

Comments, corrections or additional material related to any of the writers and artists featured in our series of mini-bios are welcomed. Please use the comments feature at the bottom of individual posts, or email us.

Calvin Tomkins completed his first novel while living at Lake Chapala

 1950s  No Responses »
Feb 022023
 

Calvin Tomkins, who later wrote extensively for Newsweek and the New Yorker, completed his first novel Intermission while staying at Lake Chapala. The autobiographical novel was first published by Viking Press, New York, in 1951. The book is not set at the lake; its locales are Santa Fe, New York and New Jersey. It explores the tricky and sometimes difficult relationships between two brothers, one of whom is the narrator, and one of their oldest friends and his wife.

Tomkins was born in Orange, New Jersey, on 17 December 1925. After graduating from Berkshire School, he served two years in the US Navy, and then completed a degree program at Princeton University in 1948. Still in his early twenties, and newly married with an urge to write, he got lucky: Tomkins’ father, a New Jersey businessman, offered to finance an entire year for him to focus on trying to become a writer. Calvin and his wife rented a place in Santa Fe, and Calvin began drafting the story which turned into Intermission.

After some months in Santa Fe, the young couple decided to visit Mexico where they:

“ended up in a place outside of Guadalajara, at a pretty little inn by Lake Chapala. . . We were there three or four months, and I wrote there, too. It was a kind of Hemingway-esque experience for me. I remember finishing the manuscript there and sending it to my agent. I heard back a few weeks later that it had been accepted by Viking Press!”

Tomkins - IntermissionOn their return to the US, Tomkins struggled to write a second novel, but did get several short stories published. To make ends meet, he became a journalist, working first for Radio Free Europe (1953-1957) and then Newsweek. He had a freelance contribution to the New Yorker accepted in 1958, and joined the magazine two years later as a staff writer. In addition to short stories and humor pieces, he branched out into nonfiction. Over two decades, he focused on chronicling the rapidly evolving New York City art scene. He was the New Yorker’s official art critic in the early 1980s, and responsible for hundreds of art reviews and profiles for the magazine’s “Art World” column.

Besides Intermission, Tomkins’ major published works include: The bride & the bachelors: the heretical courtship in modern art (1965); The Lewis and Clark Trail (1965); The world of Marcel Duchamp (1966); Eric Hoffer: An American Odyssey (1969); Merchants and Masterpieces: The Story of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1970); Living Well Is the Best Revenge: The Life of Gerald and Sara Murphy (1971); The Scene: Reports on Post-Modern Art (1976); Off the Wall : A Portrait of Robert Rauschenberg (1980); Marcel Duchamp: The Afternoon Interviews (2013); and The Lives of Artists (2019).

In retirement, Tomkins donated his papers to the Museum of Modern Art and his art-book archive to the Redwood Library and Athenaeum in Newport, Rhode Island.

Acknowledgment

My sincere thanks to artist Peter Holden for bringing Calvin Tomkins’ important link to Lake Chapala to my attention.

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

To learn more about the literary history of Lake Chapala, see the relevant chapters of Foreign Footprints in Ajijic: Decades of Change in a Mexican Village.

The Lake Chapala-Santa Fe literary-art nexus has had many distinguished members over the years, including D. H. Lawrence,  Witter Bynner, “Spud” Johnson, Betty Binkley, Josefa (the “mother of Mexican fashion design”), Jorge Fick, Clinton King and his (first) wife Lady Twysden, Clark Hulings, John Liggett Meigs, Alfred Rogoway, Don Shaw, photographer Ernest Walter Knee, poet and painter John Brandi, musicologist Charles Bogert, Bob Hunt, Arthur Davison Ficke and Gladys Brown Ficke. Instrumental in fomenting the links in the 1940s was Santa Fe journalist Brian Ború Dunne.

Sources

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

How history progresses: Antonio de Alba and “Chapala”

 1950s  No Responses »
Dec 222022
 

As explained in a previous post, my on-going fascination with the history of Lake Chapala was stimulated, in part, by the chance discovery many years ago of a copy of Antonio de Alba‘s 1954 book, Chapala.

Antonio de Alba. Chapala, p 115

Antonio de Alba. Chapala, p 115 (Click to enlarge)

The online claim (made only a few years ago) that Chapala is “the most accurate book to date about the local history” may have been true many decades ago, but has certainly not been true since the turn of this century.

The focus of my personal interest has been on when, how and why Chapala first became a center for international tourists. The ‘when’ is the easy part, given that the town’s first major hotel, the Hotel Arzapalo, opened its doors in 1898. The ‘how’ and ‘why’ are trickier to answer, and have led me down innumerable ‘rabbit holes’ related to the lives of early foreign settlers in Chapala.

What has emerged from years of research, and new online friendships with the descendants of many of these early settlers, is that the story of Lake Chapala is far more complex (and interesting) than I had ever imagined. Many of the details in de Alba’s account of the “principal promoters of tourism in Chapala” (page 115) need to be reconsidered, and in some cases rejected.

Please note that I am not, by publishing this critique, trying to disparage or discredit Antonio de Alba, his research or his book. On the contrary, it was his book that got me started down this road! But, like all accounts of history, over time new facts come to light, alternative interpretations are proposed—some of which become accepted—and a new, revised (and hopefully more accurate) version of the story is developed.

Let’s take a close look at de Alba’s account of the principal promoters of tourism in Chapala. It did not take me long to realize that ‘Séptimo Crow’ was Septimus Crowe (with an ‘e’ at the end), who was, as de Alba stated, of English origin, though he was actually born in northern Norway, where his father had a massive copper mine. It took me a lot longer to realize that the “Mr. Leonel Garden,” who built Villa Tlalocan, was Mr (later Sir) Lionel Carden (with a ‘C’), and even longer before I identified ‘Sr. D. Carlos Eissman” as Karl (Carlos) Eisenmann. Once I had their real names, it was relatively easy to find out a lot more about these individuals and their lives, and their connections to Chapala.

It turned out that Septimus Crowe, for example, had abandoned his wife and young son in Europe when he moved to Mexico. His son was informed that his father had died, and never lived to learn the truth; members of the succeeding generation were totally astonished to find a brief reference in one of my articles about Septimus’ life in Mexico.

De Alba writes that Crowe arrived in about 1895. While I can’t prove precisely when the eccentric Mr Crowe first came to Chapala, it was certainly several years earlier than that, as I have pointed out repeatedly over the past two decades. This is known because there is a clear reference to Crowe by Mexican diplomat-author Eduardo A. Gibbon in a book published in 1893. Gibbon’s account refers both to Crowe having built a “very lovely estate that can be seen from the lake on a hill, a quarter of a league from the village of Chapala” (now the site of Hotel Montecarlo) and to Crowe having “stimulated others to build holiday homes and with them give life and civilization to this very beautiful region.”

In the past several years, as I delved ever deeper into the lives of Crowe and others, I have been able to prove that Crowe built all the three houses mentioned by de Alba (Villa Montecarlo, Villa Bell, Villa Josefina), though not in the order he suggested. Before he built Villa Bell, Crowe had built Casa Albión, renamed Villa Josefina after it was bought by American-born beer magnate Joseph Maximilian Schnaider.

In the case of Villa Tlalocan, de Alba is correct that the house was built in about 1896: construction began in 1895 and the Cardens were able to move in the following year, in time to invite President Díaz for breakfast one morning in early November. De Alba is also correct that Carden sold Villa Tlalocan to Carlos Eisenmann. However, de Alba’s claims that the house was then bought by Manuel Cuesta Gallardo ‘after Eisenmann’s death’, and that the new owner built a home there intended as a gift for President Díaz, which the President never received because the Mexican Revolution broke out (1910), are inaccurate.

First, I have never found any contemporary newspaper accounts supporting the idea that Manuel Cuesta Gallardo built any home intended for President Díaz. There are, though, several references to a home being prepared for the President by his inlaws at El Manglar. Secondly, Eisenmann died in 1920 (in Germany), three years after Manuel Cuesta Gallardo had already transferred the title of Villa Tlalocan to a younger sister.

I repeat—for those who have read this far—that none of this post is intended in any way to disparage Antonio de Alba, his research or his book. It was my chance find of Chapala back in the 1980s that led me to become so passionate about exploring the history of how the small fishing village of Chapala became such an important international tourist destination.

Reading the book

Copies of Chapala, which has never been reprinted, are difficult to find. Fortunately for readers, Javier Raygoza Munguía, the publisher of the weekly PÁGINA Que sí se lee! has uploaded the entire text as a series of digital files which can be accessed via the link.

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

Several chapters of If Walls Could Talk: Chapala’s Historic Buildings and Their Former Occupants – available in Spanish as Si las paredes hablaran: Edificios históricos de Chapala y sus antiguos ocupantes – offer more details about the history of Chapala.

Sources and references

  • Antonio de Alba. 1954. Chapala. Guadalajara: Banco Industrial de Jalisco.
  • Eduardo A Gibbon. 1893. Guadalajara, (La Florencia Mexicana). El salto de Juanacatlán y El Mar Chapálico. 1992 reprint Guadalajara: Presidencia Municipal de Guadalajara.

Comments, corrections or additional material related to any of the writers and artists featured in our series of mini-bios are welcomed. Please use the comments feature at the bottom of individual posts, or email us.

Post-1970 studies of the Ajijic retirement community

 1970s, 1980s, 1990s onwards  No Responses »
Dec 082022
 

By the 1970s the Ajijic retirement community was sufficiently established that it attracted academic attention. The earliest study, never formally published, was by Dr Edwin G Flittie, a professor of sociology at the University of Wyoming. Flittie visited in 1973 and subsequently presented copies of “Retirement in the Sun,” his analysis of the retirement community, to the Lake Chapala Society Library. Like several later studies of foreign migrants, Flittie considered the Chapala-Ajijic region as a single unit, and not as two communities with their distinct histories as regards tourism and retirement. Flittie interviewed more than 100 retirees and found that many had failed to appreciate the substantial cultural differences between the US and Mexico, or recognized that the emphasis for many local residents was “not on material gain but rather on the attainment of a satisfying existence traditionally based upon agrarian economic self-sufficiency.”

Flittie estimated that about 60% of retirees were aged 60 to 74, and 14% were 75 or older. Very few were fluent in Spanish and 88% reported that their social life centered on fellow expatriates and other English-speaking individuals. Flittie found that most retirees lived much as they would have lived in the US. The main problems they faced were related to excessive drinking, marital and family discord (men adapted better than women), boredom, bribery, interactions with the local community, domestic help and old age. Flittie returned briefly in December 1977 to research the impacts of the massive 1976 devaluation of the peso from 12.5 pesos to a dollar to about 22.5 pesos to a dollar.

Juan José Medeles Romero, in his 1975 thesis proposing an urban development plan for Ajijic, detailed how the village had approximately tripled in size between 1900 and 1950, and then doubled in size the following decade. And this was even before the addition of numerous subdivisions such as Rancho del Oro and La Floresta. Curiously, Medeles ignored the impacts of foreigners and only mentioned them in passing.

academic-studies-titles

A few years later, Mexican sociologist Francisco Talavera Salgado focused solely on Ajijic when, in Lago Chapala, turismo residencial y campesinado, he examined the varied impacts of foreign residents on the local community. His important findings are described in detail in several chapters of Foreign Footprints.

At the end of the 1970s anthropologist Eleanore Moran Stokes also homed in on Ajijic. She divided the evolution of the village after ‘Discovery’ into three phases: Founder (1940s to mid 1950s), Expansionary (mid 1950s to mid 1970s) and Established Colony (mid 1970s through the 1980s).

Several of her informants considered the representation of Ajijic in the Dane Chandos novels (Founder phase) to be non-fiction; to Stokes, this was “the local equivalent to a creation myth.” The nature of migrants changed in each stage. During the Founder phase, Ajijic served, in her view, largely as an artists’ colony. These “young single well-traveled” artists were resourceful and independent individuals who had little impact on the village beyond the employment of domestic help; most of them learned the language, liked the cuisine, and blended into the local community.

Later (Expansionary phase) arrivals tended to be members of the affluent and retired middle class, many of whom had traveled widely, either in the military or working for international corporations. These newer arrivals did materially change the village. By infusing cash into the local economy and starting businesses they created “a new wage labor class in the village.” By upgrading village homes they distinguished their residences from those of local families. By retaining their language, food and lifestyle preferences, these incomers established a social distance from their host community, even forming “privileged associations for recreation, friendship and religion.” In essence, many of these migrants wanted to make many aspects of life in Ajijic more like the US.

Such tendencies continued into the Established Colony phase. Vacant houses became increasingly scarce and agricultural land was parceled for vacation and retirement homes. The foreign community greatly boosted philanthropic activities, especially those helping children, though this stage also saw a marked social stratification develop within the foreign community.

Stokes estimated that foreigners occupied about 300 of the 950 houses in the village in 1979, but comprised less than 8% of the population. Like Talavera, she viewed retirees as agents of change, not merely spectators of ongoing social processes, though they felt a sense of powerlessness in regards to what they saw as deficiencies in the provision of such services as water, electricity, telephone, garbage collection and police.

Sociologist Charlotte Wolf, who moved to Ajijic with husband Rene in the early 1990s, was interested in how individual retirees adapted and constructed a new life for themselves in Ajijic.

Among the conclusions in 1997 of Lorena Melton Young Otero, who looked specifically at US retirees, was that they created new jobs, donated to charities and hastened “modernization,” but that their presence was driving up the cost of living for local people. In a later paper, she examined in detail the mourning ritual and other customs in Ajijic following the death of a child (angelito).

The evolutionary framework developed by Stokes was used by geographer David Truly to examine how the type of migrant has changed over the years and to develop a matrix of retirement migration behavior. Like Stokes, Truly concluded in 2002 that newer visitors (including retirees), and unlike earlier migrants, had less desire to adapt to the local culture and were more keen on ‘importing a lifestyle’ to the area.

Stephen Banks, author of Kokio: A Novel Based on the Life of Neill James, conducted dozens of interviews to study the identity narratives of retirees while living in Ajijic in 2002-2003. All respondents depicted Mexicans, both generally and individually, as “happy, warm and friendly, polite and courteous, helpful and resourceful.” However, at the same time, many shared instances in which they thought Mexicans had been untrustworthy, inaccessible, lazy and incompetent. Banks concluded that the responses revealed:

a struggle to conserve cultural identities in the face of a resistant host culture that has been colonized…. The Lakeside economy is dominated by expatriate consumer demand; indigenous commerce in fishing has disappeared as new employment opportunities opened up in the services sector; local prices for real estate (routinely listed in US dollars), restaurant dining, hotel lodging and most consumer goods are higher than in comparable non-retirement areas; traditional Mexican community life centered around the family has been supplemented, and in some cases supplanted, by expatriate community life centered around public assistance and volunteer programs… and the uniform use of Spanish in public life is displaced by the use of English.”

Lucía González Terreros is the lead author of two recent papers that explore the complexity of defining residential tourism and how alternative definitions relate to property rights, transaction costs and common goods. The research arose from her personal concerns about the rapid increase in the number of foreigners in Ajijic since 1990.

Equally interesting is the work of Francisco Díaz Copado, who looked at how Ajijic is being shaped by both local and foreign “rituals,” such as the annual Fiesta of San Andrés and the Chili Cookoff respectively. In his 2013 report, Díaz Copado also examined “the different ways in which people describe and name the different zones of Ajijic… [which] reflect some historical conflicts.” Two annotated maps sharply contrast traditional locations and names with those used by retirees.

Marisa Raditsch investigated the impacts of international migrants settling in the municipality of Chapala “based on the perceptions of Mexican people in the receiving context.” This 2015 study found that these perceptions tended “to be favorable in terms of generating employment and contributing to the community; and unfavorable in terms of rising costs of living and some changes in local culture.”

Social anthropologist Vaira Avota, writing in 2016, also looked at the relations between foreigners and locals in Ajijic. She drew a sharp distinction between “traditional immigrants,” who wanted to truly understand Mexico’s culture, traditions,… [learn] Spanish and willingly participate in local activities,” and “new immigrants,” who wanted to live in a version of the US transplanted to Lake Chapala.

The impacts of this shift in migrant type were further explored by Mexican researcher Mariana Ceja Bojorge, who focused squarely on the relationships and interactions between local Ajijitecos and foreigners. She concluded in 2021 that the shift “endangers the acceptance of the presence of the other” and that “Although the presence of foreigners has generated economic well-being in the area, it has also been responsible for the reconfiguration of space, where locals have been forced to leave their territory.”

This is a lightly edited excerpt from the concluding chapter of Foreign Footprints in Ajijic: Decades of Change in a Mexican Village, which offers a comprehensive history of Ajijic including full bibliographic details of all the studies mentioned.

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

Comments, corrections or additional material related to any of the writers and artists featured in our series of mini-bios are welcomed. Please use the comments feature at the bottom of individual posts, or email us.

Antonio de Alba and his landmark 1954 book “Chapala”

 1950s  2 Responses »
Nov 242022
 

Among the chance events back in the 1980s that stimulated my curiosity about the history of Chapala was finding a book titled Chapala in a used bookstore in Ajijic. While the bookstore lasted only a few months, Chapala has been in a pride of place on my book shelves ever since.

Antonio de Alba. Chapala (1954)

Written by Antonio de Alba, Chapala was published by the Banco Industrial de Jalisco in 1954 in an edition of 2000 copies. The 177-page book was published as de Alba was nearing the end of more than two decades of service as parish priest of Chapala.

Chapala is an impressive achievement for its time, and the earliest book to be devoted to a single town or village at Lake Chapala. The first book-length histories of other settlements—including Ocotlán, Jocotepec, Ajijic, Tizapán el Alto and La Palma—all came many years later.

Antonio Guadalupe de Alba was born on 12 December (Day of the Virgin of Guadalupe) 1900 in San Juan de los Lagos. Antonio was several months shy of his third birthday when he lost his father, Jesús Alba Alba (1856-1903), and was raised by his mother, Lucía Rodríguez Murguía de Alba (born in 1859), who died in Chapala in 1946.

Antonio de Alba served as parish priest in Chapala from 1937 to 1954. His initial appointment was not without its critics; a group of parishioners wrote to the Archbishop supporting an alternative candidate. De Alba quickly demonstrated his ability to unite the faithful and gain their respect. Shortly after arriving in Chapala (from Cocula), he helped lead the effort to build a chapel to Our Lady of Lourdes (Nuestra Señora de Lourdes) on the hillside above the Villa Montecarlo. The first stone of this chapel was laid on 18 March 1940 and the dedication service was held on 14 August 1941.

Throughout his time in Chapala, de Alba was held in high regard by his parishioners. In April 1954, de Alba was appointed Canon of the Collegiate Church of San Juan de los Lagos. He died in León, Guanajuato, on 25 December 1958.

De Alba explains in the preface to Chapala that his own interest in the town’s history had been prompted by meeting José Ramírez Flores, the author of an article titled “Chapala y su curato hasta el Siglo XVIII” in the first issue of Estudios Históricos (a Guadalajara-based magazine). In response to some queries from Ramírez, de Alba began to explore the parish archive for answers:

I discovered treasures of true greatness, hidden under the dust of the years and the carelessness of our Mexican character (which does not know how to judge the greatness of our heroes, and is not accustomed to recounting their feats).”

De Alba then devoted a lot of his time to finding and collating historical material. Though he openly acknowledges in his book that he was not a historian and did not write like a historian, he explains that he felt compelled to share “what I had discovered, which is unknown to most people.”

He singled out the need to preserve the memory of clerics, such as Friar Miguel de Bolonia who lived his final years in Chapala, and of the “heroism of our aboriginal Indians, as well as the fine nobility of almost all the Spaniards who conquered these lands and stayed here”, as well as of the “many beautiful and very honorable events in our history, such as the great actions of our local insurgents and the defense of the Island of Mezcala.”

The early chapters of Chapala are based on excerpts from, and summaries of, the early accounts of the region written by Franciscan chroniclers such as friars Antonio Tello, Antonio de Ciudad Real and others, combined with the more formal syntheses written by historians of Jalisco.

De Alba acknowledges that the second part of the book, which focuses on the twentieth century history of the town, is “taken from tradition or personal knowledge.” Some of “the interesting and instructive news related to our town” that de Alba includes is based on the recollections of some older members of his parish. These recollections, which pertain to memories from half a century earlier, are neither comprehensive in coverage nor, with the benefit of hindsight, entirely accurate.

I am quite certain, after reading and rereading de Alba, that he never intended Chapala to be the final word on the town’s history. He acknowledged its limitations but wanted to share the findings of his research, not compile a formal, comprehensive, historical account.

It is unfortunate, therefore, that so many later writers have relied almost exclusively on de Alba’s writing. Tracing the origins of what I’ve come to call the “modern myths” of Chapala’s history—such as President Díaz spending Holy Week there every year from 1904 to 1909—has led me time and time again back to Chapala. The claim about President Díaz, for example, stems from a single sentence (page 117) which we now know is not supported by contemporaneous documents.

In a separate post – How history progresses: Antonio de Alba and “Chapala”  – I clarify and correct statements made on one particular page of Chapala, in the hope that this will offer some small but significant steps towards a revised history of the town.

For its time, Antonio de Alba’s book is a true tour-de-force, and an invaluable source and inspiration for later authors, including myself. I have the highest esteem for both Antonio de Alba and Chapala. However, this does not mean that everything he wrote should be accepted uncritically and without comment or, where possible, correction. And I am hopeful that this is precisely what future authors and researchers will do in relation to my own work.

Reading the book

Chapala has never been reprinted, and copies are difficult to find. Fortunately for readers, Javier Raygoza Munguía, the publisher of the weekly PÁGINA Que sí se lee! has uploaded the entire text as a series of digital files (access via link).

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

Several chapters of If Walls Could Talk: Chapala’s Historic Buildings and Their Former Occupants – available in Spanish as Si las paredes hablaran: Edificios históricos de Chapala y sus antiguos ocupantes – offer more details about the history of Chapala.

Sources

  • Antonio de Alba. 1954. Chapala. Guadalajara: Banco Industrial de Jalisco.
  • Peter Bello, personal communications via FB, November 2022.
  • Luis Enrique Orozco. 1958. Nuestra Señora de Lourdes de Chapala. Reseña histórica ordenada por el Sr. Cura D. Raúl Navarro… Guadalajara.

Comments, corrections or additional material related to any of the writers and artists featured in our series of mini-bios are welcomed. Please use the comments feature at the bottom of individual posts, or email us.

Norman D Ford on how Ajijic changed between 1950 and 1970

 1960s, 1970s  No Responses »
Nov 102022
 

Inveterate world traveler Norman D Ford (1921-2009) described Lake Chapala and Ajijic in several of his books, including in Bargain Paradises of the World (1952). By 1970, he had decided that Lake Chapala was “no longer the cheapest place in Mexico. Since 1950, about 1,500 American couples have moved into its two dreamy villages of Chapala and Ajijic. Prices have inevitably risen. But building costs still average only $4 per square foot, and you can hire a maid for $12 or a cook for $16 a month.”

“You can have a modern home built for under $5,000…. For two, you can budget about $70 for food and $30 for utilities and your maid per month. The rest is for high living–golf, riding or swimming by day, followed by some of the most fabulous parties on this continent.”

Ford was born in the UK on 8 January 1921, the only child of Frederick William John Matthew and Jessie Shortland Ford. He grew up in Wales, and became a lifelong adventurer, especially keen on cycling, hiking and kayaking. During six years service as a radio operator in the Merchant Navy during the second world war, Ford traveled as far as the U.S., Sri Lanka and New Zealand.

Ford-cover

A few days after the war ended, Ford declared himself president of the Globetrotters Club, a then loose-knit organization which produced “a monthly newsletter describing how to travel the world at rock bottom cost, plus a list of other members.” This helped popularize low budget adventure travel to all manner of unlikely destinations.

In early 1947 he moved permanently to the US where he worked as an editor and began to write travel and retirement books, starting with Where to Retire on a Small Income (1950). The success of this book, and several later books, enabled Ford to quit his day job, move to Florida, and focus on freelance writing. By 1980 travel writing had become increasingly competitive, so Ford moved to Boulder, Colorado, and switched to writing popular books about health issues. He spent the last years of his life in Kerville, Texas, where he died on 19 June 2009 at the age of 88.

Ford wrote a more detailed account of Ajijic in Fabulous Mexico where everything costs less. The following excerpts are from the 10th edition (1970).

AJIJIC. Alt 5,030′, pop 3,500. An ancient Tarascan fishing village, Ajijic nestles on the lush shores of Lake Chapala beneath a steep, green and aesthetically contoured mountain range…. You notice the neat, trim plaza with its well painted bandstand, the picturesque fishing nets strung along the shore. What lies behind those bare adobe walls? Inside are white patios lush with flowers, well equipped art studios and the comfortable homes and apartments of Ajijic’s 300 permanent American residents.”

Ford summarizes how foreigners ‘discovered’ Ajijic and began to change it:

Years ago, a retired British engineer seeking a Utopia discovered this garden spot and built himself an impressive lakeshore home fronted by an acre of color-splashed blooms. After World War II, veterans studying in Guadalajara found they could live well here on their G.I. Bill payments. Artists moved in, led by several well known modern painters. Several writers and musicians followed together with a group of enterprising ladies who reorganized Ajijic’s dwindling handlooms crafts into a thriving industry. With a few exceptions, this group still forms Ajijic’s Old Guard. Getting in early, they bought up the choicest lots and homes, secured long term leases on the lowest rentals and today, most of these old timers offer outstanding examples of the way in which the good life can be enjoyed in Mexico on little.”

Ford explains that while some of these incomers were still paying “fantastically low rents” [$7.50 to $15.00 a month] “and living well on very small budgets,” some were “constructing lavish homes costing up to $14,000 and $15,000. New homes are sprouting all around the village and to the west, ultra modern homes are studding a new hillside subdivision.”

He concluded that “Ajijic today is a slightly raffish, slightly bohemian rustic village where retirees outnumber the artists five to one.” The foreign community was changing: “Ajijic is still no place for suburban conformists but neither is its nonconformity disquieting. Drinks and gossip are still favorite pastimes but criticism today centers on the unstable electricity, the water supply which sometimes runs dry in May, and the water hyacinths which clog the lake rather than on eccentric people.”

Besides writing about Mexico, Ford wrote dozens of other books, including Florida: A Complete Guide to Finding What You Seek in Florida (1953); How to travel without being rich (1955); America’s 50 best cities in which to live, work, and retire (1956); America by car : planned routings to all that’s worth seeing (1957); Where to retire on a small income (1966); Good night : the easy and natural way to sleep the whole night through (1983); Keep on pedaling : the complete guide to adult bicycling (1990); 50 Healthiest Places to Live & Retire in the United States (1991); The sleep Rx: 75 proven ways to get a good night’s sleep (1994); and Natural remedies: techniques for preventing headaches and the common cold (1994).

When Ford looked back on his varied experiences on several continents, including cycling trips in 38 countries, he concluded that:

travel half a century ago was much more rewarding and much more fun…. Overall, the world was much safer then with far less risk of being robbed or mugged. In fact, every year since 1945 I’ve witnessed a world-wide deterioration in the quality of life and the quality of the travel experience. Each year, more Coca-Cola signs appear and almost every country is rapidly losing its national character while it fuses into a faceless industrial monoculture.”

That is so true! The world has changed, and is continuing to change, though not always for the better.
Foreign Footprints in Ajijic: Decades of Change in a Mexican Village (2022) explains the changes that have taken place in Ajijic since 1940 in far more detail.

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Sources

Comments, corrections or additional material related to any of the writers and artists featured in our series of mini-bios are welcomed. Please use the comments feature at the bottom of individual posts, or email us.

Californian journalist Vida Shepard spent several winters at Lake Chapala in the mid-1950s

 1950s  No Responses »
Jun 302022
 

Vida Hills Shepard (1885-1972) was a journalist who spent several winters in Chapala in the mid-1950s. Shepard was a regular columnist for The Chico Enterprise-Record in California, and several of her columns make reference to her multiple visits to Chapala.

Vida Shepard, 1955

She first visited in late 1954, writing in an early column how she had rented a cottage in the Nido Hotel. The cottage had windows that overlooked a pleasant patio. Though the cottage had no kitchen, the hotel offered to provide three meals a day for 50 pesos ($4). Shepard remarked that the garden was enlivened by the antics of a parrot—“Sra Nido’s best loved pet”—and two mockingbirds in cages. Shepard encouraged readers to consider visiting Chapala, and rent one of the “numerous homes rented by La Señora Nido, who has owned a large slice of the town since her husband’s death four years ago.” (In fact, Ramón Nido had died in 1945, fully a decade before Shepard’s visit.)

In her column the following week, Shepard explained that Chapala had no TV reception, very few radios, and only limited phone service, with the hotel having one of the very few lines available. She also commented on the corncobs used as fuel for most water heaters (“except for the very new ones”), saying that it was a very inexpensive method since a “huge gunny sack of corncobs costs about 16 cents and lasts a few months.”

When Shepard returned to Lake Chapala the following winter, this time renting accommodation in Ajijic, she first had a few days in Guadalajara, where she enjoyed “a very good lunch in the Ajijic restaurant in Hotel Guadalajara.” This is the first and only reference I have ever seen to an “Ajijic restaurant” in the big city.

Her column the following week is about visiting Neill James at her home, Quinta Tzintzuntzan, in Ajijic. Shepard opens by quoting an inscription—“Little by little, drop by drop, one can empty the sea”—carved on one of the hand-hewn beams of the living room ceiling, which “could well be the inspiration which, little by little, has brought this remarkable woman health, a sound business and such contentment in Mexico that she feels no compulsion to leave her picturesque village, Ajijic.”

Other beams were carved with designs from “Aztec codices”, and one had an inscription in Spanish reading “The pen is the tongue of the soul.” Shepard summarized James’ early business enterprises (embroidery and weaving) before focusing on her silkworm operation, claiming that each year James “has a new dress for her traditional Christmas egg-nog party made from threads spun by her own silk worms.” Shepard was charmed by the verdant orchard around James’ home, especially its “15 varieties of bananas” and the massed “scarlet flowers” of “an espaliered poinsettia.”

The following year (1956), when Shepard was staying at Lake Chapala, she described how she had taken visiting friends to explore Ajijic, where they met ‘Stephen.’ Stephen turned out to be the son of artist Alfred Rogoway, and persuaded them to walk with him to the gallery where his father’s works were on show. They arrived to find that Stephen’s mother was busy cooking supper there: the gallery-restaurant had only opened the previous day.

Shepard had a short story, “The Merry-Go-Round,” published in Mexican Life in 1957. The merry-go-round apparently never works properly, and its owner is constantly tinkering with the machinery in a valiant and never-ending effort to get it to work as intended. Shepard had previously co-authored a cook book with Mary Dunbar Lemcke titled Four ‘n Twenty Blackbirds: A Book on Game Cookery With Other Recipes Based Upon Products of Northern California (1949).

In 1958, Shepard apparently spent the summer rainy season in Chapala. In a column written several years later she recalled having watched a dramatic thunderstorm in Chapala from the front porch of a house near Villa Lourdes which “a group of UFO hunters had rented.”

Like so many other visitors in the 1950s, Vida Shepard was clearly captivated by what she found. Her personal accounts of staying at Lake Chapala only serve to show just how much the area has changed since.

Sources

  • The Chico Enterprise-Record (Chico, California) 7 Jan 1955, 6; 15 Jan 1955, 4; 13 Sep 1955, 10; 28 Nov 1955, 10; 5 Dec 1955, 10; 3 March 1956, 5; 2 Jan 1958.
  • Vida Shepard. 1957. “The Merry-Go-Round.” Mexican Life, October 1957.

Comments, corrections or additional material related to any of the writers and artists featured in our series of mini-bios are welcomed. Please use the comments feature at the bottom of individual posts, or email us.

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