A haphazard chronicle of my inevitable misadventures during a year in Vietnam and points east.

p.s. I'll be pitifully grateful if you send me email during my exile: TravelerKaty@hotmail.com

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Day 3 - Part 2 - Cholula
2/13/06

After yet another abortive attempt to get the cell phone situation taken care of (which at least didn't include walking 12 blocks and happening upon some mysterious prison or nuthouse or something like the evening before), we caught a taxi to the nearby small town of Cholula with a delightful toothless (two-toothed, actually) who charged us just $7 for the trip. This was quite a victory, as the bus was to be $4 each on top of the $3.50 to get to the bus station. Bargains are always so satisfying. Plus he was somewhat informative -- there are, according to the two-toothed cabbie, 55 colleges and universities and 75 churches in Puebla. Since I don't fact check, you'll have to take his word as truth.

Cholula is an attractive town in the colonial style about 10 miles from Puebla, whose major tourist draw is its pyramid, the largest in the world by volume, though now covered with earth and garnished with a picture-perfect church on top. The fact that this late 16th century Catholic church, Nuestra Senora de Los Remedios, crowns an ancient pyramid to Quetzalcoatl is emblematic of the bloody conquest of Mexico by Cortes in general, and Cholula's pivotal part in it. According to our later driver Ruben (cabbies are the source of all my Mexican historical knowledge -- you've now been warned, so don't blame me if you later find out these stories are all ludicrous lies made up to amuse the tourists) in 1519 Cortes sought a meeting with the rulers and officials of Cholula, the 2nd largest city in the Aztec empire, and other area dignitaries. From Tlaxcala, where he had cut a deal with the local government due to their ongoing battles with the Aztecs (the Cholulans had sided with the Aztecs on this front, causing no little friction between the two neighbors), Cortés gathered an army of Spanish and Tlaxcaltecan soldiers and traveled to Cholula with the expressed intention of convincing the Cholulans to join him in his proposed attack on the capital city of the Aztecs, Tenochtitlan.

One version of the story goes that the Cholulans, not at all enthused about the idea, sent a messenger to Montezuma asking for the OK on a plan to kill all the Spaniards at the meeting. Montezuma said sure, knock yourselves out, and they began to develop a plan to surround the palace where all the Spanish were headquartered in Cholula. In this version, Cortes' native girlfriend/translator La Malintzin heard of the plan through from a gossippy dignitary's wife, and Cortes took steps. He called the Cholulan nobles into the Palace for a meeting where the Spanish proceeded to massacre them all and set fire to the city. At the same time the Tlaxcaltecas, surrounding the city, entered and attacked, killing between 15,000 and 30,000 people.

This was not, however, our driver Ruben's version. His version was that the Cholulans were always acting in good faith, and that the evil Cortes totally screwed them over and perpetrated one of the worst massacres of Mexican History. I would recommend reading a more scholarly account of this episode if you wish to know the real story.

In any event, Cortes , his troops and the Tlaxcalans did indeed ambush and massacre the Cholulans, and it was pretty much the end of Cholula's centuries of dominance in the region. And more than that, it was a real turning point in the conquest of Mexico -- with the remaining Cholulans and the Tlaxcaltecas, the Spanish were eventually able to defeat the Aztecs at Tenochtitlan. As for the fate of Cholula, which was previously a city of (possibly) 100,000 citizens with 365 temples, what wasn't destroyed in the battle and fires in 1519 was transformed by the new Spanish rulers. Cortes vowed that each of the temples would razed and replaced by Christian churches, and they did make significant headway on that project - there are an estimated 280 churches in the town.

The pyramid, which dominates the landscape, was left alone, possibly because it was already covered with earth and the Spanish thought it was an extremely symmetrical hill. The lovely church atop the pyramid was built in 1594 and rebuilt after the 1864 earthquake, and starting in 1931 archaeologists began excavating underneath, clearing 8 km of tunnels and discovering 7 pyramid tiers and large-scale murals, including one I really wish I had seen, the Mural of the Drinkers featuring a hundred anthropomorphic creatures worshipping the god of pulque, a revolting fermented cactus drink.

Our two-toothed cabbie dropped us off at the entrance to the tunnels, where we were suckered into paying the $3 entrance fee that entitled tourists to take the partially underground route to the top. As we later learned, you could hike to the summit from town for free, but I'm actually glad we did it the dark way, much as I loathe tunnels, caves and underground spaces of all kinds. They had excavated parts of the hill underneath, showing the very interesting pyramid structure which, if still intact, would have scared the bejesus out of me to climb. Very steep, very uneven. The other benefit was that there was a vendor lurking outside the tunnel exit, poised to take advantage of tourists weakened by vacation-craft-buying syndrome. His local scenes, hand-made with dyed straw, were cute and different, so his first sale of the day was quite lucrative. All four of us bought something. At least it would be easier to pack these than those damned Talavera dishes, which were already creating problems in our collective luggage. Thank Quetzalcoatl I opted to use Mom's giant expandable suitcase. Although I was ridiculed by A and D with their perfectly packed little stewardess bags, my technique of toseverythingverthing without editing and leaving space for shopping would serve us all in the end. If I would actually fold competently, I could probably fit a whole set of dishes and most of Mom's 17 pairs of shoes as well.

Our timing in reaching the church of Nuestra Senora de los Remedios was serendipitous. We had ten minutes of virtual solitude to wander the perimeter and take pictures of the church itself, the valley surrounding, and the two massive volcanoes on either side, then all hell (heaven?) broke loose as the bells started clanging and a horde of celebrants, young and old, began to arrive, each heaving a sign of exhaustion as they summitted. The various members of a band straggled by, followed by two groups of very tired young men carrying the stars of the show, an elaborately carved wood and glass box for the Virgin, and an even larger statue of Jesus perched on an impressive (and seemingly very heavy) platform for easy transportation.

Though we didn't learn all the details of this mini-festival, we did determine that it was a semi-regular event, in which on February 13 the box for the Virgin is brought in procession to the top of the pyramid, where music, mass, and lots of soft drinks and chit-chat on the plaza would follow. Her next step would be in the afternoon, when the Virgin would be loaded into the box and the procession would head down the hill to another Cholula church, marchers alongside carrying miniature versions decorated like tiny wedding cakes, and her arrival commemorated by another slew of fireworks. The point of this exercise was a bit lost on me as a semi-heathenish lapsed Protestant, but it seems that any excuse for a festival is enthusiastically embraced in Cholula -- it may be a small town, but it certainly is not a quiet one. Firecrackers are exploded in great numbers almost daily, religious parades snake through the Zocalo, Virgins are delivered and returned, and a grand time is had by the the Cholulans.

In fact, we were able to enjoy the extravaganza twice. While enjoying our usual afternoon Frappe' at the Italian Coffee Company (all is forgiven) in a lovely arched arcade on the main square, the whole parade marched by, with the addition of an excellent gold-uniformed band with amplified violins and scores of well-dressed teens carrying balloons, flowers, and mini-Virgins. And they didn't just parade through the square, oh no. We saw them heading down the street followed by an ambulance that I feel sure was there to pick up that tuba player who looked like he was having a coronary as he heaved himself onto the church plaza that morning. Just as we thought they had passed by, however, the waiters of all the open-air arcade restaurants emerged from their lairs at warp speed, moving tables to the left and right in a highly professional and yet long-suffering manner, making way for the Virgin and her companions. I fear this wasn't the first procession through the outdoor dining areas that week. For us, of course, it was terrific.













And as usual, a few more pictures of Cholula:


posted by Katy at 10:06 AM