Mexico, Tenancingo Degollado, : Tlaxco, Tlaxcala

We traveled northeast using the route through Mexico City and Texcoco, a town north of the DF. Texcoco was the large lake that once surrounded the Aztec city of Tenochitlan. The lake is now a shadow of its former self reduced by repeated drainings by the Spanish conquistadors to a myriad of stagnant pools speckling this moist flat tundra like zone. We passed the fresh bones of the now canceled airport of Texcoco. In the distance some cement columns like modern ruins were visible.

This airport was a doomed dream of a group of investors including politicians and Carlos Slim, who for a while was the richest man in the world. The Airport in Texcoco should never have been approved less begun. It was a very serious mistake, whose cancellation prevented a major ecological disaster, also a severe population explosion in the Eastern Zone of the Valley of Mexico, and the overexploitation of scarce resources such as water, the expense of huge public resources along with the creation of huge financial burdens for ensuing generations.

The transformation of the area where the airport would be installed would have led to the addition of great quantities of wastewater in Lake Nabor Carrillo, an artificial lake that now teems with migrant avian life but which would have become a large rectangular cesspool. The entire zone is an ancient spongey lake bed and would present enormous technical problems in order to support all the structures needed including the runways. It might have been a chilling experience like landing on an enormous water bed.

Lake Nabor Carillo

President Manuel Lopez Obrador put it to a people's referendum which was just a show. The populace rejected the project. This went over like a lead chisel to the investors who had been drooling over the pesos they would rake in. In lieu of building a new airport it has been proposed to utilize Santa Lucia, an already existing military base, a bit further north of the proposed fiasco.

The State of Tlaxcala averages 2500 meters above sea level. That's where all the good pulque came from,,,, in B.C. "before cerveza" which through a grand advertising campaign replaced pulque as the preferred sudsey beverage. Pulque was sent by train every day to thirsty residents of Mexico City and was responsible for building large haciendas dedicated to this precolumbian dream maker.

The pot holed roads near Tlaxco are like asphalt patches of eczema. They are encrusted into a plain terraced in wheat, broken only by hills that rise up gently from the far edges of the fields.In the clear distance there was a bank of clouds. Piercing the billowing celestial galleons were the snow capped peaks of Popocatepetl and Iztaccíhuatl. There was yet a spotty early morning thick and thin fog. Every so often the silhouettes of nopals appeared like heavy necklaces and fields of maguey loomed like musical instruments from a far off pasture in the milkyway, their curled pencas gesturing elegantly like affectations from another century.

Landscape entering Tlaxco

Landscape entering Tlaxco

Hacienda pulquera now a boutique hotel

Hacienda pulquera Xochoco

Hacienda pulquera Xochoco

Hacienda pulquera Xochoco

Old Donkey

New dead mule

Capilla de San Augustin Tlaxco

This baroque style chapel was built between the 17th and 18th centuries. Its shape is of Latin cross, its facade is made in pink quarry with some plaster motifs. The construction has a single tower of two bodies facing west, the interior rococco altarpieces, made during the eighteenth century, are carved in wood and laminated in gold.

Below inside Capilla de San Augustin

Rococco altar piece San Agustin Tlaxco

On the wings of an angel Capilla San Augustin Tlaxco

Capilla San Augustin, Tlaxco

Capilla de San Calvario Tlaxco

It is considered to have been built upon a pyramid; Constructed at the end of the 19th century its thick 80cm walls are made of stone. The access door is built with a semicircular arch. At the top of the main facade we find a bulrush composed of three semicircular arches with their respective bell in each. Inside the chapel is a statue of the Holy Burial, whose coffin is made of a fine dark wood with ivory inlays.

The coffin, Capilla Calvario Tlaxco

Capilla de Santa Virgen de Lourdes Tlaxco

Built at the end of the 19th century, this chapel is tall actually 17 meters high. It is of neoclassical design and the access portal to the atrium is made of a semicircular arch crowned by a triangular pediment. Inside the ceiling is vaulted an upon entering one receives an austere almost protestant surprise moment for it is painted soberly in white.