chihuahua, Mexico

¡Ay Chihuahua !


Angelic Chihuahua
Passersby wearing vaqueros hats pass in front of the Governor's Palace of Chihuahua.
Cathedral tour
Chihuahua residents walk past the city's Metropolitan Cathedral.
dark singer
Street singer, on a semi-shady corner of Chihuahua City.
Reflected History
Towers of the Metropolitan Cathedral of Chihuahua reflected in the mirrored surface of a government building.
Pseudo-Street Artist
A street artist with a bad voice but immense attitude, he tries to make a living in the historic center of Chihuahua.
Chihuahua Fashion II
Seller of vaqueros boots and accessories, at the entrance of his store.
Piton boots
Shine shiners add shine to traditional Chihuahua python boots.
angel of freedom
Huge statue of the Angel de la Libertad, above one of the hills that surround Chihuahua.
Ten and Ulloa
Statue of Hispanic settler Deza y Ulloa against the carved facade of the Metropolitan Cathedral.
Ten and Ulloa III
Silhouette of Deza y Ulloa against the glass of a government building in Chihuahua.
Chihuahua fashion
Couple restocks on vaquero clothes at a Chihuahua store.
Rarámuri friends
Two Rarámuri women, next to a mural celebrating Chihuahua and the Rarámuri indigenous culture.
Chihuahua Mural
Mural of a chihuahua dog on the heights of a city building.
"Muralista en Llamas"
Passersby pass by the painting "Muralista en Llamas"
Pachucos Mi Barrio
Chihuahua pachucos dance in the late afternoon.
Rico's Tacos
Pick-up van passes by Rico's Tacos restaurant.
Metropolitan Cathedral
The great church of Chihuahua shines in golden tones against the blue of the post-sunset.
Wall Calle Guadalupe
Another enigmatic mural from the city of Chihuahua.
Jalopy Pancho Villa
The old car in which Pancho Villa was riding when he was shot dead.
Government Palace
Lines and shapes of the interior of the Governor's Palace in Chihuahua.
Mexicans have adapted this expression as one of their favorite manifestations of surprise. While we wander through the capital of the homonymous state of the Northwest, we often exclaim it.

The former Casa Trias who welcomes us is one of the oldest and haciendas oldest in the city.

Not only. Its façade integrates the southeastern limit of the Plaza de Armas, the heart of Chihuahua.

Blessing it, as is supposed in any city with Hispanic colonial origins, the metropolitan cathedral, a majestic Catholic temple and, for centuries on end, towering, for some decades supplanted by the building of the Congress Information Unit.

Despite the architectural outrage, the cathedral preserves its function in the lives of Chihuahuas intact. The bells of the two twin towers mark time by time outside. With such determination that, next door, they serve us as unwanted alarm clocks.

Early in the morning, but with some lapse, due to the elevations to the east, the warm sunlight hits the top of the cathedral and recharges the city for the day ahead.

Piton's Emblematic Boots and the Shoeshineers Who Care for Them

Little by little, shoeshine men take up their posts around the garden in the heart of the square, ready to renew the shine of the python boots with the fact that, in addition to hats, jeans and shirts, a good part of the men in the region make up the looks of jeans traditional manly of northern mexican.

Chihuahua is, in fact, one of the main suppliers of this regional fashion. As soon as we leave the Plaza de Armas for the surrounding commercial streets, we see stores filled with these boots and hats, displayed and promoted like the idolized items they have become.

Chihuahua, Mexico City, Pedigree, Chihuahuense Fashion

As python boots in particular, they are sold and used in a panoply of materials worthy of a vigorous ¡Ay Chihuahua.

We find them in leather, ostrich, crocodile, snake, anteater, armadillo, eel and blankets, among others.

Depending on the materials, the art used and, of course, the brand's reputation and solidity, prices can range from a few dozen to more than three thousand euros a pair.

Chihuahua, Mexico City, pedigree, fashion Chihuahua IIThe more highly regarded the models, the more the shoe shiners are committed to them.

Sometimes twenty minutes on end, enough for shoe owners to sit back, read half the newspaper and debate the topics of the day, the political scandals, the clashes between cartels and the repercussions of the other, more recent and viral, pandemic.

Chihuahua, Mexico City, pedigree, shoe shiner

Chihuahua: a City Increasingly Mural in Mexico

We continue along Calle Guadalupe Victoria, out of the Plaza de Armas, towards Hidalgo, another "square" around a statue and garden, justified by the presence of the Government Palace.

We take a last look at the towers of the Metropolitan Cathedral. When we do, we unveil the first Chihuahua Chihuahua.

Instead of the real portable dog and shrill barking that conquered the world, his modernist painting, almost psychedelic, filling the entire facade of a yellowish building.

Chihuahua, Mexico City, pedigree, Chihuahua mural

At the same time, one of the trenzites children that we are used to seeing in tourist villages in northern Mexico.

Days later, we would board the chepe, this yes, a real train, full of history, worthy of one of the most adventurous railways to the face of the earth.

On both sides of the street, there is a succession of shops with a little bit of everything. Spaces, other disparate illustrations contribute to the ambition of the rulers to make Chihuahua a mural city that stands out from so many others in Mexico.

 

The next one we pass, in the shadow of a wall under a concrete slab, has the musical title “Qué Bonito is Chihuahua”. Promotes some of the state's attractions.

Minor villages, a waterfall that we interpret as that of Basaseachi, located in the Barrancas del Cobre (Copper Canyon), the second tallest in Mexico, at 246 meters.

In the center, an indigenous person from ethnicity predominant in the mountains and ravines of the state, Rarámuri plays the violin, as if to set the work of art to music.

By chance, when we examine her, two friends of the same ethnicity appear from down the street. They stop there, conversing in their own dialect, each one in a leafy, gaudy, long dress, rising almost to the base of the chin.

Chihuahua, Mexico City, pedigree, Rarámuri friends

Tribute to Alfaro Siqueiros and the Pioneer Muralists

We proceed in reverse directions.

Further down the street, the murals are repeated: the “Muralist in Llamas” by Lizeth Garcia Portillo, shows an imprisoned painter. It is David Alfaro Siqueiros, pioneer of Mexican muralism, along with Diego de Rivera and José Clemente Orozco.

Throughout his life and work, David Siqueiros proved himself an anti-imperialist and anti-fascist, prodigious but fiery. He was accused of attempted murder of Leon Trotsky, for which he was imprisoned and exiled in Chile.

Chihuahua, Mexico City, pedigree, "Muralista en Llamas"

Upon his return to Mexico, he was sentenced to a few more years in prison, after all, the main and dramatic motif that had caught our attention, on the off-white wall.

Finally, the Calle Guadalupe Victoria leave us with the Gobierno Palace in front of.

When we enter it, we find a large mansion with three terraced floors, an immensity of arches opening onto a central courtyard tiled in grey.

uahua, Mexico City, pedigree, Palacio del Gobierno

The Historical-Political Museum of the Palacio del Gobierno

Around the ground floor, there is an entire museum of Mexican and Chihuahua history, which even has a Altar of the Fatherland dedicated to what is considered his father, Father Miguel Hidalgo.

Here too, murals abound, no more or less than 360m2 of paintings by Aaron Piña Mora. Hidalgo appears in another of them, in the center of a mural that immortalized the moment of his execution, at the hands of a platoon of Spanish soldiers, on July 30, 1811, precisely in Chihuahua.

we leave the Government Palace through the opposite façade to the entrance, straight to Calle Libertad which, there, separates it from another imposing building, formerly the pre-firing dungeon of Miguel Hidalgo.

Today, the building houses the Casa Chihuahua, a museum dedicated to traveling exhibitions.

As we see it, at the entrance, the bronze sculpture of the gorilla "Alter Ego", three meters and a ton, seems to envy the ice cream devoured by a young couple and their two children, sitting on a wall opposite.

We continue in hyperbolic mode, towards Plaza de la Grandeza and its better half, Plaza del Angel, from which a golden angel stands out against the blue sky.

Chihuahua, Mexico City, pedigree, Angel de la Libertad

the last address by Francisco “Pancho” Villa

We got into Av. V. Carranza. We zigzagged at right angles through the city's geometric grid in search of the Casa de Pancho Villa, the last home inhabited by the Mexican revolutionary, with what was considered his wife number twenty-three.

The count has proven to such an extent that the current museum insists on displaying a list of its loved ones.

Unobscured, the house is now owned by the Mexican army.

There are soldiers on guard in the troop of visitors around Villa's numerous belongings, especially the car in which he was following when he was ambushed at the behest of the Mexican president of 1924-28, Elias Calles.

uahua, mexico city, pedigree, pancho villa car

The jalopy remains parked for history in a courtyard of the mansion, pockmarked by the many bullets fired at Villa as he was on his way to a family party taking place in the village of Parral.

It's with a party that we find the Plaza de Armas when we return to it, later in the afternoon.

The fall of dusk reinforces the contours of Antonio de Deza y Ulloa, the founder of Real de Minas in San Francisco de Cuéllar, the city that would give rise to Chihuahua

Chihuahua, Mexico City, pedigree, Deza y UlloaThe statue in which the governor seems to indicate the place where he ordered the construction of the village is centered between the bandstand at the heart of the garden and the Metropolitan Cathedral, against the detailed lacework of its façade.

Chihuahua, Mexico City, pedigree, Deza y Ulloa

On the opposite side of the garden, hundreds of residents and visitors share a pagan celebration of the day and life that contrasts with the ecclesiastical solemnity inside the church.

To the Rhythm of the Pachucos Dances of Chihuahua

Leads the movement the duo of pachucos Mi Bárrio, active and motivated as never before, after several months were barred from animating the square due to the pandemic.

Sergio Boy, generates and inspires mambo steps and other rhythms, in bright outfits and zoot fashions.

Mi Barrio and the pachucos they are often survivors of the Mexican heirs – especially El Paso – of the gang subculture that proliferated in the United States during the 30s. Sergio Boy invites spectators to participate.

Chihuahua, Mexico City, pedigree, Pachucos

At spaces, he interrupts the elegant dances to produce another unusual Selfie, with a small SLR aimed at itself. Meanwhile, dancers from other collectives inaugurate parallel dances.

The Uncontrollable Sweetness of Chihuahua

We circle around, excited by the city's unexpected popular exuberance. We passed by stands of elotes (cooked corn on the cob) of churros, tacos and other snacks.

One of them is surrounded by candied fruits of all colors and shapes, resplendent in double due to the incandescent lighting that emanated from the interior. As we approached, we noticed that a huge swarm of bees, attracted by the sweetness and intoxicated by the light, had taken over the apparently deserted stall.

Upon realizing our presence, Javier, the owner, questions us. Polite, strives to sell. When we asked him what the beekeeping phenomenon was, he shrugs his shoulders and bursts out laughing.

“Qué quieren que haga? I am your slave. Come and go when you want. They only stung me once. Here!” and shows us a swelling in the head.

A family appears, determined to oblige the kids. Pressured to win the day, Javier reenters the bank. To our amazement, he serves them the sweets and passes them change among hundreds of bees in a crazy orbit. Return to the outside unharmed.

There, as in its old Plaza de Armas, Chihuahua surrenders at night and in the footsteps of happiness of the Chihuahua people.

Chihuahua, Mexico City, pedigree, Metropolitan Cathedral

Creel to Los Mochis, Mexico

The Barrancas del Cobre & the CHEPE Iron Horse

The Sierra Madre Occidental's relief turned the dream into a construction nightmare that lasted six decades. In 1961, at last, the prodigious Chihuahua al Pacifico Railroad was opened. Its 643km cross some of the most dramatic scenery in Mexico.
Barrancas del Cobre (Copper Canyon), Chihuahua, Mexico

The Deep Mexico of the Barrancas del Cobre

Without warning, the Chihuahua highlands give way to endless ravines. Sixty million geological years have furrowed them and made them inhospitable. The Rarámuri indigenous people continue to call them home.
San Cristobal de Las Casas, Mexico

The Home Sweet Home of Mexican Social Conscience

Mayan, mestizo and Hispanic, Zapatista and tourist, country and cosmopolitan, San Cristobal has no hands to measure. In it, Mexican and expatriate backpacker visitors and political activists share a common ideological demand.
Yucatan, Mexico

The End of the End of the World

The announced day passed but the End of the World insisted on not arriving. In Central America, today's Mayans watched and put up with incredulity all the hysteria surrounding their calendar.
Campeche, Mexico

200 Years of Playing with Luck

At the end of the XNUMXth century, the peasants surrendered to a game introduced to cool the fever of cash cards. Today, played almost only for Abuelites, lottery little more than a fun place.
San Cristóbal de las Casas a Campeche, Mexico

A Relay of Faith

The Catholic equivalent of Our Lady of Fátima, Our Lady of Guadalupe moves and moves Mexico. Its faithful cross the country's roads, determined to bring the proof of their faith to the patroness of the Americas.
Champoton, Mexico

Rodeo Under Sombreros

Champoton, in Campeche, hosts a fair honored by the Virgén de La Concepción. O rodeo Mexican under local sombreros reveals the elegance and skill of the region's cowboys.

Mexico City, Mexico

mexican soul

With more than 20 million inhabitants in a vast metropolitan area, this megalopolis marks, from its heart of zócalo, the spiritual pulse of a nation that has always been vulnerable and dramatic.

Cobá to Pac Chen, Mexico

From the Ruins to the Mayan Homes

On the Yucatan Peninsula, the history of the second largest indigenous Mexican people is intertwined with their daily lives and merges with modernity. In Cobá, we went from the top of one of its ancient pyramids to the heart of a village of our times.
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The Most Exuberant of Meridas

In 25 BC, the Romans founded Emerita Augusta, capital of Lusitania. The Spanish expansion generated three other Méridas in the world. Of the four, the Yucatan capital is the most colorful and lively, resplendent with Hispanic colonial heritage and multi-ethnic life.
Overall, Mexico

The Most Caribbean of the Mayan Ruins

Built by the sea as an exceptional outpost decisive for the prosperity of the Mayan nation, Tulum was one of its last cities to succumb to Hispanic occupation. At the end of the XNUMXth century, its inhabitants abandoned it to time and to an impeccable coastline of the Yucatan peninsula.
Campeche, Mexico

Campeche Upon Can Pech

As was the case throughout Mexico, the conquerors arrived, saw and won. Can Pech, the Mayan village, had almost 40 inhabitants, palaces, pyramids and an exuberant urban architecture, but in 1540 there were less than 6 natives. Over the ruins, the Spaniards built Campeche, one of the most imposing colonial cities in the Americas.
Amboseli National Park, Mount Kilimanjaro, Normatior Hill
Safari
Amboseli National Park, Kenya

A Gift from the Kilimanjaro

The first European to venture into these Masai haunts was stunned by what he found. And even today, large herds of elephants and other herbivores roam the pastures irrigated by the snow of Africa's biggest mountain.
Annapurna Circuit, Manang to Yak-kharka
Annapurna (circuit)
Annapurna 10th Circuit: Manang to Yak Kharka, Nepal

On the way to the Annapurnas Even Higher Lands

After an acclimatization break in the near-urban civilization of Manang (3519 m), we made progress again in the ascent to the zenith of Thorong La (5416 m). On that day, we reached the hamlet of Yak Kharka, at 4018 m, a good starting point for the camps at the base of the great canyon.
Colonial Church of San Francisco de Assis, Taos, New Mexico, USA
Architecture & Design
Taos, USA

North America Ancestor of Taos

Traveling through New Mexico, we were dazzled by the two versions of Taos, that of the indigenous adobe hamlet of Taos Pueblo, one of the towns of the USA inhabited for longer and continuously. And that of Taos city that the Spanish conquerors bequeathed to the Mexico: Mexico gave in to United States and that a creative community of native descendants and migrated artists enhance and continue to praise.
Era Susi towed by dog, Oulanka, Finland
Adventure
PN Oulanka, Finland

A Slightly Lonesome Wolf

Jukka “Era-Susi” Nordman has created one of the largest packs of sled dogs in the world. He became one of Finland's most iconic characters but remains faithful to his nickname: Wilderness Wolf.
Correspondence verification
Ceremonies and Festivities
Rovaniemi, Finland

From the Finnish Lapland to the Arctic. A Visit to the Land of Santa

Fed up with waiting for the bearded old man to descend down the chimney, we reverse the story. We took advantage of a trip to Finnish Lapland and passed through its furtive home.
Executives sleep subway seat, sleep, sleep, subway, train, Tokyo, Japan
Cities
Tokyo, Japan

Tokyo's Hypno-Passengers

Japan is served by millions of executives slaughtered with infernal work rates and sparse vacations. Every minute of respite on the way to work or home serves them for their inemuri, napping in public.
Obese resident of Tupola Tapaau, a small island in Western Samoa.
Meal
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XXL Pacific

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Saphire Cabin, Purikura, Tokyo, Japan
Culture
Tokyo, Japan

Japanese Style Passaport-Type Photography

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Sport
Philippines

When Only Cock Fights Wake Up the Philippines

Banned in much of the First World, cockfighting thrives in the Philippines where they move millions of people and pesos. Despite its eternal problems, it is the sabong that most stimulates the nation.
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Traveling
Couchsurfing (Part 1)

Mi Casa, Su Casa

In 2003, a new online community globalized an old landscape of hospitality, conviviality and interests. Today, Couchsurfing welcomes millions of travelers, but it shouldn't be taken lightly.
Drums and Tattoos
Ethnic
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Tahiti Beyond the Cliché

Neighbors Bora Bora and Maupiti have superior scenery but Tahiti has long been known as paradise and there is more life on the largest and most populous island of French Polynesia, its ancient cultural heart.
View of Fa Island, Tonga, Last Polynesian Monarchy
Got2Globe Photo Portfolio
Got2Globe Portfolio

Exotic Signs of Life

Terraces of Sistelo, Serra do Soajo, Arcos de Valdevez, Minho, Portugal
History
Sistelo, Peneda-Gerês, Portugal

From the “Little Portuguese Tibet” to the Corn Fortresses

We leave the cliffs of Srª da Peneda, heading for Arcos de ValdeVez and the villages that an erroneous imaginary dubbed Little Portuguese Tibet. From these terraced villages, we pass by others famous for guarding, as golden and sacred treasures, the ears they harvest. Whimsical, the route reveals the resplendent nature and green fertility of these lands in Peneda-Gerês.
Bubaque, Bijagós, Guinea Bissau, mooring
Islands
Bubaque, Bijagós, Guinea Bissau

The Portal of the Bijagós

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ala juumajarvi lake, oulanka national park, finland
Winter White
Kuusamo ao PN Oulanka, Finland

Under the Arctic's Icy Spell

We are at 66º North and at the gates of Lapland. In these parts, the white landscape belongs to everyone and to no one like the snow-covered trees, the atrocious cold and the endless night.
Cove, Big Sur, California, United States
Literature
Big Sur, USA

The Coast of All Refuges

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Jeep crosses Damaraland, Namibia
Nature
Damaraland, Namíbia

Namibia On the Rocks

Hundreds of kilometers north of Swakopmund, many more of Swakopmund's iconic dunes Sossuvlei, Damaraland is home to deserts interspersed with hills of reddish rock, the highest mountain and ancient rock art of the young nation. the settlers South Africans they named this region after the Damara, one of the Namibian ethnic groups. Only these and other inhabitants prove that it remains on Earth.
Sheki, Autumn in the Caucasus, Azerbaijan, Autumn Homes
Autumn
Sheki, Azerbaijan

autumn in the caucasus

Lost among the snowy mountains that separate Europe from Asia, Sheki is one of Azerbaijan's most iconic towns. Its largely silky history includes periods of great harshness. When we visited it, autumn pastels added color to a peculiar post-Soviet and Muslim life.
Serra Dourada, Cerrado, Goiás, Brazil
Natural Parks
Serra Dourada, Goiás, Brazil

Where the Cerrado Waves Golden

One of the types of South America savannah, the Cerrado extends over more than a fifth of the Brazilian territory, which supplies much of its fresh water. Located in the heart of the Central Plateau and the state of Goiás, the Serra Dourada State Park shines double.
Athens, Greece, Changing of the Guard at Syntagma Square
UNESCO World Heritage
Athens, Greece

The City That Perpetuates the Metropolis

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Visitors to Ernest Hemingway's Home, Key West, Florida, United States
Characters
Key West, United States

Hemingway's Caribbean Playground

Effusive as ever, Ernest Hemingway called Key West "the best place I've ever been...". In the tropical depths of the contiguous US, he found evasion and crazy, drunken fun. And the inspiration to write with intensity to match.
Moorea aerial view
Beaches
Moorea, French Polynesia

The Polynesian Sister Any Island Would Like to Have

A mere 17km from Tahiti, Moorea does not have a single city and is home to a tenth of its inhabitants. Tahitians have long watched the sun go down and transform the island next door into a misty silhouette, only to return to its exuberant colors and shapes hours later. For those who visit these remote parts of the Pacific, getting to know Moorea is a double privilege.
Rostov Veliky Kremlin, Russia
Religion
Rostov Veliky, Russia

Under the Domes of the Russian Soul

It is one of the oldest and most important medieval cities, founded during the still pagan origins of the nation of the tsars. At the end of the XNUMXth century, incorporated into the Grand Duchy of Moscow, it became an imposing center of orthodox religiosity. Today, only the splendor of kremlin Muscovite trumps the citadel of tranquil and picturesque Rostov Veliky.
End of the World Train, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina
On Rails
Ushuaia, Argentina

Last Station: End of the World

Until 1947, the Tren del Fin del Mundo made countless trips for the inmates of the Ushuaia prison to cut firewood. Today, passengers are different, but no other train goes further south.
Kogi, PN Tayrona, Guardians of the World, Colombia
Society
PN Tayrona, Colombia

Who Protects the Guardians of the World?

The natives of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta believe that their mission is to save the Cosmos from the “Younger Brothers”, which are us. But the real question seems to be, "Who protects them?"
Daily life
Arduous Professions

the bread the devil kneaded

Work is essential to most lives. But, certain jobs impose a degree of effort, monotony or danger that only a few chosen ones can measure up to.
Cape cross seal colony, cape cross seals, Namibia
Wildlife
Cape Cross, Namíbia

The Most Turbulent of the African Colonies

Diogo Cão landed in this cape of Africa in 1486, installed a pattern and turned around. The immediate coastline to the north and south was German, South African, and finally Namibian. Indifferent to successive transfers of nationality, one of the largest seal colonies in the world has maintained its hold there and animates it with deafening marine barks and endless tantrums.
Bungee jumping, Queenstown, New Zealand
Scenic Flights
Queenstown, New Zealand

Queenstown, the Queen of Extreme Sports

In the century. XVIII, the Kiwi government proclaimed a mining village on the South Island "fit for a queen".Today's extreme scenery and activities reinforce the majestic status of ever-challenging Queenstown.
PT EN ES FR DE IT