Point South Mexico - Real Estate and Lifestyle Magazine

Durango must have been a fairytale city when Maria Dolores Asunsulo was born on August 3, 1904. Great mansions built in the Pordirian style, wealthy people being driven in landaus with fine horses, carriages adorned with family coat of arms graced the broad tree-lined avenues, and made up the great city of Durango. Cherished and secure she began her life. Her father, a wealthy landowner and banker took precautions against political disruptions, yet had to flee with his family as the waves of revolution overtook the city.  Dolores, wrapped in an old robe, was carried to the mobbed train station where everyone was fleeing horrendous dangers. The Asunsulo family, like everyone else, left all family possessions behind, carrying only money and jewelry.

Maria Felix is not only renowned for beauty and talent, but also for intelligence and devotion to her country. After forty-seven films, she cannot be considered on a decline, but in the twilight of her career.

The medicine lodge or sweat bath has a long history. Evidence of the sweat bath, or temascal, as it is called in Mexico, is found in Pre-Hispanic and native colonial codices, pictorial records, Spanish colonial writers and at different archaeological sites. The word temascal derives from temazcalli, a Nahuatl word compounded from tletl (fire), mozcoa, (to bathe), and calli (house). Among the ancient Aztecs the temascal reached its most highly developed form.

A Huichol friend of mine once invited me to the annual peyote fiesta at las Guayabas, an isolated Huichol Indian village in the high Sierras. It can be reached only by a long and treacherous trail from San Andres on the plateau to the village far below. The ceremonies, which marked the start of the rainy season in June, lasted three days. The rain followed so suddenly that I began to wonder if the gods really had answered the shaman's prayers. This story, however, revolves around the trip home.

In the Plaza of Santo Domingo in Mexico City, the statue of a seated woman surveys her surroundings with serenity and dignity. In one hand she holds the scrolled document of Independence. Josefa Ortiz de Dominguez born in the state of Morelos, is known as "La Corregidora", the woman who sent the message of the discovery of the plot to free Mexico from the Spanish domination.