The Church of Tango: a Memoir, published January 21, 2012

Finally.

I started writing this story at the time it began--in February of 1992, when I was so depressed after my husband's death I wanted to swallow all of his left-over meds and follow him into the beyond. So what began in a way as a journal or diary became the chronicle of my road to survival in four countries. And once I made that decision to live no matter what tragedy came my way, I plugged on, through one tremendous loss after another, by dancing. No, not yet had the tango found me, but whatever dance there was at the time came to my rescue. I had always been a dancer, and now I knew dance could save me from despair.

As my adventures unfolded, the manuscript grew and grew. I had to make cuts in events, characters, reflections and realizations. That was the hardest part of bringing this story to fruition. There is so much left out. Who knows, maybe I'll write The Daughter of the Church of Tango, or a prequel one day.

Our students come from all over the world: China, The Philippines, Australia, Viet Nam, New Zealand, Hawaii, South Africa, India, Nepal, Finland, Russia, Israel, Scandinavia, all over Europe, Chile, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Canada and the U.S. And one question almost all ask me is, how did I end up teaching tango in Argentina?

This book is my answer.

Lots of women have come to Buenos Aires for tango, stayed a while, and went home and wrote about their experiences. There are a couple of tango histories available in English, as well as a couple of Buenos Aires milonga guide books. There are self-help books using tango as a way to better interpersonal relationships. There are some novels about tango in Buenos Aires.

My memoir is not like any of them; it is not a "tango book," but a story of survival that cuts across death, cancer, Alzheimer's, loss of home and homeland and cherished heirlooms and possessions, loss of shared histories, of hope for one's children, of hope for the future, of love. But it's also about finding love and unexpected joy. And about listening to the music and dancing.

It can be ordered from the printer online: https://www.createspace.com/3733773

Now available on Amazon and soon as an ebook for Kindle.

La Virgin de los Dolores

A repost from 2007

Today is Our Lady of Sorrows' special day.






















La Virgin de los Dolores is very dear to me. I really feel the pain of mothers who watch their children suffer.

On the Friday before Holy Week, in Mexico where I used to live in San Miguel de Allende, her day is celebrated with special, elaborate, and creative altars in homes and businesses. During the evening people solemnly visit as many as possible, always being offered a "fruit water" to drink that symbolizes the Virgin's tears. And the next day the altars are all taken down and preparations begin for Palm Sunday.

Four years ago I offered to build an altar in my friend Nelly's mail service office. I researched the symbols and spent the night before putting little flags into bitter oranges. Early in the morning I bought a bucket of fragrant fresh mint and chamomile to spread over the altar and on the floor. I used my purple satin Victoria Secret nightgown as a backdrop, because purple is her color of sadness.

Here are Nelly and me with the altar:

It was a fabulous experience for me, a time of much contemplation, meditation, and tranquility. How I miss the over-the-top spiritual life of Mexico! But you know, one Sunday three years ago after I first moved to Buenos Aires from Mexico, I was longing for the processions that used to move pass my window in San Miguel, and I looked out of my window in Congreso and saw a procession on its way to the nearby church. It was sort of raggedy and small, very simple: a priest and two altar boys, a small image of the virgin being carried by four men, and parishioners following with a few bouquets of flowers. But it was faith in the streets all the same, and an answer to my prayer. God usually provides.

To read more about processions under my balcony, as well as two years of other Mexican experiences, both spiritual and carnal, click the link to MEXICO DIARIES.

Celebrating Eight Years in Argentina--And Five Years of tangocherie!

The following is a chapter from my unpublished memoir, The Church of Tango, written in 2003 when I moved from Mexico to Buenos Aires. I am posting it now in celebration of my 8 years anniversary living in Argentina, and my 5 years of blogging here on tangocherie; this is my 661 blog post. With more than 6,000 page views per month, I thank you, gentle reader.

            If you don't know where you're going, you'll end up somewhere else.

                                                                                          --Yogi Berra

 2003 

In the evening flocks of grackles wrote V’s against the mango sky. The setting sun shone through the dusty dome windows of Las Monjas one block west, and I could see the towers of five more colonial churches from my rooftop. Almost every day beneath my windows passed processions of pilgrims, celebrants, or mourners. The Virgin sat on the back of a pickup truck. Thirty schoolchildren carried an enormous Mexican flag. Peppy tuba bands and old men, hats in hand, walked behind a hearse. 

View from my balcony on Mesones

Even so, after two years in Mexico I had overdosed on the traditional fiestas that used to enchant me. As someone who enjoys the Latin passion in the cultures of France and Cuba, I couldn’t find the same joie de vivre in Mexico.      

Mexican allegre was not a moving, pulsing force, but comfort and relaxation—abundant good food, bright and happy music, flowing beer and tequila, family togetherness and church. The sole ecstasy I witnessed was in the many fervent religious activities. I missed the zest and energy on the street and in the music that I found so compelling elsewhere.

I enjoyed greeting folks whenever I stepped out my door, yet the population was transitory, and new friends were hard to keep, often leaving after a short stay to return home to Canada or the United States. Real relationships had little time to develop. Sometimes it was painful to live alone in one of the most romantically beautiful places on earth, looking out my windows at the indigo sky and the lights of the Churrigueresque skyline twinkling below.

After more than two years, my social circle had changed. My favorite bar had closed, and even before that I stopped going out in the evening. Long ago I had given up on dating anyone. Pablo—my personal trainer—was the only man I saw for the past year, and that of course was a secret. Sure I knew it’s a cliché. I really thought at the time that God had sent him to me, I was just so lonely.

The front door to the art gallery and my apartment upstairs

Over the past couple of years, I found that without realizing it, I was drinking too much, too often, as a way to be with people. Lately I might go to Harry Bissett’s on Martini Night, and after two Cosmos, the smoke and the cackling Texas laughter would drive me around the corner and home. I read, worked on the computer, wrote articles and emails to the world “out there,” and watched Mexican TV. 

The folks I counted on were the women in my cancer support group, the people at church, the group of writers who met at my house weekly, my fellow flamenco students, as well as the two or three friends I made at the bars when I first arrived. I had some Mexican acquaintances by now, too, yet somehow there was always a gap between us which wasn’t a problem of language. I guess it was cultural differences, although I hated to think that was possible between people who cared about one another.

            

          There were several different social groups in San Miguel, and I didn’t fit into any of them: the cocktail party circuit; the landed house builders, remodelers and decorators who had inexhaustible discussions on whether to paint the sala saffron or aubergine; the old hippies in beads; the Texas Junior League women with perfectly streaked blond hair and chunky silver jewelry active in charity fundraisers; the gringa owners of boutiques and businesses; the newly reinvented artists; and of course the Mexicans who had little time to spare away from their work and families.

Where I felt empowered, at my best, and at home was with dancers. In San Miguel I had searched out dance in studios, schools, clubs, theaters, parties, and discos. I tried Sweat Your Prayers on Sunday mornings, folk dance at the Bellas Artes, contact improvisation, Mexican folklorico, salsa in classes and clubs, and took the bus to Mexico City in search of tango, the immigrant’s dance. More than a hundred years ago in Buenos Aires, the lonely porteño, far from his loved ones in Europe, was drawn to the connection and nostalgia of tango. In Mexico one’s family is large and ubiquitous, and people live for the moment. Unlike me, the Mexican has no need to search for a family in a milonga, and Mexican tango is almost an oxymoron.

Finally it was flamenco that saved my body and spirit. And after a student flamenco recital in which I did a solo belly dance, opportunities presented themselves to teach La Danse Orientale, to perform, to collaborate creatively with the flamenco teacher and musicians. But then what? I couldn’t afford to keep going in a financial hole every month and manufacturing my own artistic outlets. I knew I couldn’t live forever in the expensive Brigadoon Gringolandia that was San Miguel de Allende. If I did, I'd soon be one of the crones sitting in doorways with gnarled hands outstretched to passing tourists.

            

          Much of the Happy Hour conversations now centered on how the town had changed and how expensive it had become. I had done my best to live within my budget, moving three times to cheaper and smaller San Miguel apartments. Nevertheless from the beginning it had been an impossible dream in the most costly place to live in Mexico. I had increasingly gone into my savings, and soon they would be gone if I didn’t do something drastic. 

      

     San Miguel de Allende had been my home throughout three icy winters when I wore dance tights 24/7 and my electric throw over my shoulders on a long extension cord, heating my apartment with pots of water boiling on the stove. And during two hot and breathless springs, when dusty winds covered the town filling my lungs with desert sand, bus exhaust, and dried dog and burro dung. 

     

          The weather-perfect months in between I reveled in the afternoon rains, the ideal temperature, and the dazzling colors of the bougainvillea-bejeweled colonial architecture. Now the pleasure I found in San Miguel was no longer enough, and I knew, not for the rest of my life.

I learned a lot in Mexico; I had met people I cared about, I loved my apartment and the beauty of the town, where, like at Chateau Rodney in Los Angeles, I heard church bells and train whistles calling me to places far away. But it was time to move on—to someplace where the cost of living was less, where there was symphony and ballet and art museums, to someplace where I could dance more than solos. I yearned for the embrace of tango.

            

     After more than a decade of searching, it looked like my future would be in other places, other hemispheres. I missed Los Angeles and the United States, and if wishes could make it so, I would still be living with my family in our house in Los Feliz under the Hollywood Sign. I had twice paddled in the River Styx, and now I’ve been blessed with the chance of forging another life. I would have designed a different path for myself, but my life unfolded without consulting me. 

             Once again I had to bid a painful farewell to a mixed group of people who had welcomed this stranger into their lives. I was going to miss the man selling cigarettes and sodas on the corner, the flower seller who made the rounds of all the bars and restaurants every night, the girl who practiced her cello while working in the art gallery below my apartment. I was worn-out from the partings and leave-takings of the last twelve years. 

          But in Mexico, where nothing was as it seemed, “manana” didn’t mean tomorrow, and “Adios!” was not goodbye.

If you'd like to read the "end" of the saga, please check out Home is Where The Cat Is

The Worlds of Xochimilco

While not tango or even Argentina, Xochimilco, just outside of Mexico City, is a bit like Tigre, and the haunting historical atmosphere reminiscent of feelings I've had at La Ideal. The day I spent there in 2003 was one of the most memorable of my life.




A lake carries you into recesses of feeling otherwise impenetrable. ~William Wordsworth

In gardens, beauty is a by-product. The main business is sex and death. ~Sam Llewelyn






Xochimilco, the place of the flower fields (in Nahuatl), is at once an ancient Aztec dream, a modern Mexican fiesta, and an eccentric eerie nightmare—all in one glorious experience and all in one day. Imagine in one short Mexico City afternoon floating between two cultures centuries apart, with the added fillip of a hidden island of ghosts and dead dolls.

Very little remains of Aztec daily life and splendor. Aside from the pyramids, and artifacts desplayed in museums, we can only guess at the wonders of Tenochtitlan while we stand in the middle of Mexico City’s Zocalo and stare at the cathedral sinking slowly into the ooze of the primordial lake below.





In pre-Hispanic times the Xochimilcas built rectangular soil-covered rafts (chinampas) in Lake Xochimilco, which with time became islands rooted to the bottom and separated by water-filled canals. Perhaps because the Floating Gardens of Xochimilco were built on the eternal lake, they still exist. Thankfully they have been restored and reclaimed from the pollution and neglect that almost caused their extinction, and Xochimilco was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1987. Not only do the floating gardens enthrall visitors and tourists, but they are still used today as they have been since the Tenth Century—to grow plants, vegetables and flowers for central Mexico.

You feel like you’re at the seaside as you enter one of Xochimilco’s many embarcaderos filled with the colorful flat-bottomed boats called trajineras. Now duplicated in crepe paper, in times past the multicolored designs with girls’ names on the front and tops of the boats were made of fresh flowers. Still for special occasions, arrangements can be made in advance for real floral decorations to cover the boat and to spell out the name of the honoree.

There are so many crafts waiting that you can walk from deck to deck all across the landing to the one of your choice. You hire a trajinera by the hour, and unfortunately most tourists opt for only one hour, imagining that they have seen what there is to see and rush off to the next attraction on their Mexico City list. For such an extraordinary historical, cultural, and natural site, there is little hype in the travel media. But the local Mexican people know how to party and enjoy themselves, and on weekends the smaller, higher section of the canals and gardens are jammed with vessels and competing floating mariachi bands, stern to port, starboard to starboard, at times resembling bump ‘em boats at a carnival.


As in Venice, the gondolas are propelled by one man (and here sometimes a strong woman) standing on the back with a long pole. Our boat with a long narrow table and twenty yellow straw-bottomed chairs, contained only my friend, myself, and a plastic bucket of iced beverages, but even when a boat is party packed, one person provides the power. The only mechanical sound on the canals is from the occasional police motor boat. The trajineras move in silence, but the happy people on them are loudly partying as Mexicans do better than anyone.

The fiesta boats generally have refreshments brought from home, but if anything is forgotten (and for the more casual cruiser who is less prepared) vendors conveniently drift by selling flowers, drinks, candy, souvenirs, fresh hot snacks and main dishes, blankets and rebozos, as well as floating photographers to commemorate the moment.

There are boat after boatload of uniformed mariachis and vessels containing only a single mirimba, which tie up to the party boats during the short concerts paid for by the song. Our gondola barely squeezed by a flotilla of six tied together two by two, plus the required aquatic mariachi attachment. Women were dancing on the three feet of deck when we collided, spilling beer and flowers into the canal, but the fiesta continued with even more laughter as we passed them by. People wave and call out to each other. Several parties had family members regaling their captive partyers with jokes, and we laughed as well.

Homes and plant nurseries and green houses of roses line the upper canals; floating bridges are hauled by ropes into place when necessary for crossing. The islands have no cars, and there are small private gondolas used by residents for transportation. The Aztecs brought in everything to their city on boats such as these, and today the canals are used in much the same way.






Soon we arrive at the lock and descend to the lower and larger area of islands which are pastoral cornfields, farms and pasturelands of grazing animals. We pass indian children in green canoes filled with flowers, and two small boys paddling home with their bicycle on board. No mariachi boats, only the quiet kiss of the water as the gondolier poles us forward. Lazy trees lounge on the banks trailing their limbs in the water, bright red bougainvillea punctuates the green stillness, an occasional mudhen navigates through the waterlilies, a salamander suns on a rock, fish disturb the water’s satin surface, insects and birds sing. Another world—mystical, serene, timeless. Our festive trajinera seems anachronistic, but we are too blissful to care.






The mood changes when we land at the Isla de las Munecas, the Island of the Dolls. Don Julian lived there for fifty years, and for the twenty-five before his death eight years ago, sought to appease the ghost of a drowned child with the dolls he pulled up from the depths of the canals.

Dead dolls of all kinds hang from the trees and vines and rafters, their eyes bewitching and disturbing the visitors who have come to gawk and photograph in this surreal sanctuary. There is an altar to Don Julian, and in an open shed, a kind of museum. As the fame of the Island of the Dolls spreads, people all over the world send their own dolls to be displayed and to disintegrate, covered by cobwebs and dust with all the rest.

It can be disconcerting to see your favorite Betsy or Ginny naked, muddy, missing a limb, and hanging by the neck. While bizarre and off-putting for some (one woman tourist refused to get out of the boat), the island is in fact a kind of work of art in the realm of other “one man’s fantasy” environments—Edward James, Simon Rodia, even William Randolph Hurst come to mind.














Don Julian’s family is carrying on the tradition, and the creepy feel of wandering among childhood toys once beautiful and cherished now tainted by evil and death, is
balanced by Don Julian’s jovial nephew barbecuing fresh corn under the palapa and laying out juicy limes and chili for the tequila he proudly serves us.







Even so, one journeys back to the lock and to the parties and festivities in the high canals and then to the busy embarcadero and home, wherever it is, changed. Some voyages—the best ones—are like that.

Christmas Milagro in Mexico--A Memory

CHRISTMAS MILAGRO IN MEXICO -- A MEMORY (December 2001)


Never ask God to give you anything; ask Him to put you where things are.—Mexican proverb.

I made it! As so many had done before me, Phoebe the Cat and I arrived in San Miguel de Allende to begin a new life in old Mexico.

Vicente was waiting for me at the Leon airport holding a sign with my name as prearranged by my new landlady. The road to San Miguel was long and obscure and Vicente drove carefully, mindful of the topes (speed bumps) in the middle of seemingly nowhere, and the dead animals by the side of the road.

The lights of San Miguel gleamed in the distant hills out of the dark countryside. Soon we were on the town’s bumpy cobblestones, surrounded by adobe walls, and a few old-fashioned Christmas lights. We actually passed a man in a sombrero and serape in a small plaza, and then climbed up the hill and down a miniscule alley, where we stopped in front of my new Mexican home. I carried Phoebe inside and Vicente brought in the two large suitcases.

“But where are the purple bags?” I asked in panic. We searched the car uselessly, frantically.

My carryon bags never made it out of the Leon Airport in Mexico. You know, the bags where I put everything too important to be checked-- camera, address book, eyeglasses, jewelry, medication, computer cables, software, family photos, business papers and bills, Phoebe’s favorite toy rat, my tango shoes? I don´t know exactly what happened, you can’t relax your vigilance for one second in life. I turned my attention to Phoebe, and poof, everything changed. And the timing couldn’t have been more poignant--it was right before Christmas.

I endlessly examined my two remaining bags. I couldn’t sleep. I only tossed and burned with worry about the loss of my irreplaceable belongings. I pictured someone picking up the bags, searching them for things to sell, and tossing the rest out the window of a pickup truck on some dusty Mexican road. The image of my family photos blowing through the cactus just made me sick.

The next day my new landlady called the airport for me because as yet I had no Spanish. But the news was bad: no found purple bags. She counseled me to forget it and move on. Easy for her to say in the middle of her Texas mansion plunked down in a garden in a beautiful, small highland town in Colonial Mexico. Not only did she own her huge hacienda and my apartment, she also had built and rented out a casa and a casita all constructed in the same walled compound. And of course all four dwellings were full of her things. In all the world I only had a cat and four suitcases, and now the two most important bags were missing.

This new loss after so many recent losses in my life caused me to mourn for days. I went to lovely St Paul´s, the gringo Protestant church, and prayed to accept the inevitable.



The day of Christmas Eve, the town was full of people carrying baby Jesuses hurriedly through the streets on their way to all the Nativities where the Holy Child would later appear in ceremonies that included rocking Him in cradles of lace. That night I went to a party given by a friend of a friend, and like seems to happen so often in San Miguel, in talking about a problem, help happens. At the party I met someone who was leaving the next day for New York from Leon, and she offered to inquire at the airport about my bags.

I took the bus up to the supermercado on the hill and bought some new underwear and makeup, although all of the shades were too dark for me. The bus was decorated with crucifixes and images of Our Lady of Guadalups, and a boy dusted off the windows at major stops and then collected the fares in a plastic bucket.

Gigante was like a surreal American supermarket, where things were kind of familiar, but upon close inspection were totally different. Open bins of sticky candies and pickles, and the smell of fish, strange looking plant things in the produce department, only frozen shrimp, ice cream and ice cubes in the freezer, guards with automatic weapons at the ready near the checkstands. Next door to the small supermarket in the center of town was a funeral home with a big stack of tiny white satin baby coffins in the display window. It was so foreign.

After five days, acceptance was growing. I figured this was just another lesson in how we don’t need things, how we are here not to accumulate but to live and do. I looked at the poverty around me of the Mexican and indigenous peoples with new eyes. I didn’t really need so many pairs of earrings, how often did I look at those photos anyway, and if my friends wanted to contact me they had my address, even if I didn’t have theirs. It would all work out, and I would be a better person for it.

In the last few years I had lost so much. I was sick and tired of loss, but wasn’t this just another lesson in how to live on my own? We come with nothing, we leave with nothing; we can’t take it with us, possessions are just a burden, etc. All the helpful cliches spun around in my head, actually making me feel better.

Early Christmas morning the phone rang: "Cherie, your bags are here!" It was the lady from the party, calling from the airport on her way to New York.

Twenty minutes later a sleepy Vicente and I were tearing along the empty Christmas morning road the 150 km to Leon. At the airport we searched through the lost luggage and my bags weren´t there, although there was a similar purple one and I thought probably that was the one my new friend saw.

But Vicente also wanted to check in Customs up by the gate. And when we approached, we saw my orphaned bags behind locked doors. There they sat, both of them, like my oldest friends in the world. Traveling unlocked with me on the plane, now they sported plastic security seals. I offered a tip, but the officials waved it away, smiling at the tearful reunion of a gringa and her stuff. Gracias, muchas gracias, Feliz Navidad! I sang, walking through the airport hugging my luggage.

Vicente and I laughed all the way back to San Miguel where, after cutting off the plastic locks, I found everything completely untouched.

Getting my things back was a miracle and the best Christmas present ever. But those five days without the security blanket of the cherished contents of my bags gave me perspective. I could have managed without them, I had been managing. And it had not been the end of the world. I had even learned something about myself. Nevertheless because of the kindness of strangers and a miracle of good luck, I had a very Feliz Navidad in my new home town, and an incredible Bienvenida a Mexico.

And Vicente invited me to his extended family´s Christmas celebration that night. But that is another story of milagros, magical realism, and me in Mexico.

All photos but the Baby Jesuses and margaritas by Gail Miller.

The Amazons of San Miguel

As many of you know, I first moved from Los Angeles to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, in 2001, before Phoebe the Cat and I moved here to Buenos Aires. Just last month an anthology of writings about this lovely Colonial town was published, Solamente en San Miguel (Windstrom Creative), and I am honored that an essay of mine was included. Here it is for those who are curious, or who are yet unable to purchase the book.



They are known by their shoes. There is an irrefutable elegant air to these slim women of a certain age, starting with the renowned cocktail huaraches they wear on their feet. Often with heavy silver cuff bracelets, art-gallery earrings, classy straw hats protecting perfect blond highlights, these women are as frequently known for their good works as their good looks.

The culture of San Miguel de Allende, a picturesque colonial town in the highlands of central Mexico, seems to be moved and stirred by women, whether foreign or Mexican.


English-speaking Amazons from the United States and Canada have bought property, own businesses, and run the public library and festivals of art. In any tourist restaurant at any time are norteamericanas sitting alone with a book or a notebook, studying, learning, journaling, or in groups of like-minded free souls planning the next charity event or a stylish personal project. Sometimes superficial, always creative. (Overheard in a popular restaurant: “I just can’t decide between cinnabar, saffron, or eggplant for the sala.”) Their children come here from the States to marry, and often the lavish weddings include donkey processions, piñatas, exploding brides and grooms, mariachis, puppets, fireworks, and of course, the rental of one of the hundreds of gorgeous mansions and haciendas in San Miguel.

The much fewer expatriate men in evidence are sitting in the sun in the Jardin (the main plaza, sometimes called “Gringolandia” by the locals). Usually retirees dressed in shorts or jogging suits, they read the English language newspaper and watch the women, as the colors slowly change on the spires of the Parroquia. The full-time expat population stays at about 5,000 in a town of 50,000, but during the high seasons, the gringos seem to be everywhere.


Legend has it that there are thirteen women to every man in San Miguel. This includes Mexican women also, many of their men having gone north for work. The narrow cobblestone streets with steep, uneven sidewalks are filled with striking Mexican teenagers in tight jeans, young mothers carrying shawl-wrapped babies, women washing the sidewalks in front of their stores, tiny crones curled in doorways with knarled open hands, colorfully dressed Indian women marketing the pounds of beads over their arms, hawkers of dolls and baskets of dried flowers, women on the Jardin hacking coconuts open with a machete and selling the contents for ten pesos.

Whether Mexican, gringa or indigenous, there is no question that the women of San Miguel are a major, visible and vital presence in the town. Whether they were born in Mexico or have been adopted by it, the women are the ones who get things done.

Besides the Coldwater Creek-catalog gringas in graceful loose linen, there are the aging hippies, who are still trying to get by on art, blue denim and ethnic jewelry in lieu of hard currency. Wanting to change the world in the 60’s hasn’t dissuaded them from continuing to try in 21st Century Mexico, and they also volunteer, teach English, organize pet clinics, copy the artesanias of the Indians and make beaded jewelry, write letters to the editor of Atencion, the gringo newspaper, about ecology and social justice.

The New-age and holistic norteamericanas have a large clientele in the gringas who are exploring their spiritual sides, and they have made businesses out of teaching yoga, soul healing, dream interpretation, astrology, selling herbal medicine and feng shui advice. There for a while a decade or two ago Croning Ceremonies were a weekly event at the various hot springs outside of town. Solstice/Equinox celebrations at the Botanical Gardens continue to mark the seasons.

Foreign women move to San Miguel to forget a man, to find one, but above all to find themselves. Expatriates, and even tourists, can reinvent themselves, and every lady one meets professes to being an artist, writer, or psychotherapist. And why not? For most, it’s a chance to create a new life, and it’s now or never. Sometimes a gringa marries a young Mexican man and they go into a new business together, operating an inn, a restaurant, a gallery, a hair salon.



It is the women unconcerned with making a living or raising families who are now working to make a difference in Mexico, a country with so few social services. Middle age has found them to be comfortable financially, for the most part, or at least comfortable with doing without. Now they have a chance in their third age to contribute time, experience, knowledge, skill—and frequently, money.


Often without husbands or partners due to attrition or death, these capable women now have the independence to work for the underprivileged and handicapped, to express themselves finally in art, to learn Spanish, to access their spiritual sides, to raise money for hospitals and schools, to begin businesses, to build houses, to remodel convents into B & B’s. (Ironically they flock to a country where the women typically are not free from male domination to do whatever they like.)

Retired or independently wealthy and now denizens of Mexico, the freedom is liberating, and the feeling of “last chance” is everywhere. When asked why San Miguel, the answer always includes the fact that they feel safe there. (San Miguel was rated the third safest place to retire in the world by AARP).



The American women in San Miguel have seen enough--and suffered enough by the sheer strength of years--to actually have changed their value systems, the old ones were left up north with the BMWs and quite frequently, the husbands. Bitterness often lurks near the top of any conversation with a new transplant from the United States. Besides the popular conversational topics of real estate and library politics, newbies inevitably get around to past husbands.

If a number of these women have a great deal of money, they by and large don’t mind parting with some of it to benefit others. No gringo organization is without a favorite charity, and few foreign residents are too busy to volunteer because the obvious need is so great. Fundraisers are ongoing, from talent shows, cookbooks, lectures, raffles, rummage sales, home and city tours, any pleasant activity that can raise a few dollars for the needy, which are many.

Amazons in their strength, tall mature beauty, and determination to win—whether it’s new bathrooms for a country school, pre-natal care, or a last opportunity to be the artist or writer they had always planned on being and where did the time go?

They do all of this and still find the time to get pedicures and take cruises with their grandchildren.

Do the Mexicanas resent their northern sisters for taking over their town? For attempting to change things, for having the time and money to try? Most likely the Mexican women are too busy themselves to pass judgment—or to even notice. Mexican women of San Miguel are the doctors and dentists, pharmacists, lawyers, hotel and business owners, and the holders of the most real estate in the municipality. The dictionary defines Amazon as “a notably tall, physically strong, strong-willed woman.” Though generally smaller in stature than their northern counterparts and less flamboyant, nevertheless the Mexican women of San Miguel de Allende are amazing Amazons in their own daily hardworking, quiet right.

Solamente en San Miguel

A new anthology of writings on San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, comes out this month and I'm proud to say my essay, The Amazons of San Miguel, is included.

Before moving to Buenos Aires, Phoebe the Cat and I lived in San Miguel for 2 1/2 years--a gorgeous and inspirational place to live and work. I love Mexico. But there is very little tango there, and so the rest was history...and my destiny.

Oaxaca Tango

Imagine a large leafy square with fountains and huge trees, surrounded on four sides by the colorful arcades of ancient colonial buildings. Imagine the kiss of a chocolate scented breeze on your skin. Imagine a concert band playing a classical concert under the trees, with elderly couples rising casually from their benches to dance an elegant and sophisticated Danzon.

I didn’t have to imagine it, because I was in Oaxaca, a state capital city in southern Mexico that is as breathtaking as everyone says it is. Oaxaca is the second poorest state in Mexico but one of the richest in tradition, cuisine, culture, and natural beauty. I could have chosen no better vacation spot for the week I was away from my home in San Miguel de Allende, twelve hours north by bus.

I had lunch outside in the Zocalo, a tasty chicken dish with one of the six types of mole sauce that are Oaxacan specialties. The many colossal balloon clusters of invisible vendors seemed like eerie, silent witnesses to the life in the plaza. They bobbed, pulsed, breathed, appearing to me like living plastic and mylar beings of great wisdom. Zocalo life could come and go, but the balloons saw it all and weren’t telling.

Returning to my hotel, I glanced into the courtyard of an ancient building and saw dancers moving together without music. Stopping I looked harder because what they were doing reminded me of tango. A closer look told me it was tango, or was supposed to be.
Unable to help myself, I went inside and asked a seated woman if this was a rehearsal for a dance performance. No, it seemed this was a tango class! Well, I said, I am a tourist here, but I am a tango dancer.

The class came to a sudden halt, and I was swept toward the teacher, a skinny toothless old man. Someone punched play on the boombox, and nothing would do but the old man and I had to dance a tango together for the camcorder! After what was a very painful experience because he hadn’t a clue how to dance but must have picked up some choreography from Rudolf Valentino movies, they turned the video camera on me and asked me to dance solo!! So I did, I danced a solo tango which is now preserved on video in Oaxaca, Mexico!

I talked to some of the students, danced with young Alejandro and exchanged email addresses, and I sashayed on my way feeling like a movie star...

...from 2003

Today is Our Lady of Sorrows' Special Day

La Virgin de los Dolores is very dear to me. I really feel the pain of mothers who watch their children suffer.

On the Friday before Holy Week, in Mexico where I used to live in San Miguel de Allende, her day is celebrated with special, elaborate, and creative altars in homes and businesses. During the evening people solemnly visit as many as possible, always being offered a "fruit water" to drink that symbolizes the Virgin's tears. And the next day the altars are all taken down and preparations begin for Palm Sunday.

Four years ago I offered to build an altar in my friend Nelly's mail service office. I researched the symbols and spent the night before putting little flags into bitter oranges. Early in the morning I bought a bucket of fragrant fresh mint and chamomile to spread over the altar and on the floor. I used my purple satin Victoria Secret nightgown as a backdrop, because purple is her color of sadness.

Here are Nelly and me with the altar:

It was a fabulous experience for me, a time of much contemplation, meditation, and tranquility. How I miss the over-the-top spiritual life of Mexico! But you know, one Sunday three years ago after I first moved to Buenos Aires from Mexico, I was longing for the processions that used to move pass my window in San Miguel, and I looked out of my window in Congreso and saw a procession on its way to the nearby church. It was sort of raggedy and small, very simple: a priest and two altar boys, a small image of the virgin being carried by four men, and parishioners following with a few bouquets of flowers. But it was faith in the streets all the same, and an answer to my prayer. God usually provides.

To read more about processions under my balcony, as well as two years of other Mexican experiences, both spiritual and carnal, click the link to MEXICO DIARIES.