Lecture & Slideshow
The Magnificent Maya: Part I
Guillermo Méndez
Wed, Jul 22, 3pm
Teatro Santa Ana
Biblioteca Pública 
60 pesos


Bookmakers of Mesoamerica
By Guillermo Méndez

The Maya were the most advanced of all the ancient civilizations of Mesoamerica. They inhabited southern Mexico, Belize, Guatemala and the western boundaries of Honduras and El Salvador.

They built cities and paved roadways, although they used no wheeled vehicles of any kind. Their astronomers plotted the movements of the visible planets and stars using a mathematics that included zero, a rare accomplishment in world history. They were the only people of the New World to develop a complete written language that could express, in writing, anything spoken. They made books that combined illustrations and glyphs.

The magnificent Maya are the subject of a lecture focusing on architecture and art, the Bonampak murals and Maya mathematics.

Lecturer Guillermo Méndez is a retired professor of humanities.



_________________________________________


Talk & Slideshow
Pátzcuaro
Arturo Morales Tirado
Tue, Jul 21, 1:30pm
Teatro Santa Ana
Biblioteca Publica
Insurgentes 25
60 pesos

Indigenous tradition still alive
By Arturo Morales Tirado

Pátzcuaro, the main craft and cultural center of the Purépecha’s indigenous traditions, nestles in a pine forest on a plateau in a beautiful landscape accented by a high-altitude lake. Purépecha means “river of the frogs.”

Pátzcuaro is allied to the cultural life of San Miguel de Allende from the time of the indigenous Mesoamerican civilizations. The Chupícuaro, for more than 2,000 years, developed to the south and north of the Lerma river basin. The Purépechas constituted in the Postclassic era an independent territory of the Mexica or Aztec military domination and extended their area of influence to the south of the present state of Guanajuato,

From Pátzcuaro, Franciscan friars and indigenous people came to found the San Miguel village between 1540 and 1550. One image of great veneration in San Miguel comes from that time. “The Master of Conquista” is exhibited in its exclusive altar in the main parish of the city, which was elaborated with the old technique of corn-cane paste sculptures, a technique that, to this date, is continued in Pátzcuaro by, among others, Don Antonio Hernández González.

Pátzcuaro was host to the archbishopric of Michoacán in the sixteenth century, where Don Vasco of Quiroga (a Catholic priest), put in practice the Renaissance utopia of Thomas More, turning to this in the cultural and handicraft center city of the Purépechas, which, in diverse towns, specialized in the production of articles and services that even today express great local identity and personality, like: Santa Fe de la Laguna, Quiroga, Tzintzuntzan, Erongarícuaro, Chupícuaro, Tócuaro, Ihuatzio, Santa Clara del Cobre, Zirahuén, Yunuen and Janitzio.

Today, a visit to Pátzcuaro lets one experience the root of Mexican identity in Mesoamerican indigenous traditions, expressed in festivals related to the Catholic ritual calendar like Easter, Saint Isidro the Farmer, Saint Juan Baptist and, of course, the celebration of El Día de los Muertos.