From Catorce to Plateros: Wherein I Sketch My Grand Itinerary & Make a Few Final Notes on Catorce

Yesterday, I left Catorce after a week there.   I took a bus south to Cuidad San Luis Potosi and then north to Zacatecas, and from there to Fresnillo.  Early this afternoon I took a cab to the shrine of El Santo Nino de Atoches, which I will post separately on after this.

This a map showing the geographical relationships relevant to my wanderings in this part of central Mexico:

 (This is a Google maps link - I hope I've figured the technicalities of linking, if I have you should be able to zoom in and out to get the whole context of what I am about..  The bus route is a more circuitous route than that of the blue line here.  The bus goes further south to San Luis then north to Zecatecas, which is 63 km from Fresnillo.  But the blue line makes the relationship between the shrines of Catorce and Plateros clear:)


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I've decided to commit to visiting all the major shrines of Mexico, as I understand them.   Seeing as they are all basically grouped in this north central part of the country around Guadlajara and Mexico City, it's an easy itinerary to make sense.

These are the shrines:

Catorce (the statue of San Francisco), the statue of the Christ Child here in Plateros, the Shrine of San Juan de los Lagos just north of Guadalajara, the Shrines of the Mexican Martyrs and that of Our Lady of Zapopan in Guadalajara,, and (of course) the most visited Catholic shrine in the entire world, that of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City.

There may be one or two other sites that I'll add to that list along the way, if it makes any sense.. I may try to visit all nine of the World Heritage churches in Mexico, as well as the shrines of Puebla, the Shrine of Our Lady of Ocotlan and the Shrine of Saint Michael the Archangel there.  

After I complete my great Mexican pilgrimage, which (as is justo y neccesario) must finally end in Guadalupe, I will go down the Pacific coast and then cut inland to Oaxaca and then the Yucatan.  I may go even farther, but I will go at least that far.  

Now, as for my leaving Catorce yesterday morning:

The wake I told you about in the last post was still on when I left.  I wrote that post just before midnight the evening before.   There where dozens of people in the courtyard below my room singing and praying well past 1 a.m. when I finally fell asleep.  I had to use my handy earplugs to block the noise (the little foam plugs you use when operating loud machinery) which have come in handy over and over again on this trip.   I'll never travel without them, again.  When I left the next morning there were still people praying the rosary and dozens more filing through the side room off the courtyard where the body was displayed in a glass box, as is typical at Mexican wakes.  Many people were crying, even men, which I find interesting because it seems to run counter to what you'd expect given Mexican machismo. 

This was not my first experience of a Mexican funeral.  I'd been to another one back in 1997 when I was teaching English in Sonora.  A girl, in her mid- twenties, who was working as a secretary at the school fell off a galloping horse and was killed.  I'd had a passing acquaintance with the girl, who'd had quite a spunky personality.  That funeral, held in the small village cossetted by great irrigation canals and miles of agricultural fields, near Obregon where she'd lived, was an experience I've often thought of writing about.   It was like something out of Camus crossed with Octavio Paz..

This funeral in Catorce made me recall that one, as well as my recent experience at my friend Geoff's wake in Cleveland.  At that wake the only person who shed any tears that I saw was Geoff's mother.   Everyone else was at turns somber and convivial.  I was not at the "official" wake, and left before the internment, but spent a day and a half with the family, and saw no one pray.  I prayed for him when I saw his body the next day (a privilege that his family wanted me to have, and one I gratefully accepted), but silently.  His friends actually all commented on how the presence of a Lutheran pastor at the funeral home during the official visiting hours leading prayers and preaching a sermon was a false note, in that Geoff was not at all religious himself, and was in fact almost always skeptical and teasing or even mocking when it came to religion.  He had no qualms teasing and making fun of me about it.

The contrast with the wake in Catorce couldn't have been starker, in that sense.   There was no sense of celebration or  lightheartedness.   It was all sorrow for the loss, and intercessory prayer in the old school Catholic tradition.  No professional weepers like at a traditional Southern European funeral, but plenty of open sobbing, even a times hysteria, all the same.

This is the Ogarrio tunnel, that 2.3 km I walked through the night I arrived.  I took the bus out, this last  time.

Anyway, I'm still trying to figure out how to replace my Nikon's battery recharger.  Something that would be relatively simple in the Sates, here is going to require some logistical effort.  Since my battery is almost dead, I've been taking few pictures, and not spending a lot of time composing the ones I do take.   I'm still learning how to use an SLR, and don't have the luxury of trying many things each subject I shoot, like I usually do. 

So, my pictures will be crap - or more crap than usual - until I get a new charger.. Which I hope to find in Guadalajara this coming week..

I took some mediocre shots of the Shrine in Plateros this afternoon that I'll post this evening..

I'm composing my blog posts with the same care as I have been my pictures, see.  Crap, crap, all around.  If you've read this entire post it is true proof you love me.  There could be no other reason sufficient to wade through such a waft of indifferent prose..

You deserve a prize, an assurance of my undying regard and affection..



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