Pátzcuaro: The Enchanted Lake

cruelty and selfishness of a minority. You see years of revolution and bloodshed, and the terrible turmoil and unrest those years caused. Adventurers and selfish men have come along to leave their dirty finger prints on the history books.

Now all of that is changed.

With the City of México as the inspirational fountain, a great liberalization of the country is now taking place and has been taking place.

The past decade in the Republic of México has seen more good being done for the betterment of all the people than took place the preceding century.

In Mexico City men with vision are planning more roads and better roads. They are planning schools. They are making it possible for medicine to be the lot of the many instead of the privilege of the few. Vast reclamation projects are being formulated. The science of agriculture is leaving the classrooms and is going out in the fields to be put to work side by side with the poor farmer.Such are some of the forces at work in this proud capital city of the Aztecs, of Colonial Spain, of all México today. The people look to their capital with hope for better and better things. They are not being disappointed.

But México is going about her duties to the people of the Republic, not grimly, but with the charm that permeates all things Mexican.México is essentially a gay city, and it should be so because the Mexican people are essentially a gay and happy people. There is always time to greet a friend and inquire after his health and that of his family. There is always time to repeat the latest joke, some wit has spun good-naturedly about a statesman a little bit overwhelmed by his own importance.

There is always time to discuss the merits or the demerits of the matador in the bull ring last Sunday, and always time to patiently explain a street direction to a dazed tourist. No man is too busy or too important that he can avoid for long the family circle, for the Mexican home is the friendliest of institutions.

México, like her people, has seen good times and bad times. You make the best of the situation and learn to be patient and take things easy.

When you number your years by over five centuries you find there is always time to laugh and always time for the lighter things of life. México has learned well the lessons of the centuries.

The island of Janitzio (Ha-nee-cho) is one of the colorful islands in Lake Pátzcuaro. Towering over the island is the impressive monument in honor of the solidarity of the Indian tribes on the American continent. Tarascan Indian fishermen live here. (Photo by Dorothy Hamilton.)

Patzcuaro THE ENCHANTED LAKE

PÁTZCUARO is sheer poetry, the rhythmic blend of sky and lake and colorful countryside. The name (Póts-kwah-ro) means a lake, a village, but it cannotes many villages and a region in many ways the most spectacular and idyllic in all of México.

Almost midway between Guadalajara and México, at an elevation of seven thousand and a few feet, Pátzcuaro is a famed fishing center for the Tarascan Indians. Over twenty of their villages, including Pátzcuaro itself, surround the lake and run over the little islands in the lake. The fields of the industrious Tarascans, art creations in black soil and green crops, border the lake, enhancing the beauty and the simplicity of the idyll. Nets, white and clean, dry in the sunshine in the villages. Tile roofs glisten in the sunlight, and rock steps and walks run indiscriminately through the pattern of the villages like gay ribbons.

Here the Tarascan monarchs came in the summertime in the days of the empire long, long ago. The name itself means "Place of Delights," and truly Pátzcuaro could not be better described. Today wealthy Mexicans have built great summer homes around the lake, unobtrusively sharing the sunshine and the scenery with the neighboring villages. Several beautiful resort hotels, answering the need of the modern traveler, have been built

Poetry of lake and sky and simple, dignified people that is Pátzcuaro, the lake, the town, and the surroundings. There are over twenty villages scattered around the lake, and the little, green farms of the Tarascan border the lake on all sides.around the lake, most notable of which is the "Posada de Don Vasco." This region, within the boundaries of that beautiful Mexican state, Michoacan, has also gained fame as an art center, one of those tantalizing places in México where the artist is beset with so many vivid pictures, so much color, such infinite combinations of sky, lake and countryside as to bewilder the senses of the poor mortal. Pátzcuaro is not painting-Pátzcuaro is poetry, and poetry set to music, the grandiose music of a lavish and benificent Creator.

To the villages of Pátzcuaro come each Friday Tarascans from all the villages around the lake and from the island villages within the lake for the weekly shopping day. At sunup little fishing boats by the hundreds start for Pátzcuaro, countless specks of white in the blue of the lake. The trails and roads are filled with Tarascans carrying their goods to market or urging laden burros to greater haste. Here is enacted each week a market almost with the proportion of a country fair, the most colorful market day in all of México.

To the Tarascans themselves their lake and their rich countryside is a gift of the gods, where all the days of their lives are serenely passed. The rains come in the summertime, each day bringing a shower to wet the fields and create growth and life in their crops. The skies clear in winter and colorful gabansserape-like blankets of all colors known to man, appear with the season to augment the translucent blue of the sky and to take the chill off the clear, pure air.

There are endless things of interest about Pátzcuaro. In the little village of Tzintzuntzan (Tseen-Tsoon-tsahn), "The Place of the Humming Birds," is an old monastery where hangs today a painting attributed to Titian. Here, too, are ruins of the former capital of the Tarascan kingdom, an archaeologist's delight.

Here on Pátzcuaro the tree-trunk canoes and the ladies are holding their own against the sailboats and motor-boats. The Tarascans are content with their lake and the ways of their fathers and their father's father. Modern ways are good but old ways are good, too.