The Creative Collective

DOS CABEZAS y UN CORAZON (Two Heads and One Heart)

According to our beautiful grandmother, that is the secret of every perfect relationship whether measured into friendship, romance or marriage. Her advice to the Secretary of State would be "Go to Mexico with your heart and you will come back with the heart of Mexico."

This is not just another book about Mexico. In it we present some unusual exposures of the old-new land of Mexico. Our text is up-to-date by writers who have lived with the land and the people. Our illustrations are the expressions of artists and photographers who know and love Mexico.

If you feel that we are presenting only the beautiful side of Mexico, please remember that beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, and we have never seen anything there that did not in some way, by an alchemy possible only in Mexico, turn a sow's tooth into a pearl of beauty. Not a pearl of great price perhaps but, to a degree, still a pearl. The poet would ask of Mexico "How many ways do I love thee?" and, indeed, to number the ways would be impossible because Mexico is loved for many things and that love is returned in every changing nuance of light and shadow, and each face expresses a mood for every thought it reflects from you.

You will note we have subordinated the places already over-exposed, which are familiar to anyone who has read a tourist-oriented article on Mexico.

We have, on the other hand, purposely taken the choice to present the lesser known aspects of Mexico with words and pictures about strange and exotic places and some things rarely, if ever, shown before.

Each picture and every word comes first hand from on-the-scene personal experience. Every hour spent obtaining them was worth living; many of them will be worth living again, and that cannot be said of many things these days.

Everything was of interest the old cathedrals, little adobe chapels and shrines. Palacios, haciendas and thatched roof huts all belonged, and each, in its environ, was beautiful. The plazas arrd colonial grandeur of the big cities contrasted with the "back-in-time" misty serenity of the village squares.

Mexico's birds are like jewels on the wing. The variety, color and form of the native flora, whether in its wild state or carefully tended, with topiary artistry, are unforgettable and incomparable.

But, more than anything, the people, from the most courtly and the highest intellectuals to the darkest-skinned unschooled Indians the people are the priceless treasure and the unforgettable love of Mexico.

We were saddened only for the time we had to spend in sleep because the general ambience throughout Mexico is one of a slow but relentlessly determined dynamism not progress as we know it, but a vitality reflected by the ever-changing scene designed to not only upgrade the standard of living, but, also, to make the living more worth the while.

The Mexico of the manana is no more. The sombrero'd sleeper has awakened.

Old, old ways and pictures of primitive charm still abound throughout the land but they will not be there in the same form for too many more decades.

The traveller journeying to Mexico for the pleasure of seeing the country and its people will be amazed to find so many Mexicans who speak the language of his country. The stranger will quickly feel he has been here before, because the Mexican is happy to please, depending upon the degree of your grace which he reflects in double measure. We like the way Don Sanborn puts it "May the Mexicans you meet regard you alone as the finest American they have ever known."

We always think of Mexico as a beautiful woman, and are deeply grateful to God that we were especially privileged to be a welcome guest in her many mansions. We loved her, and were loved in return; and all this happened in our waking hours instead of only in our dreams. For those who have lived only with the dream, we hope that these pages will motivate a desire to see and know this sublime land of love and romance, before the changes of time and life take their inevitable toll. Joseph Stacey