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La Iglesia del Calvario shines in the heartland
village of Vetagrande.
Photograph by David Alan Harvey |
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Click for Heartland map.
Hear author Michael Parfit.
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WE FLY TO THE HEARTLAND of Mexico, the region known as México
Profundo, where life seems suspended in a Spanish colonial past.
“I flew from Torreón all the way down to Guadalajara in the afternoon and
crossed a lot of the heartland,” Parfit said, “and I got this impression of
these old fields, surveyed in an antique fashion. Farmers would probably
draw a line from a rock to a tree to a fence post, and that was their field.
Whatever worked for them as human beings was what they put on the land.
“And I would see these colonial churches that would sit up on a hilltop,
with their twin towers. I crossed this part of the landscape late in the
day, when each of these high points in the land would catch the sun and
shine out [above].
“The landscape looks rich and productive, but people are extremely poor.
The ones out in the country get by on almost no money at all, but it’s not a
rag-tag country from the air. People have things—architecture, farming
methods, community planning—that hold them to the ground, things they care
about, that give their lives meaning, and I actually could see that as I
flew over. Roads go somewhere, there are very few ruins . . . there is a
sense that these are people who have an intact culture that is not about to
come apart.”
WE LAND in the landscape Parfit describes as “worn and familiar as
old marble stairs softened by centuries of passing feet.” Click to see these
photo stories:
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Rodeo prospers in the heartland, where charros
work their livestock, and champions show off their fancy ropework.
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Tarascan Indians fish with butterfly nets in landlocked Lake
Pátzcuaro. They hold to deep traditions, including an elaborate Day
of the Dead.
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