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A few miles downstream from Batopilas, the old mining town deep in Mexico’s Copper Canyons, stands a magical mystery: the neglected church of Satevo, built by Jesuits around 1740, of such enormous size the clerics must have expected a city to develop around it. None did. Its dome, some 60 feet (18 meters) high, alone in the vast, roadless canyon mountains, led one journalist to dub it the Lost Cathedral, though it is neither. The church lost some of its magic a few years ago, when roadless ended, thanks to a new government-bulldozed link from Batopilas. But it retains its Jesuit acoustics, great for impromptu concerts.

Until recently, only a footpath led to the abandoned 260-year-old “Lost Cathedral,” deep in Batopilas Canyon. Photograph by Jonathan Tourtellot

On my visit, a little band of guests from the inn at Batopilas sits on benches in the nave. The inn’s chief guide plays classical guitar, and the inn manager, Oscar Ortega sings, a cappella. Oscar Ortega is a concert tenor. His clear voice soars into the high vaulted dome like a rising liquid breeze. Crystal song fills the vast space. The church was built for this voice. “Angelic” has new meaning.

Afterward, one guest is ecstatic: “Now, that’s something only a traveler would experience, not a tourist!” he exclaims. “A tourist just skims the surface.”

So wrong, so right, so . . . symbiotic. This “traveler” is being coddled from sunup to sundown on an all-inclusive package, guided everywhere, fed his tasteful-but-not-too-startling meals at the inn. Yet compared to the trainloads up at Divisadero on the canyon rim, or the RV fleets so eagerly awaited by the new KOA campground in Creel, he is right: Those legions will never share this experience.

And it could not have happened without him. Without tourism, Ortega would not be living in Batopilas, Satevo would echo only to ranchero songs from some passing cowboy’s boom box, and the world would be the poorer for it.

—Jonathan B. Tourtellot

Get the complete story in the July/August 1999 issue of TRAVELER.

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