Yesterday, from the top of Cantona’s tallest pyramid, I had a magnificent view of the Basin of Libres-Oriental, which is a vast plain, maybe 100 km long in the north to south direction, and 60 km in west to east direction. It is an endorheic basin, meaning that all the water and sediment that accumulates in it drains internally rather than having an opening to the sea. The basin is bound to the north by the massif of Los Humeros, to the east by the andesitic ridge of the Pico de Orizaba to Cofre de Perote volcanoes, to the south by the narrow volcanic ridge of San Salvador el Seco, and to the west by the limestone ridge that extends between the towns of Zaragoza, Libres, and Oriental. In other words it is a rectangular sand box, elongated to the north, that forms the eastern end of the Mexican Altiplano. Because it has no river that drains it to the sea, this basin is full of groundwater. To the brim! Accordingly, there are many lagoons within it, and the different magmas that have reached the surface have interacted explosively with the shallow groundwater to form broad and shallow tuff rings called maars by geologists. The native inhabitants called xalapascos and axalapascos, depending on whether they were a dry bowl of sand (their bottom being above the water table), or whether they were a bowl of sand filled with water (the “a” in the word axalapasco means “water”) (the water is of course the water table). From my vantage point I could see at least two of these axalapascos, as well as the xalapasco on the north flank of the Cerro Pinto rhyolite dome.
I could also see the enormous rhyolite dome of the Cerro Pizarro (a unique hypersthene rhyolite that could be the Mexican equivalent of Sutter Buttes in California), the Las Aguilas rhyolite dome (with a beautiful pumiceous carapace and a crumble breccia all around it), and the huge rhyolite domes of Las Derrumbadas (two unique garnet rhyolites). There were of course any number of basaltic cinder cones and here and there remnants of the folded Mesozoic limestones of the Sierra Madre Oriental.
Why am I talking about yesterday today? Because when I crossed the Basin of Libres-Oriental on my way to Puebla, instead of the glorious sun of yesterday I was carefully feeling my way through the fog that is such a common phenomenon in this region. I did the right tourist thing and stopped at the Axapalasco of Alchichica, a beautiful lagoon rimmed by tufa towers, and climbed to the border of the Axalapasco of San Luis Atexcac, which happens to be my absolute favorite.
I also reflected that, given the abundance of shallow groundwater, the region is ripe for expansion of irrigated agriculture, although so far rain-fed agriculture seems to be doing alright.
On my way to the city of Puebla I took a detour to visit the beautiful pueblos mágicos of Cholula and Santa Maria Tonanzintla. The church of the latter is the maximum exponent of the Mexican Baroque, the style that develop after the native artisans blended their art and cultural experiences with the traditions of the European baroque. The combination of both traditions created an explosion of color and unique imagery that has no equal anywhere else in the world.
Before I tell you something about the city of Puebla, I need to go back to the years of 1519 to 1521, when a crazy group of less than 200 Spaniards landed in Veracruz, and proceeded to poke the Aztec empire. There is no doubt that they were clever and incredibly brave, but you cannot pit a band of 200 to an empire of 200,000. But Cortés realized that there were another 200,000 indigenous people that were subjugated by the Aztecs and thus hated them. So he gained all these other tribes to his cause, for convenience I will call them Tlaxcaltecas, and in 1521 was able to march against Mexico Tenochtitlan at the head of a native army equal to that of the Aztecs, but supported by the steel weapons and arquebuses of the Spaniards. So the Aztecs lost, and the Tlaxcaltecas started thinking that they deserved the lion’s share, a position further strengthened by the fact that their capital, Tlaxcala, was in the way between Veracruz and Mexico so they could keep an eye on everything that came and went.
It was then, in 1531, that a new city—Puebla de los Angeles—was established from scratch by Spaniards for Spaniards at a location even better suited to regulate the trade between Veracruz and Mexico, with the intention of creating a safe heaven far away from the Tlaxcaltecas. It was as switcharoo to take economic and political power from Tlaxcala, and it worked like a charm, since afterward Tlaxcala remained a poor backward state compared to Puebla.
As far as the tourist is concerned, however, Puebla is a center of culture, architecture, and the arts, on top of being an important cluster of economic activity. With 3.5 million inhabitants it is the fourth largest city in Mexico.
I had booked a hotel via Booking but was horrified when I
found that it was smack in the middle of the produce market. This was not going
to do, so I called them and cancelled, and trusting my instincts I booked a
comfortable room in a hotel barely one block from the zocalo. I walked
around downtown for a while, visiting the beautiful chapel of El Rosario, the
crafts market of El Parián, and the Artists quarter, but eventually found it
more efficient to take the Touri-Bus to take a bird’s eye view of the city.
Tomorrow I will revisit some of the most interesting spots.
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