"Echoes of Eden" Dayle King Searle

Jerry Wright wanted to experiment with renting a car and driving somewhere, so Friday afternoon we took off with the Wrights for a little town called Villa del Carbόn. It’s a couple of hours north of us and a little over 1,000 feet higher. The hardest part of the drive was the part in Mexico City. At least half of the time it took to get to Villa del Carbόn was spent just getting out of the city. Once we did that, it was a lovely drive up into the forest. Villa del Carb ό n is a vacation town, but not one Americans frequent. It reminded me a little of Island Park, because it is a small city in the mountains where people from the nearby large cities go for a quick getaway. I was looking at all the cute buildings as we were driving around trying to find the zocalo, when I saw a familiar sign. I exclaimed, “That was one of our churches!” It was only a couple of blocks from the zocalo, so we walked back to it later. It was fun to see that we have a presence even in a little place like th

  Most people in the United States think Cinco de Mayo is Mexico’s Independence Day. They are wrong. That’s the commemoration of a battle Mexico won against the French. The actual Independence Day is September 16, which was last Friday. About a month ago I began seeing red, white, and green decorations going up everywhere and thought, “Wow, they’re decorating for Christmas early.” Then I realized those are the patriotic colors for Mexico, and they were decorating for Independence Day not Christmas. One of the traditions for Independence Day in Mexico is El Grito (the yell.) The official Grito takes place in the Zocalo, the historic city square of Mexico City. It commemorates Miguel Hidalgo, a Catholic priest who was one of the heroes of the Mexican revolution. On September 16, 1810, he rang his church bell and gave a fiery call to arms which was the beginning of the revolution. His speech ended with “Viva Mexico! Viva Mexico! Viva Mexico!” Every year at 11 pm on September 15, the presi