Baños de Niagra - 1971
Santa Ana (Chiautempan), Tlaxcala

Tlaxcala looms large in Mexican history, because Hernán Cortez stopped there in 1519 to enlist the support of the Tlaxcalans for his conquest of the Aztecs (Mexica) in Tenochtitlan, thus changing the history of Mexico forever.

Some 450 years later, I spent the summer of 1969 in the village of Santa Isabel Xiloxoxtla, Tlaxcala a village of some 1,000 people on the lower slopes of La Malinche, an inactive volcano. Paved roads were soon to make the surrounding villages of the Malinche Mountain quite accessible from nearby larger cities like Puebla and Tlaxcala; television sets were introduced during the summer of 1969, allowing the villagers to see the first landing of men on the moon.

I remember the night of the first moon landing. I had borrowed a villager’s flimsy bike to ride the few miles to the larger town of Santa Ana, Chiautempan chased part of the way by various village dogs who were trying to bite my legs as I pedaled. In Santa Ana I got to see on television that crowning moment of human history when Neil Armstrong became the first earthling to walk on the moon.