A Miracle in Mexico

Author’s NoteGeographically Mexico is a unique country. It boasts towering mountain ranges, broad high plateaux and jungle lowlands. The temperatures are as varied as the scenery. Rainfall in some places is a few drops a year. In the Southern part of the country the annual precipitation can be as much as sixteen feet in the Grijalva River valley. Mexico has had roughly twenty centuries of turmoil, invasion, occupations and revolutions. Spanish is the language now after the Spanish invasion although English is widely spoken. In some outlying areas the ancient Indian languages are still spoken by the inhabitants. The God Quetzalcoatl is the God of Life, the God of Rain and the God of the Morning Star and has always been of great importance with the Mexicans. Towns were built in his honour and the Marriage Service that I describe in this novel still takes place among his followers. Benito Juarez was born a poor Zapotec Indian who was educated in a Convent School and rose to the Supreme Court. He became President, but once lived in exile in New Orleans. There are many monuments to him because he was a great reformer known for this personal integrity and ideals – he tried to lead his country forward to a new Nationalism. Juarez initiated the Reform Movement, which expropriated Church properties, placed education under state control and proclaimed religious liberty. In general he separated the Church and the State. It took years to accomplish, but because of Juarez, the convent-educated Indian intellectual, it all began. What he did accomplish was to give Mexico a sense of being a united Nation.