Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
and the town had just built a new museum to display the collection. Comandante assumed
that I had come to Yanga to interview Daniel Cid and see the new museum.
While pages were being copied, I crossed the street to the plaza. An ornate, octagon-sided,
two-story bandstand that was decorated with iron lace, like you see in New Orleans, stood
in the center. Rockets boomed, announcing a fiesta. Opposite the bandstand, girls in white
dresses and veils and boys in white shirts milled about in front of the church.
I had stumbled into a celebration of a First Communion. Parents were seated in the church.
An offering table was set up in the aisle with a fresh basket of fruit, and sprays of roses
decorated the church benches. Behind the altar hung a huge cross bearing a crucified
Christ, three times taller than the priest. Two banners framed the cross and proclaimed, “I
am the bread of life….he that eats of this bread will have everlasting life.” The children
marched in pairs down the aisle and sat in the first pews. A bell rang, the priest performed
the Catholic mass, gave a short sermon then one by one the children received their first
communion. They seemed to represent all races, and I noticed a young girl with a radiant
first communion smile. She could have been Yanga's daughter.
When I returned, Jaime Gordillo Flores, a businessman, shop owner and father of four,
explained that his older daughter designed a symbolic dress for the annual mid-August
Yanga carnival, and she won first prize. “Would you like to see the costume?” he asked.
Now we had a real group. Comandante Omar Escalona called in Xavier, a bilingual po-
liceman, to take me to Daniel Cid's. But with Señor Gordillo's offer, we now had two des-
tinations. I wanted to see the monument to Yanga that was built near a local school.
Xavier and I were to follow Jaime's pickup. Xavier was a big guy and the car sagged as
he got in and pulled the door shut. He said that he had been on the force for two years but
was thinking about opening an English language school. He spoke with hardly a trace of
an accent. I asked, “Where in the U.S. did you learn English?”
“I've never been to the U.S.,” he said.
I was surprised. He said that he grew up in Córdoba and learned English at a local school.
Xavier asked me what music I liked in Mexico.
I mentioned “
Hombres Malvados
” (Evil Men).
