In the news:
Originally published Saturday, February 4, 2012 at 7:03 PM
An easygoing trip into Mexico's past
The small town of Tlaxcala, just two hours from Mexico City, has an almost kaleidoscopic palette compared to the hazy-brown air of polluted...
The New York Times
ADRIANA ZEHBRAUSKAS / NYT
The 18th-century Hacienda Casa Malinche in Tlaxcala state gives a glimpse into Mexico's colonial past.
The small town of Tlaxcala, just two hours from Mexico City, has an almost kaleidoscopic palette compared to the hazy-brown air of polluted Mexico City.
The town's low colonial-era buildings are painted in burnt umber, salmon pink and mustard yellow, and the domes of the tangerine-toned cathedral are covered with cobalt blue ceramic tiles. And unlike Mexico City, where the overwhelming traffic can feel like a glue trap, Tlaxcala has a compact center that makes an easy base for exploring the big-sky beauty of the surrounding countryside.
This is the central appeal of Tlaxcala, home to about 15,000 people. It is a town built on a modest scale that has retained its historical charms. It is also the seat of the safest state in Mexico — also called Tlaxcala — with a low crime rate to match.
Tlaxcala (pronounced Tloks-CA-la) is set amid a sweeping valley where maize and chilies have been cultivated in the rich, volcanic soil since pre-Columbian days. The twin Popocatépetl and Ixtacihuatl volcanoes stand tall in the distance, capped in snow, with Popocatépetl occasionally smoking.
On this fertile earth, Tlaxcalan ancestors built cities of stone and painted them with depictions of jaguars and feathered serpents; they warred with a powerful rival nation, the neighboring Aztecs. When the Spaniards landed, the area's indigenous warriors allied with the European conquerors.
In the centuries that followed, some 1,000 haciendas were built in the state — large, rural estates that grew a mix of Old and New World crops, raised livestock and produced pulque, the slimy, fermented sap of the agave plant (known in Mexico as maguey).
Today, about 200 or so haciendas remain, clusters of churches, stables and schools rising above the cornfields. Most are decaying relics, but about a dozen have been restored and are open to visitors, either as museum-like hotels packed with antiques and artifacts or as restaurants. In the landscape of central Mexico's highlands, these crumbling adobe and stone complexes give an eerie, cinematic glimpse into Mexico's gilded age.
