The origin stories of Ajijic are explained in a legend that begins this way; "There was a place far to the north called "Place of the Herons" or "Whiteness" and from its seven caves, seven tribes set out towards the south."
Jesús López Vega, artist, muralist, co-founder of the Ajijic Arts Center, and now historian and author, grew up hearing the myths and legends about the Lake Chapala area. He spent years researching the origins of those stories, and the history of Ajijic, and has now written - and beautifully illustrated - a book which will be published soon. But not just any book. Those who know Jesús know that this will be something extraordinary.
Jesús remembers sitting in the shade of an enormous lemon tree along with all the other kids, listening for hours as his grandmother told stories about the origins of Ajijic that had been handed down from generation to generation. As a kid, Jesús and his family lived on the lake with his extended family and he remembers always being very close to his grandparents. "I used to go with my grandfather to his fields in west Ajijic", Jesús told me, "riding behind him on a donkey, and I was always asking questions about his ancestors."
500 years ago, the road that Jesús and his grandfather walked, now known as Calle Ocampo, was referred to by the Spanish conquistadors as the Camino Reál. It was this route that Captain Alonso de Ávalos, cousin of Hernán Cortéz, followed for 300 km from the Spanish port of Tlacotla (Manzanilla) on the Pacific Ocean to Axixic in his conquest of Western Mexico in 1522-23, and it is on this road that Jesús now has his art studio.
"According to our ancestors, in the middle of the mid 15th century on the north shore of our Lake Chapala in the vicinity now known as Chante, San Juan Cosala, and Ajijic, the lands were governed by a Tlatoani named Cazcalotzin (Venerable Raven) who lived in the ceremonial center Teopantitla (place of holy banners)." Thus begins the oral traditions of the history of Lake Chapala as documented in a manuscript entitled Orígenes.
"When I was a teenager in 1984", Jesús remembers, "the lake was very low, and thousands of pre-Columbian ceramic figures were revealed in the dry mud along the lake’s shore. All the kids, including my brothers and friends, started to collect them and I began to wonder where all these miniature clay figures came from. What kind of people would throw these little vessels into the lake? What was their purpose?"
Remembering the stories that his grandmother had told him, he began to research the local history searching out ancient legends, stories, and mythologies in an attempt to find answers. In 1985 Jesús and his friends found a large number of artifacts along the shoreline where the Zapota River empties into the lake, so they followed the course of the river up into the hills. "Eventually we came to an ancient site on a hillside, about a mile west of Ajijic." This, as it turns out, was the ancient pre-Columbian village of AXIXIC (Teopantitla). "I remembered hearing about this place from my parents and grandparents along with stories of other ruins and petroglyphs around the lakeside. The more I found out, the more fascinated I became. My passion was ignited."
Jesús' curiosity to find out more about the history of western Mexico eventually led him to La Conquista de la Nueva Galicia, and the early XVI century religious chronicles from the Spanish Friar, Fray Antonio Tello. What he found there led him to other historical documents that described the lakeside area during the conquest by Alonso de Ávalos, and these documents in turn led him to information that detailed the evangelization of western Mexico and the founding of the first convent in New Spain at lakeside, Convento de San Francisco de Axixic, by Fray Martin de Jesús in 1531. Still more information was revealed in “Leyenda Orígenes de Axixic”; a collection of stories that describe the native people from Ajijic (Xitomatl and Xicantzia) before the Spanish conquest.
"One of the things I found in these texts was multiple references to the Ruta de Aztlán, the legendary journey of the last Mexica tribe that came from the north in the early XIII century." Aztlán, Jesús explained, was the "Place of the Herons" the mythical place of seven caves that Jesús had heard about since he was a child. "The route split at one point with some of the Mexica people traveling south to Tenochtitlan, what is now Mexico City, and others stopping on the shores of Lake Chapala", Jesús told me, and he beautifully illustrates all this in the pages of his book.
His great, great grandfather, Ambrosio Padilla, had been a scribe for the Cofradia de la Limpia Concepción, an ancient confederation or brotherhood responsible for the material care of religious artifacts, images, ceremonies and documents of the church and hospital during the Franciscan regime. His great grandmother, Francisca Padilla, also worked as a caretaker of the church, and his grandmother would tell stories of when she was a child, watching her mother as she held many of the original Spanish church documents in her hands and told about a secret enclosure in the wall behind the altar, where these documents were hidden.
Years later Jesús found some of these documents that had been rescued from the church and spirited away for safekeeping during the Mexican and Cristero Revolutions in 1910 and 1927. "My grandfather on my father’s side had taken part in the Cristero revolt", Jesús told me, "and I remember my father telling stories of how my grandfather stood in what was then the graveyard in front of San Andres church, rifle in hand, defying the authorities".
What Jesús came to realize over time was that the stories of his grandmother, and the stories he had heard from the oral traditions his entire life, were substantiated by the old written texts and Spanish chronicles, the church documents, archeological and scientific texts, and in the evidence found in Lake Chapala and in the surrounding hills.
We walked one morning with Lupe, a 92 year old friend of Jesús, and life-long resident of Ajijic as he guided us through the fascinating story of this remarkable community. He showed us where the construction of the carretera sliced through the middle of the ancient sacred ceremonial grounds at Teopantitla cleaving it in half, and how the Spanish built their own Christian temples over what once were the sites of the Temple of the Sun and The Temple of the Moon now forever separated.
He guided us to the original location of the Piedra de Tortuga the pre-historic ceremonial rock on the edge of the Zapota River, and then walked us further up into the hills to the ancient goldmines, and pointed out the location of the ancient shaft tomb that he found with artifacts still undisturbed. He pointed to the spot on the side of the river gully where many years ago he had found a broken ceremonial dog vessel, known to be associated with prehistoric shaft tombs that have been found from Lake Chapala to Colima. Architectural evidence has been found in Colima that dates similar Xolo vessels to 3,500 years ago.
Jesús describes, and beautifully illustrates all of this in his book, and more. He talks about the legends surrounding the enormous image of an eagle on Red Mountain. He talks about his friend, Pablo Marquez (El Cuate), a neighbor of mine who still at 70+ years old rides his bicycle to work the fields on the old communal land in the hills who, as he was plowing his fields, unearthed what they believe to be the stone ring or goal from an ancient ball court adjacent to the old burial grounds.
Jesús tells the stories of the Piedra Rayada, a huge rock covered with pre-Columbian petroglyphs that now sits behind the walls of a private home on the hillside. He talks about the Ojo de Agua, the spring on the side of the mountain that was the life-source of the village and the origin of the name Ajijic. He talks about the "Huentli" or Sangrias de Mayo, the ancient ceremony where the participants deposited drops of blood, sometimes sweat, sometimes tears, into small ceramic vessels, sealed the vessel with masa, and deposited them in the lake along with armfuls of flowers to honor the rain god Tlaloc and to ensure a fruitful harvest. It was these vessels that Jesús found at the lake beginning in 1984.
And of course he talks about Teo Michicihualli, the goddess of the lake, that is the focus of many of his murals around lakeside. He talks about the Cocas, the indigenous people who lived here for centuries before the Aztecs and before the Spanish arrived, and the veneration they had for the land and the lake and the world around them. He describes the ceremonies they performed that were designed to honor, respect , and preserve this land for future generations, a lesson we could all learn from today if we would just listen to the voices of our ancestors.
Jesús' art has an innocence about it. Even when the subject is historical, it is infused with a sense of magical realism that evokes the dream-like quality of the myths and legends of early Mexico. It explores the strangeness and incongruity of existence with a juxtaposition of images that evoke a quality of wonder and a distortion of time and space. It is a realism that allows us to explore the mysticism of everyday life. His style heightens the tension between history and legend, between myth and reality, between the indigenous beliefs and the evangelization by the XVI century Catholic Church. The book delicately intertwines the myths that the indigenous people embraced to explain the world, and the Spanish preference for Catholicism, science, and military dominance to legitimize their own peculiar sense of destiny.
If you live here at lakeside, this book is essential to understanding the layers of history beneath our feet. And if you don't live here, this book will make you wish that you did.
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Photography by Bill Sheehan
April, 2020