Xalapa
The Mexican state of Veracruz, Xalapa-Enriquez its capital, is best known for the commencement of two great campaigns which irreparably altered the course of Mexican and world history. Over three centuries apart, the two military marches launched from the same place on Veracruz's coast. In 1519, the Spaniards first landed, followed by the Norte Americanos in 1847. Both forces passed through Xalapa, a beautiful town in the hills ascending below the imposing sentinel of the Volcan Orizaba toward the great Mexican valley and its capital Tenochtitlan, later Mexico City.
Xalapa is Nahuatl for “a spring from sand.” When the Conquistador Cortes passed through, with his 500 soldiers and 11 horses on one of history's most sublimely ridiculous campaigns, Xalapa was only four little villages under Mexica rule. Three centuries later, the seminal German ecologist Alexander von Humboldt gave Xalapa its nickname, la ciudad de las flores (city of flowers) writing, “This site, one of the most beautiful and picturesque in the known world.”
American historian William Prescott in his magnificent The Conquest of Mexico poetically describes the route both Cortes and the Americans experienced from the Gulf coast up to Xalapa,
“The traveler finds himself rising into a purer atmosphere. His limbs recover their elasticity. He breathes more freely, for his senses are not now oppressed by the sultry heats and intoxicating perfumes of the valley. When he has ascended about four thousand feet, he sees in the unchanging verdure, and the rich foliage of the liquid-amber tree, that he has reached the height where clouds and mists settle, in their passage from the Mexican Gulf. This is the region of perpetual humidity; but he welcomes it with pleasure, announcing his escape from the deadly vomito (yellow fever). He has entered the tierra templada, or temperate region, whose character resembles that of the temperate zone of the globe. The features of the scenery become grand, and even terrible. His road sweeps along the base of mighty mountains once gleaming with volcanic fires, and still resplendent in their mantles of snow. All around he beholds traces of their ancient combustion, as his road passes along vast tracts of lava, bristling in the innumerable fantastic forms into which the fiery torrent has been thrown by the obstacles in its career. Perhaps, at the same moment, as he casts his eyes down some steep slope, or almost unfathomable ravine, on the margin of the road, he sees their depths glowing with the rich blooms and enamelled vegetation of the tropics. Such are the singular contrasts presented at the same time, to the senses, in this picturesque region!”
Today, Xalapa is a vibrant small city seemingly without a straight street, all curving around or across hills and through shallow, soft ravines. The once thick cloud forest has vanished. The Mexican urban landscape largely denuded of tall vegetation, except conspicuous stands in a few small parks. It's a very middle class town, best characterized by its numerous cars. At times, the constant flow of automobiles provide an almost American feel.
The automobile defined the 20th century middle class. Traveling the globe, any country with a significant middle class instantly reveals its own national auto industry: Mexico yes, Guatemala no; South Africa yes, Tanzania no. 20th century and early 21st century middle class identity—that of the individual, culture, and the greater environment itself—are all defined by the automobile. Xalapa's car culture would be familiar to any member of the global middle class. Of course, when both Cortes and the Americans passed through there were no cars.
Xalapa's sublimely magnificent Museo de Antropología of pre-Spanish culture is not to be missed. Unbeknownst to Cortes, and the Americans for that matter, the state of Veracruz had been home to the Olmecs, one of Mexico's great indigenous cultures, who disappeared almost a thousand years before the Europeans arrived. Olmec is a Nahuatl word, basically meaning “rubber people.” What they called themselves is unknown. Outside being the first to produce rubber, little else is known about the Olmecs except their relatively recently discovered ancient city sites, and their famous colossal carved basalt heads:
The museum also includes relics of the cultures Cortes encountered, including those of the Totonacs, the first peoples to ally with the Conquistador against the Aztecs. Unfortunately, lost to history is any sort of conducted survey of the Totonacs, something like:
Question 3: On a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being “completely awful” and 5, “excellent,” how would you say Totonac life is under Spanish compared to Aztec rule?
Considering the Totonac city of Cempoala was abandoned a half-century after the Spanish stepped ashore, the decision to go against the Aztecs must have been deeply regretted.
Arriving in 1847, the Americans garnered no Mexican allies. Landing at Veracruz, then marching to Mexico City, the Americans would fight the determining battle of the war, Cerro Gordo, a dozen miles from Xalapa. Winfield Scott, a name lost to the present, commanded the American forces, which included U.S. Grant, Robert E. Lee, and many other names of America's soon following Civil War. Grant said Xalapa was a place he could see settling, “a beautiful, productive and healthy country, far above the fevers of the coast.”