Cuentepec

Today my co-workers visited the small town of Cuentepec. This puebla is a rariety in that most if not all of the residents speak their native tongue of Nahuatl, and Spanish. Many of the women and girls wear the traditional dress which includes an apron and a scarf.

Today is the fiest day of St. Michael, the archangel's feast day and this puebla puts on a big celebration for it. Most every household makes molé for the occasion, and everyone's molé is their own special receipe! Molé is a chocolate sause with many different spices that is put over meat...the taste is usually not sweet, and I would never have guessed chocolate was in the receipe. We visited several different households and we were fed at each. Some of women in the households we visited are in cooperatives that were set up by a social worker in the area. One women is in a sewing cooperative as well as a pottery cooperative. The women are very happy to be part of this new way of making a living...

At the first household, the young mother made us excellent handmade tortillas with rice beans, & chicken covered in molé over a fire, a way of cooking that is far from what I have known.

Some siblings took us for a tour of the area...beautiful with it's green hills and valleys, and river at the bottom...

Sitting in the backyard of these families homes reminded me much of my time in the Dominican Republic. There were cats, dogs, pigs, hens and colorful roosters walking all around... I really enjoyed my time in Cuentepec. It was nice to spend an afternoon learning a bit of the native language, learning about the cooperative, and seeing a glimpse of the people's life here.

Learning a bit about the families also was a reality check. One of the women we visited has been raising her children alone while her husband works in the U.S. The family wants to send their children for higher education, and could see no other way to afford it. I asked the mother how he crossed into the U.S., and she told me that he crossed through the desert. This is a very dangerous way to get into the U.S. and I'm sure I would never survive the brutal heat and distance of the journey. For people that are poor and without connections, there are no legal ways to immigrate into the U.S. This extremely dangerous route is one of the few options to cross into the U.S.