| | |  Travel & Outdoors | November 2008 
Guayaba Fair in Talpa de Allende
 Jenny McGill - PVNN
| | At Talpa's Feria de Guayaba you'll also find sugared fruits and other edible souvenirs, like flowers, small baskets, sombreros and sandals made out of chicle, the basis of chewing gum. | | |
About twelve years ago the ruling fathers thought this town should have an annual guayaba fair. Coffee and chicle are also featured, but it's the Feria de Guayaba which will run from the 15th to the 22nd of November.
Every artisan, and some who aren't, can set up a stand to display and sell whatever is handcrafted in Talpa. Rolls of guava paste, canned guavas, home grown locally roasted coffee beans, strawberry coffee, or nut flavored eggnog, jars of figs and peaches, cookies, candies, dandelion wine, candles, and leather huaraches are a few of the items to be found. Sometimes you can pick up a good oil painting, sculpture or fancy needlework for a song. And then, there is the famous chicle art which is slowly dying.
Chicle or called by its Nahuatle name, chilte, is the gum or resin from a tropical evergreen tree which Mr. Wrigley used in his chewing gum. The gum is collected by slashing the tree in a crisscross manner and catching it in little bags. The resin is boiled in dye baths of Mexico's brilliant colors to a proper consistency, and then poured into trays to dry, much like we did caramel taffy.
This colored "taffy" is cut into circles about the size of a tortilla, and hung on a clothesline to dry out a bit more. Chicle craftsmen buy a kilo or so of colored 'Play Dough' and create intricate figures so real you can almost smell the phony rose or onion. Competitors in this prize-awarding category of the Feria create churches, towns, theatrical and historical scenes by giving life to a resin collected from a tree with their talented brown fingers.
The old-timers shake their heads in sadness, and say, "This means of creativeness won't be around much longer. The young ones are too busy with their lap tops and boogie carts to work with chilte."
The wonderful aroma of freshly brewed coffee fills the air as one wanders through the plaza on a brisk morning admiring the crafts the natives have set out. Although most of the local coffee is roasted and packaged here, it is actually grown on nearby ranches in La Cuesta, about an hour's drive from Talpa. When the coffee growers fire up their roasting ovens on the plaza, you run for your cup. There's nothing like that smell.
A couple of years after it appeared that the Guayaba Fair would become a tradition; somebody came up with the idea of issuing invitations to various images of Virgin Mary to come visit the Virgin of Talpa. Icons and their devotees came from the states of Jalisco, Colima, Guanajuato, Nayarit, Oaxaca and Mexico City.
The first year invitations were made to the popular Little General from Zapopan, Jalisco and the equally popular icon from San Juan de los Lagos, Jalisco.
It seems that a parish priest over in the neighboring state of Nayarit got word of this visit, and called up the Events Committee Chairman. "What about mine? She's just as important as the others. We want an invitation also."
Of course he was told, "You'd be most welcome, Father, but the publicity has already been printed and posted. There would be no promotion."
"No problema," he cried, "I'll bring my own promotion!" And he did. He brought two musical bands, a group of dancers and an escort guard of Franciscan monks!
I don't know if the Traveling Madonas' pocket change is affected by the economic crisis our countries are going through now, but they won't be coming this year. But there will be dancing, eating, drinking and singing in the plaza for the Guayaba Fair.
Longtime Mexico resident Jenny McGill and her husband moved to Puerto Vallarta in 1973, where she served as the U.S. Consular agent for 14 years. Her book, Drama and Diplomacy in Sultry Puerto Vallarta, is a poignant, riotous read describing the town, its people and her own resourcefulness when people needed her help. It is a portrait of a simple beach town and a quieter time, gone forever. The couple now resides in Talpa de Allende. |
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