Tepoztlán

Tepoztlán wasn’t very far from Mexico City; it was a modest bus ride, but in those days it seemed very far away because the class distinction was so great that nobody would go to Tepoztlán, for heavens sake!

Of course I don’t remember too much about it, but I do remember a few things about Tepoztlán.  I remember looking for spiders in the stone wall. I also have a visual memory of my father waving as he went down the hill to the actual town – we were a little above it.

Let’s not forget – this is not really a detail – that grandma Park came along to look after the two little kids, so it was sort of a family expedition. She was a portraitist, so that was her métier. I don’t remember her doing portraits in Mexico, but she certainly did it everywhere else.  Some of her portraits are at International House now, I think.  Anyway, she was a not-bad portraitist.

I know my mother thought it was marvelous being there, and I don’t know what my father thought, but it must have affected him somewhat the same way because having written this little monograph which was his dissertation, he then went on to develop the idea of the little community as not behind the times, but as more poetic.  In fact, he wrote a book called “The Little Community” [“Tepoztlan: A Mexican Village“?] which is about community studies, and it’s really lovely because instead of being taken up with the idea of how to study these wretched places, it’s really a hymn to small communities.  I’m sure it doesn’t get anywhere in Mexico nowadays, good heavens!