Most of the Cora families live high up in the mountains, in huts surrounded by cornfields that can be seen from the plane flight. The children are taken by their parents to school on Mondays, where they study, eat and sleep until Friday.
The plane flies over the mountains of high peaks and deep cliffs, until it lands on the top of a hill. Then a ramshackle truck takes us to the town of Jesús María, with a mild and dry climate, which has about a thousand inhabitants. In contrast to the desert landscape of cacti, a river with transparent water crosses the town, there is also a wooden suspension bridge.
Although the town has a municipal president who handles administrative matters and is elected by open vote, the highest authority is the Cora governor, who is a moral leader and presides over religious ceremonies and traditional festivities. He also acts as a judge in everyday conflicts. He is an elderly man named Mateo de Jesús, with a deep look and sparing conversation, but with a friendly greeting.
The governor and his council of twelve men are based in the Royal House, a solid construction that on the outside is made of stone and clay, and inside everything is magical. The floor is made of mat, the long benches are made of logs cut in half and in the center there is a large equipal. Guajes and gourds hang from the walls and ceiling, adorned with feathers and ribbons. While the members of the Cora council discuss community issues in their native language, some smoke and another sleep. At dusk they read, in Cora and Spanish, a letter expressing their interest in preserving their culture and nature, which must also be read on January 1 at the power renewal ceremony, when the new governor takes office. and its twelve leaders, whose positions will be held for one year.
The ceremonies can be extended over several days and nights, accompanied by music and dance. We were able to witness two of them, related to the change of powers: a ritual of several horsemen on horseback and a dance of men with masks made of beads, in which a 12-year-old girl acted as La Malinche. Another important festival is that of Holy Week, in which the Passion is represented with the half-naked bodies painted in colors. In the town there are also Huichol indigenous people, with whom the Coras live peacefully, as well as a score of mestizo families.
The church is Catholic, although there is a syncretism of centuries-old traditions. Although the figure of the priest is unusual, people enter the temple to pray with devotion and to dance various ritual dances during the celebrations. They deposit small offerings before the figures of Jesus Christ and the saints, such as: paper flowers, small tamales, pots with pinole and cotton flakes.
Something peculiar are the tamales that, unlike other places, here are dry and hard, and are cooked in a clay oven.
From infancy to adulthood, dress is very different for Korean women and men. They wear ankle length skirts and ruffled blouses, in which purple and hot pink colors predominate. Men, on the other hand, have modernized their clothing, as they generally dress in a cowboy style with denim pants, boots and a Texan hat, due in part to the fact that many of them go to work “on the other side”, and as well as they bring dollars they also import merchandise and American customs. Here, as in other regions of Mexico, it is the women who best preserve the indigenous costumes and other traditions. Almost all men, however, wear brightly colored cotton kerchiefs. Very few still retain the original flat-brimmed hat with a hemispherical crown.
The small hotel of the place, a house covered with tiles illuminated with the help of a car battery, is managed by a hyperactive mestizo woman, named Bertha Sánchez, who runs other businesses in the same place: restaurant, furniture store, handicraft store and photography. In his spare time he gives catechism classes to children.
Until recently the town was far from civilization, but now with progress, its appearance has changed, as the beautiful stone, adobe and tile houses have begun to be replaced by block houses and flat cement slabs. In the buildings built by the government - school, clinic, library and city hall - there is no respect for the original environment.
Although most of the locals are apparently intrigued and even uncomfortable by the presence of outsiders, this is a place where the mystery of going back to the past can be felt.
If you go to Jesus Maria
There are two ways to get there: by plane that has been flying for half an hour or 40 minutes - depending on whether it leaves Tepic or Santiago Ixcuintla, respectively - or by dirt road that takes eight hours to the northeast of the capital. state, but with little security.
The trip by plane does not have a precise schedule, date, or return destination, since this could be Santiago or Tepic.
