Unknown Mexico

If you have lived for any amount of time in Mexico, you are probably aware of those beautiful magazines, Mexico Desconocido (Unknown Mexico) that tempt you in the checkout lines at the grocery stores. You pick one up, and try to pick your way through the beautiful looking magazine that promises to illuminate all the wonderful corners and cultures of Mexico for you. But alas, it is all in Spanish and you resign yourself to mostly looking at the beautiful photos.

Well, gracias a Dios, there is the internet. And Mexico Desconocido has a website, with a very healthy English language side to it. And as of today, Mexico Desconocido is no longer unknown, at least to the readership of Mexico-in-English!

Basically, Mexico Desconocido has Travel, Shopping and Publication sections. These sections appear to be only in Spanish. But within the English section, there are two divisions: Discover and Live. I'm not really clear on the distinction between these two. Under the Discover section, you'll find History, Nature, Culture & Society and Monuments & Historical Centers. Under the Live section, there's Sports, Beaches & Spas, Counties and Museums & Archaeological Zones. This is not the way I would have divided these categories; this is not intuitive to my Western mind. But there you have it.

Each category is further divided into sub-categories, and within each sub-category are anywhere from 10 to 40 or 50 articles. It appears that these articles are reprints of articles previously published in the magazine, as they are notated with the author name and dates. Some that I've read are dated back as far as 1994. The depth of information about different parts of Mexico, its traditions, culture, treasures and people. Just casually exploring, I have come across articles about everything from Ricardo Bell, "the clown that made our grandparents laugh" to the mining museum in Pachuca. I've found articles about the Xalapa Museum of Anthropology (surely one of the most beautiful museums I've ever seen) to the History of the Altar of Forgiveness in the Cathedral in Mexico City.

Now don't get *too* excited. Some of the articles are nothing more than a paragraph or two of rehashed facts that are all too familiar to the casual student of all things Mexican...hardly desconocido. But at least one half of the articles are in-depth, interesting and full of details and tasty tidbits of information.

This website is a gold mine of little nuggets of information about Mexico. I'm bookmarking it, and next time I go on a little roadtrip, I'm going to research my destination with this website. I might find out about a little church I might have missed otherwise or a tradition I might not have otherwise known about. After you visit it, you might decide to do the same.