ABSTRACT
For four hundred years the port of Vera Cruz has been the front gate to Mexico. There in 1519 on a deserted sandy beach, Cortés and his gang of adventurers landed from their fleet and built the first European city on the American mainland, through which were later to pour the Spanish colonizers who came to settle New Spain. The side streets are clean and picturesque, incongruously frequented by bald-headed black vultures, tame as chickens, that go about unmolested except by dashing motorcars, which they avoid with clumsy skips. But life is not all politics and social problems in Vera Cruz; every Sunday night and at weddings and birthdays, in Alvarado, Tlaliscoyan, Villa Lerdo Tlacotalpan, up the Papaloapan and down the Coatzacoalcos, in Los Tuxtlas and in Tuxtepec, deep into the banana country, two skyrockets at sundown announce that there will be a huapango or fandango, the weekly social event, attended even by people living far away in scattered settlements.
