Arriving at Guanajuato’s Templo de la Compañía is always a strange experience. It’s a church connected to the former Jesuit seminary, which is now the University of Guanajuato. It sits on one corner of an intersection diagonally across from the main Post Office and faces the Casa del Agua hotel.
I stopped in front of the church’s main entrance and made note of the serape-covered very dark-skinned indigenous woman who has been sitting there for as long as I’ve been living in Guanajuato. She is dressed exactly the same, is covered with the same blanket, and is in the exact same squatting pose with always the same gnarled hand cupped for a handout. I’ve wondered throughout the years whether she’s actually a ceramic sculpture with a coin slot in her raised hand as a moneymaker for the church. This time I checked – no slot. I find this strange beyond words but then strangeness is what describes so much of the Mexican experience.
I wa » Read more: The Uninvited Church Parishioners in Guanajuato, Mexico