COFFEE, COOKIES, AND A HISTORY LESSON WITH DORA MACIAS: PART I

Interview by Lady Cande

I'm sitting in the living room on a squashy brown sofa having coffee and cookies enjoying a conversation with a splendid white haired woman of 91 years old. Unlike the typical ladies of her age, she isn't counting off the days until the inevitable but is lucid, hardworking, and energetic. She is a lawyer and she works with the red cross. As the granddaughter of the last owner of El Cubilete, she isn't just anybody. She is living history whose family were big shots in the Mexican history books. For those who don't know El Cubilete, it is a hill 2,579 m (8,461 ft) above sea level which is a famous landmark.

El Cubilete

 -Tell me about your grandpa.

- Well, he was Jose Natividad Macias Castorena, born in 1857, son of a farmer that put my papa grande (grandfather) to work counting the sheep but he wanted to study, and so he did. He enrolled himself in school and he had to walk a lot to get there everyday. After, he studied at a seminary, he decided to study law, eventually becoming a senator and two-time rector of the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM).

  Founded in 1551, the UNAM is one of the oldest Universities in the Americas and has a reputation for being one of the top 100 universities in the world.

          

Jose Natividad Macias posing as rector at the University.

- Did your grandpa meet any notable people at the time?

- Of course he did, He was good friends with the President Venustiano Carranza, and he was acquaintances to some notable artists like the muralist Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. 

Her grandfather is second from the left. The president of Mexico from 1917-1920, Venustiano Carranza, is center.

- Did you get to know them?

-  Well Frida Kahlo was disgusting and an alcoholic, she had empty bottles in her room all the time whereas Dieguito was a very nice man. He liked to party but he was respectable. They were both atheists but when Diego was in his death bed, he asked someone to hang a Crist made out of corn husk and he died watching it.

I met also the famous painter Olga Costa because she was married to my uncle Jose Chavez Morado. 

- Did you live close to Chavez Morado's house?

- In Silao Guanajuato we were living close. But I was coming only for vacation because my house was in Mexico City. Do you know the Wax Museum?That was my house. The Beatles are posing in my old room.

- Gosh! That' s a huge house!

Wax Museum, Mexico City.

- It is huge. In fact when I was about to get married I was looking for an apartment and my father asked me to live with them for a couple of months and if we were comfortable we could stay. And so it happened. 

- Why did your father decide to sell the house?

-Well, one day a gentleman was looking for my father to buy it for a very substantial sum, he wanted to make it a Casino. My father almost had a heart attack. Some time later another business man came who was interested in making the house into a Wax Museum. So my father said yes.

Dora Macias Morado

Part II coming soon...