Those Places Thursday: Postcards from Mexico, Part 5: The Floating Gardens of Xochimilco

Benita (McGinnis) McCormick (1889 - 1984)
Phillip C. McCormick (1892 - 1981)

We wrap up our postcard series by visiting one of the loveliest stopovers Phil and Benita made during their 1937 vacation, the famed floating Gardens of Xochimilco, in the southern region of the Federal District (Distrito Federal), about 40 minutes from downtown Mexico City.

A family enjoys their outing in a "trajinera," or flower-decked gondola, as a young
flower vendor poses in her "chalupa," or vendor's barge. Postcard; Mexico, 1937.
From Benita (McGinnis) McCormick's scrapbook.

Vendor-photographer, his camera mounted on a tripod,
pauses on his "chalupa" as he awaits an approaching
gondola of tourists.  Postcard; Mexico, approx. 1930s.
From Benita (McGinnis) McCormick's scrapbook.

Derived from the Náhuatl words xochitl and milli, Xochimilco means "field of flowers."  Over eleven hundred years ago, the city was built on a lake by the Xochimilca tribe as a system of man-made islands, called chinampas, and canals for farming and navigation purposes.  It later was expanded as a waterway to the ancient Tenochtitlán, another city on a lake which would one day become the center of Mexico City.

Back in the 1930s, as today, colorful trajineras, open air wooden gondola-like boats covered with elaborately decorated arches, glided lazily through some 110 miles of canals, offering tourists and Mexican families on weekend outings a chance to convivir, or enjoy one another's company.

Tall and graceful, Juniper trees line waterways in Xochimilco.  Postcard,
1930s, Mexico.  From Benita (McGinnis) McCormick's scrapbook.

Phil and Benita and their friends, John and Mary Coates, probably spent an idyllic afternoon here. Always living in the moment, they would have laughed and told stories, feasting on a picnic lunch and reclining on the long wooden benches of their trajinera. As the hours passed, they would have bought flowers and souvenirs and enjoyed the music coming from passing canoe-like chalupas.  Maybe Phil and John would have even hired a group of mariachis to serenade their wives with a love song such as Agustín Lara's "Veracruz," and the two couples might have found themselves dancing in that carefree way that travelers do when the boundaries of time and language and space melt away into a languid infinity.

A quiet moment on the waters of Xochimilco.  Postcard, 1930s
Mexico.  From Benita (McGinnis) McCormick's scrapbook.

To read the other installments in this series, please click on the links below:

Part One: Postcards from Mexico

Part Two:  Taxco

Part Three:  The Artistry of Taxco

Part Four:  Tracing Phil and Benita's Footsteps through Mexico

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Copyright ©  2014  Linda Huesca Tully

Travel Tuesday: Vacationing in Mexico, 1937

Benita (McGinnis) McCormick (1889 - 1984)
Phillip C. McCormick (1892 - 1981)

Caption by Benita reads, "Phil

& I at Fountain."  Mexico, 1937;

exact location unknown. From

her scrapbook.

In the summer of 1937, my great uncle and great aunt, Phil and Benita McCormick, traveled from Chicago to Mexico for several weeks, leaving their eight-year old son and daughter, Bud and Jane, in the able care of close relatives back home. 

As the freight service manager for the Baltimore and Ohio (B & O) Railroad in Chicago, Uncle Phil enjoyed the enviable benefit of free rail travel for himself and his family.  Though we do not know the route they traveled, they might have taken one of the B & O's "streamliner" trains, such as the Abraham Lincoln, from Chicago to Saint Louis.  From there, they most likely changed trains once or twice before arriving at their destination on one of the trains of the National Railways of Mexico. 

Timetable Brochure,
National Railways of Mexico,
July 20, 1937.  From Benita
(McGinnis) McCormick's
 scrapbook. 

During their Mexican sojourn, Phil and Benita visited not only the capital, Mexico City, but also many Mexican villages. They fell in love with the country, and Benita took several art classes while there.

They traveled the country with a tour group, a safe way to travel in 1937 for those who spoke little or no Spanish.  Uncle Phil probably had some working knowledge of the language; when I was young, I remember he was always studying Spanish!  

In the photograph above and below, Benita and Phil sit contentedly in front of a lovely unidentified fountain.   The next photo shows them in front of the same fountain with their tour guide and a couple they met on their trip, John and Mary Coates. 

Caption reads, "4 Americans & Guide."  From left to right:
John and Mary Coates, unnamed tour guide, and Benita
(McGinnis) and Phil McCormick.  Location unknown.
Mexico, 1937.  From Benita McCormick's scrapbook.

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Copyright ©  2014  Linda Huesca Tully