Wednesday, August 20, 2008


evangelista.(Del lat. evangelista).

1. m. Cada uno de los cuatro discípulos de Jesús con cuyo nombre se designa uno de los cuatro Evangelios.

2. m. Persona destinada a cantar el evangelio en las iglesias.

3. m. Méx. Hombre que tiene por oficio escribir cartas u otros papeles a la gente que no sabe hacerlo.

Real Academia Española © Todos los derechos reservados

Your ordinary poor Mexican may not have any idea who Cyrano de Bergerac is as many (at least in my time in the 50s, 60s and 70s) did not know how to read or write. This did not prevent them from writing love letters, letters of condolence, letters to government bureaucracy or perhaps attempting to find a job with a nice and neat application letter. Cyrano's job was performed and perhaps even today by men (they were always men) called evangelistas. An evangelio (or gospel) is a letter. Evangelistas are the scribes of the populace. They set up shop under portales (long arched sidewalks in the centre of Mexican cities) with a typewriter (usually ancient) and paper. For a fee they will strive to please.

Rosemary has informed me that we used the services of an evangelista once for some sort of government petition re our house and we did not know the legal language to use. Our evangelista had no problem making a one sentence request occupy a whole page. Our request was granted.

Here Ms Hernandez is posing with my pinstriped suit which I purchased at the Puerto de Liverpool (sort of like Eaton's) sometime in 1972. Her tie, a Fraser Institute tie, (why not?) was given to me by a friend who worked for the institute. I tried to explain to Ms Hernandez what the Fraser Institute was but in the end I gave up.