Palm Sunday - Coyoacán - 1962

I met my Rosemary in Mexico City on December 15^th, 1967.  We were married on February 8, 1968.  We would have been married at least a week before but every time we tried it the judged said he was not authorized as I was an Argentine but Mexican resident while Rosemary was a Canadian tourist. Finally when we were married my mother was not there. She lived in Veracruz and she had travelled for our previous attempts.

The solution was for me to go to the lovely Coyoacán neighbourhood with a bottle of good French cognac and I bribed a judge who had his office in the city square. Since then Coyoacán has been a happy place in my heart

Coyoacán was always an attraction for me. In 1962 when I was just starting to shoot street photographs I had taken a photograph at the door of the main church in the Coyoacán zócalo. What is interesting about the photograph is that if you look on one of the corners you will see the points of a palm. I took it on Palm Sunday.

Without revealing my now true spiritual beliefs, I can state that my religious grandmother inculcated me on the meanings of Roman Catholic Doctrine. As a young boy these beliefs were stabilizing. Years later when I was 16 who could have predicted the lightness in my mind after going to confession? Confession with a priest was like going to a psychologist and not paying a cent.

I will never forget that a few days after Time Magazine’s Is God Dead cover on April 6, 1966 I was sitting in the Buenos Aires Zoo reading it by the tiger cage. I was wearing my summer whites Argentine Navy uniform because some Admirals had yet to decide if it was much too cold to change us to the blue uniform. Had I lingered a while I might have run into Jorge Luís Borges who loved tigers as much as I did and would often sit on the very bench I was sitting.

Perhaps my world of comfort died that day that God died.