Vera Cruz Means

Directions: Study the situation given below and answer the question.
IN VERACRUZ, during nearly two decades of research, I have come to realize the deep indebtedness of the present to the past. Even today, and usually unconsciously, the people of this only favoured state adhere to many customs and traditions that echo ancient ways. Their lives culminate an eighty century continuum of human experience.

In our understanding of Mesoamerican civilization, between the well known cultures of the Maya and of highland Mexico, the Gulf coast of Vera Cruz had remained a gray area of scattered knowledge. A multi- disciplinary scientific effort over the past 12 years was sought to fill in the gaps. We have traced the evolutionary chronology of Vera Cruz from an early hunting and gathering era through a remarkably artistic civilization known as EL Tajin, and beyond that society demise to Spanish conquest and the present day synthesis of Indian and European cultures.

Blessed in the vitality and diversity of its people, Vera Cruz profits also from fertile soils, abundant rainfall, a 450 mile long sea coast with harbours and excellent fishing, reserves of oil and natural gas. From the narrow coastal plain the land rises steeply through diverse ecological zones to glacier. Capped Orizaba, at 18,700 feet the third highest mountain in North America, after Mount McKinley and Moung Logan. A few score mile separate tropical shores from the dry, high plateau of central Mexico west of the Sierra Madre Oriental.

Cortes gave the name La Villa Rica De La Vera Cruz (Rich Villa of the True Cross) to the town he founded during Easter week in 1519. From that first formal European settlement of the New World mainland, Cortes marched inland with his Spanish adventures and Indian allies to conquer Aztec Mexicans. Thus, began the slow merging of Renaissance Europe and aboriginal America.

Vera Cruz city and region prospered. Commerce, ranching, fishing and sugarcane production contributed first to the colonial and then to the Mexican economy.

The preeminent modern resources are, of course, oil and natural gas. In northern Vera Cruz alone, the Chicontepec area hold almost 15 percent of Mexico estimated reserves. I remember, in the early sixties, driving from the state capital of Jalapa to the Totonac market town of Papantla. Riding the ferry across the Tecolutla River dark, I stood transfixed of the tail. Up- stream the sky, heavy with clouds, pulsated with color. It glowed red to pink, reflecting the burn-off of gas in oil fields known as the New Golden Lane. The scene was surrealistic spell bounding.

We changed past clusters of dugout canoes from which local fishermen cast their nets on the changing tide. In the channel, porpoises leaped as if in some aquatic celebration, fragments of the popular folk music known as los sones waited from the far shore. Harp and guitar in some small restaurant sent out these strains, which wove a graceful counterpart to the visual drama of man superscribed technology.