LAND OF COLOUR AND LIFE
A celebration of Mexico’s spectacular landscapes, diverse wildlife and rich culture.
Mexico: Earth’s Festival of Life TV BBC Two Due to air in May. See Radio Times for details.
Mexico, it’s fair to say, is probably best known for its food and drink. Both are part of this immersive BBC Two series, narrated by local Eliud Gabriel Porras. The three episodes travel the length and breadth of the vast nation, exploring the varied habitats of Mexico’s mountains, forests and deserts, but they also feature tequila, avocados and chillis – and the people cultivating, selling and consuming them with passion and care. The programmes highlight the wide menu appealing to the myriad creatures of this diverse land as well.
There are the black-tailed prairie-dog pups tempting a hungry 2m-long bullsnake, seen off by the youngsters’ determined father. There’s the sugar-rich nectar of night-blooming agave cacti, sipped by lesser long-nosed bats migrating along the Sierra Madre mountains. Scorpions provide midnight feasts for ground-hunting pallid bats in the Sonoran Desert. Black bears quench their thirst from cattleranchers’ water tanks, while cheeky coatis raid tourists’ picnics at an ancient Aztec shrine, and spider monkeys pluck fruit above Mayan temples.
The celebration of Mexico’s biodiversity is just one facet of the series; what makes it truly absorbing is the subtle interweaving of the country’s landscapes and wildlife with human stories. The dazzling hues of the bee-eater and the tail plumage of the turquoise-browed motmot offer a visual treat, but what lingers in the memory is the fact that the ancient Maya used the birds to locate cenotes, or underground caves. And the sight of oyamel fir boughs sagging under the weight of hundreds of millions of monarch butterflies – believed by Nahuatl people to be the souls of the departed returning to Earth – links convincingly with the Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) that has been celebrated here for some 3,000 years.
As farmer Don Roque, a descendant of the ancient Maya, comments: “The beautiful thing is that the land is like your mother – you find your life from it.” And life is certainly there to be admired.
BLACK BEARS QUENCH THEIR THIRST FROM CATTLERANCHERS’ WATER TANKS.”