El Chanal

The ceramic dog is everywhere. You see it in the markets of Mexico City and in the airport shops and in the folk art galleries of San Miguel de Allende: a small hairless dog, often reddish terracotta, often rotund, with a calm expression that might be contentment or might be the specific composure of a creature that knows its role in the proceedings. They are sold as decorations, as gifts, as symbols of the state of Colima.

The originals are burial objects. The Aztatlán culture that flourished in western Mexico between roughly 900 and 1200 CE placed these figures — called Colima dogs, or xoloitzcuintli effigies, though the scholarly debate about the exact species and cultural meaning is ongoing — in shaft tombs alongside the dead as companions for the journey to the underworld. The dogs are well-fed in the figurines, intentionally so: a fat dog was a dog that had been cared for, and a cared-for dog was a proper companion for death.

El Chanal is where this culture built its ceremonial center, on a low rise on the eastern edge of what is now Colima City.

The Site

The site is small by the standards of the great Maya and central Mexican complexes. There is a main pyramid mound, a stone ballcourt, several platform structures arranged around a central plaza, and a sequence of smaller features that the excavations have clarified over the years. The vegetation here is tropical in the Pacific coast lowland way — banana palms, broad-leafed trees, the specific humidity of a place 600 meters above sea level with the coast 40 kilometers west — and it grows aggressively back around the stone if you let it.

The Aztatlán culture occupied El Chanal at a moment when the Toltec influence from central Mexico was radiating westward — the architectural vocabulary here shares elements with sites much further east, evidence of the trade and cultural networks that connected western Mexico to the central highland world. The ballcourt in particular reflects this: the I-shaped court with its stone ring markers is the pan-Mesoamerican form, from the Yucatán to Colima, which tells you something about the reach of shared ceremonial practice.

I arrived on a Wednesday afternoon because Wednesday seemed like the least busy option. This judgment proved accurate; there were two schoolchildren’s groups finishing a guided visit as I arrived, and after they departed there was only a security guard named — I think, based on a brief exchange — Rodrigo.

Rodrigo walked me to the north end of the site and pointed out a carved stone panel in a low wall that I had walked past without registering. The carving showed a figure that the interpretive signage identified as a deity associated with the ballgame. It was worn enough that you could miss it easily in the wrong light, which is why Rodrigo pointed it out. I thanked him. He nodded and returned to his chair in the shade.

The Museum

The on-site museum is one room, climate-controlled, with original artifacts from the excavations and interpretive panels that describe the Aztatlán culture, the shaft tomb tradition, and the ceramic dog complex in enough depth to be genuinely useful.

The original Colima dog figures on display are different from the reproductions in a way that is immediately legible. The reproductions are made quickly from commercial molds and fired at tourist-industry consistency. The originals are handmade, slightly imperfect, with the specific weight and surface texture of objects that were made by someone who knew what they were making and why. The dogs in the museum cases have a presence that the market versions don’t have. This is not sentimentality about antiquity — it’s a functional observation about the information carried in an object’s making.

There is also a well-fired ceramic vessel in the museum that depicts what appears to be a man in a ballgame costume, his expression focused in a way that — given what we know about what the ballgame sometimes required — does not seem like comfortable focus. I stood in front of it for a while.

The museum is free with the site entry fee, which was a nominal amount that I paid to a woman at the entrance kiosk who also sold postcards and, incongruously, a small selection of fresh mangoes from a bag at her feet. I bought a mango. It was very good.

Getting to El Chanal from Colima City

The site is roughly 5 kilometers from Colima’s historic center, which means it is reachable by a combination of walking and a short taxi if you don’t want to walk the whole way. Colima City is a pleasant, manageable city — one of the smaller state capitals in Mexico, not heavily touristed, with a good central market and some of the best local food in the Pacific coast region.

Visiting El Chanal as part of a day in Colima City makes sense — the site takes about an hour and a half with the museum, and then you’re back in town in time for lunch. The city’s main market and the Mercado Constitución both have food stalls serving the local specialty, sopa de mariscos, and the regional preparation of birria made with goat. The ceramics shops in the city center sell the dog reproductions at a range of qualities; having seen the originals, you’ll have a clearer sense of what you’re buying.