The ideal month to buy a Mexican flag

Ambulant vendors selling Mexican flags are everywhere during the first half of September.  If you’re looking for a Mexican flag, this is the easiest time of year to acquire one, as almost every major street corner has someone selling them, from the small plastic flags which attach to a car or window, to colossal flags of monumental proportions—and everything in between.

200 years of El Grito

September 16th is Mexico’s official Independence Day and a national holiday, marking the events that led to the creation of the Mexican Republic following three centuries of Spanish colonial rule.

On the night of September 15th, state officials in towns and cities across the country re-enact Miguel Hidalgo’s pre-dawn grito de independencia (cry of independence), which originally took place in the small town of Dolores Hidalgo, near San Miguel de Allende, in 1810.

Key provincial cities where independence is celebrated

The most popular provincial cities to attend for Independence Day celebrations are San Miguel de Allende and nearby Dolores Hidalgo—the ‘cradle towns’ of the independence movement.  Other popular provincial cities where lively celebrations take place include Guanajuato, Querétaro, Oaxaca, and Puebla, although celebrations are national and every town and city will mark the occasion in its town square.

The capital’s zócalo — focal point for the national festivities

In Mexico City, the capital’s zócalo (main square) traditionally swells with thousands of people who attend to hear the country’s President re-enact the grito from the balcony of the National Palace.

Traditionally, egg-shells filled with confetti are thrown and crushed on people during the celebrations, so we also recommend that leave your ‘Sunday best’ clothes in the wardrobe if you attend a local fiesta—at the town square, or elsewhere.

Mexico is seeing a renewal in excitement about railways as the government tries to make passenger service a thing—again.

A brief backdrop

First a bit of history. The thing for which president Porfirio Díaz was most famous —before he became infamous for clinging to power for 30 years— was the development of a network of railways, much of which was done by foreign companies.

The country’s first railway was conceived in 1837, when the president at the time granted a Mexican businessman a concession to build a line from the Gulf coast port of Veracruz to Mexico City. The first train to run between the two cities, under a later concession, left the capital in 1873—not bad as delays and cost overruns go. The network expanded from 9,500 km (5,900 miles) in 1890 to more than 19,000 km (11,800 miles) by 1910. A nicely illustrated history of the railways (in Spanish) can be found here.

The Mexican railways were nationalized in 1937 by then-president Lázaro Cárdenas, a year before the expropriation of the oil industry, and run by the state for the next six decades.

By the time the government decided that private companies would do a better job of maintaining and improving the country’s railways, passenger travel by train from one city to another was virtually unheard of.

The private concessions were only granted for freight service, and the railway companies focused on that with few exceptions such as the journey through the picturesque Copper Canyon and the tourist train connecting Guadalajara with the agave-growing town of Tequila.  Passenger rail travel was removed from Mexico’s consumer price index around the same time that bottled drinking water was added. Signs of changing times.

Service on the handful of routes where passenger travel was still available into the 1980s was somewhat typical of a state monopoly in its last throes—bad. Air travel was still prohibitively expensive at that time for many people, but highway expansion made bus routes more convenient, and significantly faster than the rail services being offered.

Getting back on track

Fast forward to the 21st century. Low-cost airlines fly all over the country, interstate buses come equipped with toilets and movies, and long-distance passenger rail is beginning to make a comeback.

The idea began with the administration of President Enrique Peña Nieto (2012-2018), who had plans for a bullet-train from Mexico City to Querétaro, including a future extension to Guadalajara, a trans-peninsular passenger train joining the Yucatán state capital city of Mérida with the popular tourist region of Riviera Maya, and a train from Mexico City to the State of Mexico capital Toluca.

From the outset the projects were criticized as being unprofitable, which they evidently would be, but that wasn’t the point: the plan was to reignite the rail industry and recreate a modern high-speed passenger train network capable of reducing travel times along what have become highly congested highways and give passengers more choice in travel.

To cut a long story short, the bullet train project was canceled for political reasons —all was not well with the way it was awarded— and shortly after, the trans-peninsular line was postponed indefinitely for economic reasons. The Mexico City-Toluca line went ahead but was far from complete by the time his term ended.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (2018-2024) went a step further. The idea of a trans-peninsular train was rekindled and expanded into the Tren Maya, a tourist line running around the entire Yucatán peninsula. The Mayan Train opened almost a year ago, although some parts have yet to be completed.

Initiatives begin to pick-up steam

President Claudia Sheinbaum, who took office on Oct. 1, 2024, took up the baton and intends to continue expanding passenger rail service. Her government has resumed plans for a Mexico City-to-Querétaro train —but not a bullet train— and others in different parts of the country.

They include completion of the Tren Maya, the Mexico City-Querétaro project, the Interoceanic line crossing the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, several lines to the new Mexico City airport at Santa Lucía (including a stop on a new Mexico-to-Pachuca route), and others from Mexico City to Nuevo Laredo on the U.S. border, and Querétaro to Irapuato.

Her efforts will be supported by a recent constitutional change restoring government control of the railways. The railway bill was even supported by the opposition—an unusual occurrence in these days of political division. Private operators can make their own plans for offering passenger service, and have expressed interest in several projects, or they can allow third parties access to their lines. Government plans also involve laying new rails where necessary.

México Lindo y Querido
si muero lejos de ti
que digan que estoy dormido
y que me traigan aquí

The ballad was first made famous by  Jorge Negrete (1911 – 1953) who ironically died outside of Mexico—succumbing to hepatitis in Los Angeles at the young age of 42—and his body was repatriated to rest at the artists’ corner of El Panteón Jardín in Mexico City.  Even today, his name continues to be a musical icon in Mexico.  The original version of his ballad can he heard here on YouTube.

The song itself lives on as a centerpiece number for mariachi bands, and has also been continually covered by a roll-call of famous Mexican musicians; the most recognizable contemporary version is the one performed by Vicente Fernandez.

Another contemporary recording of the ballad has been produced by “Playing For Change”—who sent a team across Mexico recording the ballad as interpreted by over 70 independent Mexican musicians from all walks of life and combining the work into this extraordinary music video:

For the current writer, this was the case with Luis Arturo Ramos, a contemporary novelist and essayist who’s featured in the Encyclopedia of Mexican Literature but somehow doesn’t have his own Wikipedia page.

Anyway, some years back a federal deputy, or maybe several federal deputies, decided to upload an eBook of Ramos’ novel Violeta-Perú on the congressional library web site, marking the 40th anniversary of the novel.

Never one to turn down a free eBook, I downloaded it and started reading but didn’t finish it. After all, how many people finish As I Lay Dying, or Mrs. Dalloway at their first attempt? A second reading was successful, and that’s where the enthusiasm started.

Set in Mexico City presumably in the years after Tlatelolco, the book traces a series of events involving a ragtag group of colorful characters as recalled by the protagonist on a rainy, alcohol and paranoia-filled journey on the Violeta-Perú bus. (Violeta and Perú are streets in downtown Mexico City). The plot is sometimes hard to follow, but the narrative captures the atmosphere and attitudes of Mexico City in the 1970s.

Fast forward to the 21st century and the age of cell phones. The 2015 novel De Puño y Letra is the story of private investigator and unknown poet Bayardo Arizpe who’s hired to unravel the mystery of a missing text, uncovering a world of literary pretension and shenanigans. Something of a mixture of Sherlock Holmes and a not-so-tough Philip Marlowe.

For anyone who loves Mexico City, these stories serve a double purpose. Entertainment and nostalgia.

See also: Leafing Through Bookworms’ Choices in Mexico

A 3,500-year history that begins in Mesoamerica

But even before then, cacao beans were being fermented and turned into drink by the Olmec, and the Maya who mixed it with vanilla and spices to create a beverage taken during important religious and social ceremonies.

The precise date when humans began consuming cocoa is unclear —recent archaeological evidence suggests that Mesoamericans may have been cultivating the cacao plant and using it to make beverages as far back as 1400 B.C.— but historians agree that cocoa was an important substance held in high regard by our ancestors.

A precious bean also used as a form of currency

Cacao beans were also used as a form of currency; Cortés’s men observed how precious the beans appeared to the native peoples, and ancient records show that livestock and other goods were traded in exchange for them. The Aztecs also accepted cacao beans in payment of their taxes, or tributes as they were known.

The Spaniards did not take to the bitterness of the Aztec cacao, but discovered that blending it with cane sugar (from Europe) or honey (from Yucatán) made it more agreeable to their taste.  In its sweetened form, the beverage became popular across Spain from the seventeenth century although, like tea leaves in England during the same period, cocoa was expensive and taken almost exclusively by the social élite and well-heeled.

The emergence of chocolate confections

During the mid-nineteenth century Coenraad Johannes van Houten, a Dutch chemist, worked out a way of creating cocoa in a powder form by removing some of the natural fat and adding alkaline to create a mixture termed as “Dutch cocoa.”

A few years later, the Englishman Joseph Fry discovered that a mold-able paste could be produced by mixing melted cocoa butter back into the Dutch cocoa powder—he is thus widely credited with having created the first chocolate bar.

Chocolate became ubiquitous during the twentieth century, although most chocolate products being purveyed were blended with large quantities of sugar and other additives reducing the cocoa content (and cost) of the end product.

‘Artisan’ chocolate has long been purveyed by specialist chocolatiers across Europe, and this practice is making a comeback today in the U.S. in the form of independent chocolate makers offering hand-made pralines created with higher cocoa content and blending the more expensive cacao bean varieties instead of the hardier, less expensive and less flavorful beans preferred by mass producers.

Cacao production in Mexico

Despite having been the ‘birthplace’ of chocolate, Mexico’s cacao production now makes up just a small fraction the world’s total. (Africa is the largest producer.) Mexico’s cacao trees grow primarily along the coastal plains in the Gulf-coast state of Tabasco, where the esteemed plant thrives in the sweltering humidity of that region.  The state of Chiapas, with its fertile sub-tropical climate, is the second largest region in Mexico where cacao trees grow well.

Even from its low baseline, cacao production in Mexico has fallen by half since the early part of this century, and the Mexican government has been backing some projects in an attempt to revive the country’s production of the crop, particularly in the area of organic cacao which holds great favor in current markets and commands a premium price.

Chocolate in its mystical form: as a beverage

Although chocolate confections are widely available in Mexico today (and artisan pralines are a form of luxury here) modern-day Mexicans, like their Aztec ancestors, still prefer to take their chocolate as a liquid beverage, albeit with a European twist: by far the most popular method is melting tablets of cocoa mixed with sugar and cinnamon into hot water or milk, and whipping the drink into a froth using a specially-turned wooden whisk called a molinillo, which aerates the mixture.  According to Mexican folklore, the “spirit” of this mystical beverage dwells in the foam.

It appears that many people in the U.S. think Cinco de Mayo is Mexico’s Independence Day, the equivalent of the Fourth of July.  May 5 isn’t an official national holiday in Mexico.  Schools and some commercial office workers have the day off, but businesses open.

Cinco de Mayo marks the Battle of Puebla in 1862, when the Mexican army led by Gen. Ignacio Zaragoza defeated French invaders.  The following year the Napoleonic troops, with reinforcements, were successful and later installed Austrian archduke Maximilian of Habsburg as emperor.

Mexico’s Independence Day is celebrated on September 16, and that is a national holiday.  The date marks the call to arms in 1810 by Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, which set off a long war for independence from Spain.  Independence was finally achieved in 1821.

Revolution Day, which marks the anniversary of the start of the 1910-1917 Revolution, is November 20.

The expression malinchista (or the practice, malinchismo) harks back five centuries to the native woman Malinche —the Aztecs called her Malintzin, and the Spanish doña Marina— who served as interpreter for Hernán Cortés, became his mistress, and bore him a son.

Incidents in her early life meant that Malinche spoke both Maya and Náhuatl, and along with Gerónimo de Aguilar, who knew Spanish and Maya, allowed Cortés to communicate with the Aztecs in his conquest of Tenochtitlán.

For some, malinchista is tantamount to traitor, although this is much too strong for its real connotation.  To say “no seas malinchista” in reaction to some comment, purchase, or opinion, can be as inoffensive as heckling a friend over his or her choice of favorite sports team.

Some writers have used the figure of Malinche to spin yarns about the Mexican psyche and the perennial search for a national identity—along the lines of the idea that the mestizos (people of mixed Indian and Spanish blood) were born out of treachery.  This quasi-Freudian adaptation of the doctrine of original sin, which, by the way, assumes greater haste in profligacy in the captain of the conquistadores than among his men, was popularized last century, with its cubists and surrealists and the odd journalist dabbling in existentialism.

It contrasts with the practical view of malinchismo of writers in the 19th century, when exile in Europe was, as often as not, a matter of survival in turbulent political times.  In his short novel, The Man of the Situation, —El Hombre de la Situación— Manuel Payno describes how Fulgencio, returning from England where he had liberally spent his father’s money to become a “gentleman,” is embarrassed by the rustic ways and unrefined tastes in food and dress of his parents and sisters. In their efforts not to offend the new-found sensibilities of the family heir, they find themselves sneaking into the local fonda for some real food: tostadas, quesadillas, mole. There’s nothing judgmental here, just teasing about the vanity of youth.

Mexico’s hot-and-cold relationship with foreign things, somewhat diluted in these globalized days, has two special cases: the U.S. and Spain.  These are the two countries with which Mexico has the closest economic and cultural ties.  But even a hard-core malinchista will think twice before extolling the virtues of the great neighbor and rival to the north, or singing the praises of the Iberian peninsula.

You could search high and low (on internet and in the microfilmed files of a century of newsprint) and not find a Mexican journalist who has gleefully qualified a president or cabinet minister with the prefix “Harvard-educated.”  That is the habit of the foreign press, for foreign consumption.  It’s not to say that they don’t study or take post-graduate courses in the U.S. and Europe, they do, but top of the list will be their alma mater: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Politécnico, Tecnológico de Monterrey, or ITAM.

Finally, many a malinchista at home is a patriot abroad, perhaps drinking nothing but scotch in Mexico but when away demanding the one true blue agave tequila. This isn’t so much bad manners as bad economics.

Spanish concessions to brew beer

The first official concession to brew European-style beers was issued by the Spanish authorities in the middle of the 16th century; however, despite the brewers’ attempts to expand the business by growing more crops locally to increase the supply of barley at a lower price, heavy regulation and high taxation imposed by Spain on locally-produced beers and wines stymied the industry’s growth.

Beer production following independence

After Mexico’s war of independence, beer production began to flourish in Mexico, and during the latter part of the 19th century an influx of German immigrants brought additional knowledge and expertise to the field which caused the local market to diversify and improve its products.

By the turn of the 20th century, beer had become big business in Mexico, helped also by prohibition in the United States at that time, which gave rise to a brisk and profitable trade of beer and other alcoholic beverages along Mexico’s border towns and cities.

Revolution and consolidation

By the end of the Mexican Revolution, there were more than thirty-five breweries operating in Mexico, and a period of consolidation that began in the 1920s brought about the beer market we see here today: independent breweries were absorbed into one of the “big-two” breweries, Grupo Modelo and Cerveceria Cuautehmoc-Moctezuma, which emerged as the dominant players of the Mexican beer market.

Successful beers produced by the acquired regional breweries were mass-produced and distributed nationally, and less successful beers disappeared from the market altogether.  Smaller breweries that were not bought-out were forced to close as they could not compete with the economies-of-scale brought about through consolidation.

Two breweries dominate the market

The two big Mexican breweries, which by the turn of the 21st century controlled over 90% of the Mexican beer market, were subsequently acquired by international conglomerates.  Cerveceria Cuautehmoc-Moctezuma, whose brands include Sol, Bohemia, Tecate, and Carta Blanca, was sold to Heineken in 2010; Grupo Modelo, which sells Corona, Modelo, and Pacifico brands among others, was acquired by Anheuser-Busch in 2013.

Mexican Corona beer is a light lager sold world-wide and has become an iconic brand.  Other, darker and craft Mexican beers can sometimes be found in the premium brews section of higher-end supermarkets and trendy restaurants across the US, Canada and Europe.

The colossal marketing budgets and the extensive distribution networks controlled by these two breweries ensure that their big-brand names are placed at the forefront of buyers’ choices across the country.

A re-emergence of independent craft beer breweries

However, changing consumer habits are fueling a boom in artisanal beer across Mexico, and independent brewers have been making a noticeable comeback recently with small-batch craft beer and ale labels appearing regionally in local stores, restaurants, and bars.

Contemporary beer culture in Mexico

The majority of beers sold in Mexico today are lagers, pilsners, Vienna-style light and dark beers, as well as Munich dark beers.  Beer in Mexico is served cold, or taken as a Michelada: beer with lime juice, or lime juice mixed with a variety of spicy sauces like Worcester, Tabasco, and soy.

The beverage is still regularly supplied using returnable bottles, although recyclable cans and bottles are becoming increasingly common.  If you are visiting Mexico and purchase beer from a local store, choose the cans or recyclable bottles with the words “No Retornable” printed on the label, which don’t require a deposit and can be recycled after use.

When you’re living in Mexico, it’s worth building up a small stock of returnable bottles which you can take back to the store when you want refills.  Over time, if you build-up a good rapport with your local independent shopkeeper, they might waive the deposit if you’re passing-by or forget to take your returnable bottles on that occasion.

Most Mexican beer bottle sizes are 325ml, although some brands of beer are also available in larger 925ml, 940ml, and full 1-liter sizes.

In Mexican slang Spanish, the larger bottles are called caguamas (sea turtles) or if you’re in north-eastern Mexico you might hear them referred to as ballenas (whales); in Mazatlán, ballenas refer specifically to the Pacifico brand of beer sold in the larger-sized bottles.

Learn more about Mexican drinks and beverages

Mexperience publishes guides and articles to help you discover Mexico’s drinks and beverages including beers, spirits and non-alcoholic beverages.

• Discover and explore Mexican beers
• The Mexican Bar—discover Mexico’s alcoholic drinks & cocktails
• Mexico gave chocolate to the world
• Mexico grows fine coffees
• Learn more about drinks and beverages in Mexico

Greene traveled in southern Mexico during the anti-clerical persecutions of the 1930s, and produced two books, the commentary Lawless Roads and the novel The Power and The Glory.  Lawrence visited in the 1920s, and wrote The Plumed Serpent, while Lowry in the 1940s wrote Under The Volcano, which was made into a film in 1984.

The three can be associated with specific places in Mexico: Greene with sweltering Tabasco; Lowry with Cuernavaca, the land of eternal spring; and Lawrence with Lake Chapala—to this day a popular spot for foreign residents living in Mexico.

The Mexican historian Enrique Krauze considers in a 2015 article on British writers that lived in or visited Mexico that the works of the male authors lean toward what is dark in the country, while the female writers —Rosa King, Sybille Bedford, Rebecca West— tended rather to reflect the day.

More recently, writers like Tony Cohan, author of the memoir On Mexican Time (and its sequel, Mexican Days) show how the country continues to deliver inspiration for writers who come to visit or live here.  A good number of the more contemporary books are about people escaping to a quiet life south of the border —oblivious perhaps to Mexico’s own version of the rat race— and some are fiction.

Another modern-day writer, DBC Pierre of British and Australian parentage, grew up in Mexico in the 1970s.  While Mexico appears briefly in the latter part of his prize-winning first novel Vernon God Little, it’s in a later work, Release the Bats, that he shares several of his personal experiences in the country.

Modern writers are still finding inspiration in Mexico for turning out prose (not to mention blogs), and writing courses are also popular here.

Use the comments below to share your recommendation.

For many, the anniversary provides a day-off work; this national holiday is observed on the nearest Monday to the date, creating a long holiday weekend in March.  For the political classes, it’s an opportunity for speech-making and scoring election campaign points; for the intellectual, a chance to reinterpret history — again?— or at least run some new or resuscitated ideas by the readers of opinion journals.

Benito Juárez was born on March 21, 1806 in San Pablo Guelatao, in the southern state of Oaxaca.  Around age 12, orphaned and knowing no Spanish, he went to the state capital, Oaxaca City, to live.  He studied at the Santa Cruz seminary, but abandoned the idea of the priesthood for a career in law.  After becoming a lawyer, he entered politics, first in his home state and then nationally.

Juárez is best known for the the Reform Laws of 1859, which established the separation of Church and State, expropriated church properties, and introduced civil weddings.  He led the liberals in the Reform War of 1858-1861, which pitted them against the conservatives.  The conservative forces were defeated, and Juárez called elections, which he won, assuming the presidency in 1861.

When the French took the city of Puebla in 1863 and installed Maximilian of Habsburg as emperor, Juárez moved north, organizing an offensive from Paso del Norte which was later renamed Ciudad Juárez.  With the defeat of Maximilian in 1867, Juarez returned to the capital, where his government embarked on programs of economic and educational development.  He was elected again in 1871, and died before completing his term.

His most famous saying is that “among individuals as among nations, the respect for the rights of others is peace.”  Many plaques and statues —including the one pictured above— quote this famous line.

A fair historical comparison for Juárez might be Thomas Jefferson or William Pitt, but in the popular mind’s eye Mexico’s only indigenous president is more spectacular—an Abraham Lincoln or a Lord Horatio Nelson.

In his bicentennial year in 2006, it was again fashionable to be critical, to uncover the man behind the myth, to question the political assumptions of the victory of the 19th century liberals over their conservative rivals.  Wasn’t Juárez perhaps more like a modern-day conservative?  As a full-blooded Zapotec Indian, didn’t Juárez do less for the indigenous of Mexico than might have been expected of such a one? Isn’t he wrongly portrayed as a ‘demigod’ when in fact he was just as human as the next person with his good points and his faults?

One would not be thought ignorant by one’s peers, but faced with such an array of polemical possibilities, and armed only with a smattering of history from the handiest sources, one often can’t help but suspect, nay hope, that ‘the real Juárez’ is the one of official textbooks—the Nelson who saw no ships, the Lincoln of “fourscore and seven years ago.”

There is no question of the Mexican origin of this saying, which refers to the most revered of the country’s presidents and is similar in meaning to “water off a duck’s back.”

Several explanations are offered for how the expression came to be used, of which the most likely appears to be that offered by the late anthropologist and historian Fernando Benítez, in his work Un Indio Zapoteco Llamado Benito Juárez.

According to Benítez, when Juárez was a boy, he was caught in a wind storm on a boat on a lagoon. Other boys swam to shore but the young Juárez stayed aboard, rode out the storm and came safely ashore with the boat the next morning. Hence the saying, something does to one “what the wind did to Juárez” – i.e. nothing.

Another explanation offered is that of a supposed portrait of Juárez, which shows a flag waving in the background, but Juárez’s robes not moving at all. Given the serious poses in which Juárez appears in most portraits, this explanation at least sounds feasible.

Others, totally unconvincingly, talk about wind storms in Ciudad Juárez, originally El Paso del Norte, and renamed in Juárez’s honor after he and his forces briefly took refuge there during the French intervention, or even to the many statues of the former president being unaffected by wind.

Mexico’s 1917 Constitution

Mexico’s Constitution was drafted in the colonial city of Queretaro, north of Mexico City.   It was legalized on February 5th, 1917, by the country’s Constitutional Congress. Venustiano Carranza was the first President to serve under the terms of the new constitution.

In years past, Mexico would have marked this holiday on February 5th but, in 2006, Congress approved an initiative whereby a number of official holiday dates would be observed on the nearest Monday to the official date, thus creating long holiday weekends.

100th Anniversary

2017 marked the 100th anniversary of the Constitution and to commemorate the centenary, the Bank of Mexico issued a limited edition 20-peso coin and a limited edition 100-peso banknote which are introduced here.

On the centenary of the revolution in 2010, the bank issued a 100-peso commemorative banknote for that occasion: although they remain legal tender, they are rarely if ever seen in trade now, and have become a collector’s item.

The Mexican Constitution was drafted following the Mexican Revolution, led by Francisco Madero against the dictatorial regime of Porfirio Diaz (an era known in Mexico as “El Porfiriato”), in pursuit of political and agrarian reforms, and social justice.

Although it took several years for Mexico’s political upheaval to settle-down following the revolution —and subsequent enactment of the Constitution— to this day, the document continues to influence and shape Mexico’s social, political, and economic landscape.

Land ownership in Mexico

One of the key Articles of the Mexican Constitution to come to light in recent years is Article 27—which deals with the ownership of land in Mexico. Specifically, it states, foreigners may not own land within 100 km of a land border or 50 km of a sea border.

In a bid to open up land development to foreign direct investment the administration of President Carlos Salinas de Gortari introduced ‘Land Trusts’ (fideicomisos) in the 1990s; administered by banks, they provide foreigners with title of the land in all but name.  You can learn more about property ownership in Mexico in our free eBook about real estate in Mexico.

Before this law came to pass, foreigners who bought land near the border in Mexico used a ‘presta nombre’ (borrowed name)—a Mexican national whom the buyer could trust to hold title of the land, with a gentleman’s agreement existing between the buyer and the title holder.