Visitors to Mexico are often affronted by dogs whose naked, blotchy skins look as if a loathsome disease had stripped them of their fur. Some of these creatures are really victims of mange or eczema, but others are more or less mixed descendants of the Xoloizcuintle,* the hairless, edible dog of the Aztecs. "Xolos" have been neglected until recently, but last week Norman P. Wright, a onetime British diplomat living in Mexico, was well on the way to establishing them as a rare, high-fashion breed.
In pre-Spanish times the Xolos were important to Mexican Indians in many different ways. Young ones could...