February 11, 2005

A Giant Eye on the Stars

By MARION LLOYD

On a frigid winter morning, as the first rays of daylight are just creeping over the Sierra Negra volcano, several truckloads of construction workers rumble toward the 14,000-foot peak, past donkey carts and heavily bundled farmers headed out to their fields. Below, spirals of wood smoke rise from a cluster of adobe huts.

Aside from the trucks, the scene has changed little in the hundreds of years since farmers began coaxing peas and potatoes from these parched hillsides 110 miles