San Miguel de Allende
San Miguel de Allende is in the Mexican state of Guanajuato, about 3 hours north of Mexico City, and a 9 or 10 hour drive from the Texas border. Founded in the mid-16th century as a stop on the caravan route to the silver mines, San Miguel and its citizens took a prominent role in the beginning of the Mexican war of independence from Spain in the early 19th century. It has a lot of Mexican tourist traffic, particularly in the couple of weeks around the 16th of September when Mexican Independence Day is celebrated. This year, 2010, is the Mexican Bicentennial, so there is a whole lot of celebration going on.
San Miguel de Allende is nowadays home to a large colony of expatriate Americans and
Canadians, and quite a few Europeans and Asians as well.
The American artist Stirling Dickinson began to promote the
Instituto Allende
after the Second World War, and tuition was made available to American veterans under
the GI Bill, resulting in an influx of artists and art students. Since then an ever-increasing
number of foreigners have settled here, along with artists, musicians and writers
who are both Mexican and foreign. Nowadays, San Miguel is also a retirement destination,
which may have somewhat diluted the artistic atmosphere, but has also increased its
general level of affluence.
San Miguel, though it has experienced a real estate boom and development in recent years, is still a remarkably beautiful small town with many traditional Mexican elements. On narrow streets of cobblestone, peddlars with burros sell their wares, high stone walls with broken bottles embedded in the top shield beautiful private gardens from the public eye, ancient women sit on street corners selling home-made tortillas and nopales (cactus leaves) that they have picked in the countryside and cooked at home, traditional musicians wander from restaurant to restaurant with their guitars in hand, and a blind harmonica player sits on a corner rain or shine, day or night, playing "Solamente Una Vez" and "Cielito Lindo" for pesos thrown in his hat.
The center of San Miguel is the "Jardin" in front of the Parroquia (what would be called the "zócalo" in many other Mexican cities.) The Parroquia is a most atypical Mexican cathedral. Most Mexican churches are massive constructions in 17th Century Baroque style; the exteriors are imposing but plain, and the insides are often extravagantly decorated in Mexican Baroque style, with gory crucifixion and martydom scenes and magnificent murals.
The Parroquia of San Miguel de Allende, the most prominent of the many colonial-era
churchs in SMA, was remodeled in the 19th century with
a sandstone facade modeled on a fairy-tale castle on the Rhine. With fireworks exploding
over the top of it (a frequent occurrence),
and now a Bicentennial light show projected on it as well,
it looks just like Disneyland. As an introduction
to Mexico it is unquestionably dramatic, and it takes a while for the newcomer to realize that
it is not at all what most Mexican churches look like. However, it is an essential
part of the myth and mythos of San Miguel de Allende.
If you are coming to San Miguel and plan to stay in the center of town (where our student housing is), be forewarned that the many churches all have bells which are rung regularly, and irregularly (meaning often in the wee hours of the night). The local joke goes, "In San Miguel, ask not for whom the bell tolls... or why, or when." Also, there are also many fiestas in the historic center of town... and this usually means fireworks, particularly on weekends, and especially during the month of September. Both bells and fireworks can start in the early morning (4 am) and continue until late into the night.
The weather forecast for San Miguel de Allende...
Last page update 08-11-2010