Guanajuato

I go to school for four hours every day, and spend my afternoons and weekends visiting museums and randomly walking around Guanajuato.  I have also taken some short weekend trips to visit nearby towns.  This is what I have discovered …

Guanajuato is located in the central highland plains of Mexico about a four hour drive north of Mexico City and at an elevation of nearly 7,000 feet. Very early on during the Spanish colonial era, they discovered some gold and a lot of silver in these mountains. By the eighteenth century, Guanajuato was the world’s leading silver producer and for most of the colonial period, Guanajuato was the richest city in Mexico. Needless to say, the Spanish had to build a huge administrative infrastructure to process that much silver, and that is why today, Guanajuato and the nearby town of San Miguel de Allende have so much classic Spanish colonial architecture.

The battle for Mexican independence, which took place roughly from 1810 to 1821, happened in large part because Spain “disappeared” as a country in 1810 when Napoleon conquered it and King Carlos V abdicated. If there was no king in Spain, who ruled Mexico? And the battle for Mexico’s independence began … right here. The Grita de Dolores. Literally, “the (battle)cry from Dolores.” Figuratively, “the shot heard round the world.”

Several leaders of the independence movement including Ignatio Allende convinced Padre Miguel Hidalgo of the town of Dolores to join them, and he did so, counting on the help of one of the Virgens of Guadalupe (there seem to be a lot of them).  It was Father Hidalgo who issued that famous Grita (shout). The revolutionaries marched into Guanajuato from Hidalgo which is over the mountains and took me an hour and a half by bus. In Guanajuato, the army had barricaded itself into the solid stone Alhondiga, a huge grain warehouse.

Unable to attack the building, legend has it that a local miner crawled up to the door, the only part of the building made of wood, and set it on fire.  Today, a giant statue of that miner, Pipila, holding a torch, towers over Guanajuato.  The revolutionaries did then enter and take over the Alhondiga, but the victory was short lived.  The leaders were arrested, shot by a firing squad, and their heads were placed on the four corners of the Alhondiga as a warning to future revolutionaries. If you look closely, the rectangular plaque in the corner of the building has the name of the revolutionary whose head graced this corner. A strange fact about Pipila that I cannot explain ... the quote on the plinth says: there are still more Alhondigas to set on fire. And the date is September, 1939. Odd timing, no?

Another view of Pipila. You can see him lit up in the background of the Super Bowl.

Also, they do love to combine all the imagery that they can. Just as Pipila has a little of the Statue of Liberty in him, this painting of Padre Hidalgo that I saw in the museum in Dolores Hidalgo combines the good padre with Pipila and Paul Revere.

A minor side note:  the town of Dolores renamed itself Dolores Hidalgo in honor of Padre Hidalgo, a name that sounds strange to Americans since it seems like it is named after a woman.

The most interesting thing to me about Guanajuato is its unique layout. Originally, a river ran through the valley and the houses were built up the sides of the mountains on either side. Since the houses were made of stone and the streets were narrow in the colonial period (not to mention steep), there are almost no streets in Guanajuato that cars can drive on today. This is an incredible pedestrian town, although it is as un-handicap friendly as it could possibly be. You have to walk everywhere, and you have to walk up everywhere. Combined with the mild climate, the upside is that there are people outside everywhere and all the time, and there is music playing most of the time.

The river flooded periodically, so they started building houses farther up the slopes.  Then they built bridges across the river, and kept building even farther up.  Sometimes, they built buildings on top of the bridges.  Eventually, they built a dam in the mountains and diverted the river from the city.  They were left with a city built over an empty space where the river once flowed, so they put in … roads.  How do you put car tunnels through a mountain with solid stone buildings on top?  You don’t.  You build the city on top of a river, and when you take away the river, you put a maze of streets where once the river flowed.  Voila!  An incredibly walkable city with car bypasses for through traffic.  In a few places there are steps down for people to walk under plazas or buildings, but most of the tunnels are for cars.

In more modern times, Guanajuato wanted to attract more tourists and visitors, so they became a World Heritage site and had the houses in the city painted in bright colors. These are the two houses across the alleyway from my new apartment.

They also decided to put Guanajuato on the cultural map by adopting Miguel Cervantes as their inspiration.  Guanajuato is the site of all things Cervantino including a museum, an annual festival with readings and performances, a theater (Teatro Cervantes) and statues.  With a few exceptions for historical figures, every statue in Guanajuato is either Don Quixote, Sancho Panza, Dulcinea, or Rocinante.  (The directions to my school from my first apartment:  walk to the first Don Quixote and turn left.  I did get kicked out of that apartment but that’s another story.  I have learned my lesson; no more late night wild parties.)  They even put up a marker for Cervantes' "tomb" although this is no chance that he is buried here.

A typical outside mural

A modern (legless) Rocinante in front of the University

The narrow streets and alleyways of Guanajuato have led to its own Romeo and Juliet story. Supposedly a poor young miner lived across this narrow alleyway from a rich family. (Stop right there. Impossible set-up.) One day the father found his daughter kissing the miner by leaning in from each balcony. So he ... of course ... killed his daughter. My excellent guide told me she has seen photos from the 1930's and the balconies were not there. Oh well.  Visitors come from all over to kiss in the Callejon de Besos, the  Alleyway of Kisses, for good luck

I do spend my afternoons visiting the museums here. The Cervantes museum, of course, the municipal museum, and the Alhondiga. The most pleasant surprise: Diego Rivera’s childhood house. He was born here but his family left when he was 6. No matter; Guanajuato can still claim him. The museum exhibits early works and sketches, no full blown murals. It turns out that his talent was recognized early on and he received a scholarship to study in France and Spain where he met and studied with, among others, Picasso and Cezanne. In one room were exhibited Rivera’s cubist works that looked like they could have been Picasso’s. Who knew?

I also attended a concert at the Teatro Principal.  Guanajuato has an excellent symphony orchestra that is somehow connected with the University of Guanajuato but is made up of professionals, not students.  I was sitting in the middle of a sea of English speakers.  One of the men (American) told me he had moved to Guanajuato in large part because of the symphony.  I pointed out that the orchestra seemed very white to me.  He acknowledged that there has been little appreciation for European music but that is slowly changing.  Mexico has benefited from an influx of Russian musicians who chose to leave their homeland.  The concert master was Ukranian.  These musicians are training the next generation.  

More typical of the musicians in Guanajuato are these estudiantinas - an echo of student singers of bygone eras who literally sang for their supper.  These modern troubadours lead groups of tourists through the alleyways every night, singing and telling stories and jokes.  Teddy, you too can carry your bass vionin through the alleyways of Guanajuato.  And there are mariachi bands everywhere, playing music, resting, and checking their cel phones.