Vivir en San Miguel de Allende es como vivir dentro de un cuadro
"Living in San Miguel de Allende is like living inside a painting." -Albert Coffee, archeologist and tour guide
To celebrate our anniversary this year, Darby and I spent a week in San Miguel de Allende, the beautiful city (and Unesco World Heritage site) in the state of Guanajuato, Mexico. The city of cobblestone streets is built on hills in a mountainous region of Mexico’s Central Highlands. The elevation is 6300 feet above sea level, and you feel it when walking uphill.
San Miguel de Allende has a rich Indigenous history dating back thousands of years, and plenty of twists and turns since. Hundreds of years ago, the city was a silver mining center for the Kingdom of Spain. Today, it’s a vibrant arts colony, an international tourist destination, and home to thousands of English-speaking expats.
We luxuriated in the friendliness and warmth of the local people, went from one amazing place to eat to the next, chatted with local artists, drank Mexican coffee, wine, and Mezcal, sought out street murals, and took a mind-blowing tour of Cañada de la Virgen—the Otomi sacred site a few kilometers outside of town.
The site faces the celestial north, where the stars spin around in a circle throughout the year. The moon moves up the stairs of the pyramid as its cycle advances. It rises and falls perfectly in pyramid notches at key times in the lunar calendar and during solstice periods.
We toured the site with Albert Coffee, an expat archeologist from Louisiana who relocated to San Miguel de Allende in order to work on the original dig, and now takes people to the site where he dispenses his wealth of information. Some of the things that he said that stuck with me:
The numbers 13, 20, and 52 are important to the Otomi priests who lived at the site, which was abandoned in the 11th century and only recently rediscovered.
The Otomi relied on spirit dogs to guide them across rivers in the afterworld.
Skeletal remains from the site indicate that some people had their heads, hands, and feet removed—which in the Otomi religion aligns with thought, art, and movement.
Cacao beans and bird feathers—not the local gold and silver—were used as currency in Otomi villages.
The conquistadores used to build their Catholic cathedrals on top of pyramid sites in order to stamp out native beliefs.
The word Mexico means ‘In the Moon’s belly button’, or ‘In the center of the Lake of the Moon’. Roughly translated, Mexico is the umbilical cord to the moon.
And the Mexican flag’s central emblem recalls the Aztec legend of a golden eagle sitting on a cactus while devouring a serpent — a vision that signaled to the Aztecs where to found their city, Tenochtitlan.
Indigenous art, astronomy, storytelling, religion, culture, and knowledge of the natural world…it’s all woven together in this powerful place like the most beautiful tapestry. Since first contact by Europeans in 1542, new strands have been introduced to the community mosaic—some poisonous and some prosperous—and new strands continue to be introduced from within Mexico and from afar.
Mental and Emotional Mexican American States
Borders are an illusion largely enforced by illegitimate governments. Like a rattlesnake, borders curl up and eventually disappear. Beyond the cartographic illusions, I believe we can find deeper and more meaningful truths.
When I’m on the other side of the US-Mexico border, things seem vibrant and alive, the people are kind and warm, and I find myself hopeful again. To say travel to Mexico is good for the soul is to undersell the gifts that the people of Mexico offer.
For one, I enjoy it when people on the street greet one another with a hearty, “Buenos Dias.” The vibration is high! Many people are also patient and helpful, especially when a ‘guero’ like me makes a genuine effort to speak conversational Spanish.
Respect. Gratitude. Craft. These are Mexican values, and more so than any objects collected from our journey, we return to America with the intent to keep Mexico and its people close to our hearts.
What Paid Subscribers Receive…
I recently activated paid subscriptions and I want to thank the subscribers who’ve already opted in. Typically, this would mean that I’d offer paid subscribers exclusive content hidden behind a paywall. But paywalls are not my thing. I’ve tried paywalls in the past and I don’t like the idea, or the reality, of gated content. I’ve also tried micropayments, display advertising, job boards, sponsored content, and crowdfunding, as means to a financial end on the Web.
None of these options works all that well unless you scale and the only way to scale is to invest more time and effort in making magnetic content that people will read, share, and in some cases, pay for. You also must be one of the lucky ones. Plenty of people make amazing things and share them on the Internet, yet they never reach a large audience willing and able to support them.
What I offer is an old-school offline connection with my paid subscribers. Instead of providing access to gated content, I will mail you physical objects like poems, paintings, greeting cards, and the like on a quarterly basis.
Un Poco Más
We met and chatted with several artists in San Miguel de Allende, including Daniel Rueffert (like me, originally from Nebraska), Lisa and George Hallmark, Cheri and Michael Schwarcz, Peter Levitan, Lucas Rise, and others.
Some of our favorite places to eat in San Miguel: Café Quiería for tacos al carbon, La Parada for the best salmon cebiche, and San Mezcal for flights of the namesake spirit and incredible food.
Ki’Bok and Lavanda are unspeakably great coffee shops in San Miguel de Allende. Deep bow of gratitude.
The Mexican wines we drank in San Miguel were outstanding. We particularly enjoyed the Sauvignon Blanc from Monte Xanic. The varietal comes from the single vineyard originally planted by Russian pacifists who escaped violence in their homeland during the Bolshevik Revolution in the early 1900s.
We saw a mural in San Miguel with these words attributed to William Butler Yeats, “The world is full of magic things patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.” When you’re living inside a painting, your senses do grow sharper. You become present and more able to see the humanity and creativity in others and the beauty of nature.
Thanks for being here now,
When you are ready to grow a mission-based organization, spark a social change movement, or invest in an art project, please let me know. I’d like to help.
Hrrmmm, now I gotta go look up more info about the #s 13, 20, and 52.