In 1916, the Amparo Mining Company had the most successful silver mines in Jalisco and was making money hand over fist. Although it was located pretty much in the middle of nowhere, 65 kilometers due west of Guadalajara near the town of Etzatlan, rumors abound that a bustling community of some 6,000 souls once lived […]
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Isla Isabel is located 34 kilometers (21 miles) off Mexico’s west coast. It is a National Park and wildlife refuge with a population of some 42,000 birds and, in 2003, was named a World Heritage Site. On top of that, Isabel Island is a Ramsar site (wetlands of international importance). Because the birds and iguanas […]
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In most places, a straight line is the shortest distance between two points, but not in many parts of Jalisco’s Primavera Forest, located at the western edge of Guadalajara, Mexico’s second-biggest city. In this woods, a person trying to take a shortcut to some spot only 100 meters away may suddenly find himself or herself […]
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Driving up the long rise into Mineral de Pozos, framed by the gray-brown humpbacked mountains once laced with veins of silver and gold, the visitor first sees the stone walls of the cemetery, the panteón, before he enters the town. It seems like a fitting introduction to a city that nearly died itself, sinking from a population […]
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An American acquaintance of mine, who believes himself to be quite astute about such things, is in the habit of asking whether San Miguel de Allende is the real Mexico and, if it’s not, where can it be found? I suppose the presence of 10,000 Canadians and Americans in this city of 75,000 puts him […]
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Earlier this year, a woman said to me at a cocktail party, “So you hate the United States?” “What?” I’m sure my eyebrows leaped nearly to my hairline with surprise. I wondered whether she’d been lying in wait for me. “You call yourself an expatriate. You even admit it right here.” Her left hand raised […]
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For some northerners, heading south of the border to live after a busy career, Mexico looks like the land of mañana. All they have to do is kick back and watch the monarch butterflies pass on their annual trek down to the state of Michoacan, while the maid whips up another batch of margaritas. This view does […]
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I’m sitting in a third grade class at the Independencia School in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Aside from the charming teacher, there’s hardly a full set of teeth in the room, although nobody’s smile appears to be diminished by this defect. The teacher’s name is Fatima Almeida and she does not work for the […]
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It started in 2001 with supplying a pair of shoes so that a young man didn’t have to go to college barefoot. He’d already won a scholarship. A San Miguel woman named Helen Morris provided them, and a relationship blossomed from there. Soon she was joined by Virginia Wheelwright and several others in providing financial […]
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Seven US presidents were born in log cabins. The most notable, of course, was Lincoln. During elections, all of them were quick to remind the public of their humble frontier origins with fulsome references to their roughhewn family cabins. However, the introduction of the log cabin to Mexico is actually a surprisingly recent phenomenon, driven […]
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