We woke to the sound of gunshots – six in rapid succession. My husband levitated off the bed shouting “What! What was that?” The shots continued, punctuated by long black silence between them. Eventually we braved getting out of bed and peeking out the window. Behind the brick wall of a nearby church courtyard, we […]
Continue Reading
Here is San Miguel de Allende – the town, its people, its fiestas – celebrated through the eyes of thirty talented photographers, in a visually exciting book published by Dean and Luna Enterprises. “Foundations of Greatness”, the first of four sections, opens with a wonderfully atmospheric untitled black-and-white photo (Bill Begalke) showing the town center emerging from […]
Continue Reading(The following account represents my personal feelings and subjective impressions as I experienced Semana Santa last year. Since I am neither Catholic nor Mexican, I don’t fully understand all the religious significance of the processions and pageantry. Although Holy Week is celebrated throughout Mexico, the colonial mountain town of San Miguel de Allende is famous […]
Continue Reading
Sometime during my first month in Guanajuato, the idea floated into my head of writing an article about the sonic landscape of the city. This of course includes a great deal of music, since it resounds in every corner. But surrounding the music is a larger sonic landscape, comprising a range of sounds, some magical, […]
Continue Reading
Guanajuato is, and has been for a long time, a centre of culture and education. In one way or another, it has always been prosperous, either through the richness of its farmland or its mines. There was the money to support cultural activities and the desire on the part of the rich mining families and hacendados, I […]
Continue Reading
The Instituto Allende is a Spanish language and Art school in San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, Mexico. I recently attended sculpture classes there, and found it enjoyable and worthwhile. The Instituto offers Spanish classes, and a wide range of art classes. Group classes in Spanish as a second language are offered in various intensities, with […]
Continue Reading
St. Lucia is the patron saint of eyes. The story is told that she was very beautiful, and had many suitors. One of them said that he had fallen uncontrollably in love with her eyes. She plucked out her eyes and sent them to him on a plate. He stopped pursuing her, and the virgin […]
Continue Reading
This is part of one wall of the church in Cata, near the town of Guanajuato. When I visited in 1996, the walls were completely covered with exvotos to a height of twenty feet. When I returned in 1999, the exvotos had been taken down for conservation. Published or Updated on: December 7, 2007 by Richard Ferguson © […]
Continue Reading
The Valle de Maiz drops away from the old highway to Queretaro into a narrow, gloomy gulch, the dirt streets bounded by broken walls, unfinished homes, dark shadowed places and an occasional vacant lot cluttered with refuse wind blown down the canyon from the nearby Mexican mesa. It is where the witches and sorcerers live. […]
Continue Reading
The most important visual image in the classic film, ” Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” was not the alien spaceship, but the imposing stone monolith chosen as the site of the encounter. In an attempt to understand the significance of his mental image of that place the star of the film almost goes mad. It […]
Continue Reading