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Published: January 17th 2017
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A 1948 issue of Life Magazine changed the future of San Miguel.
I left off in the history of San Miguel in the 1860's, when it was well on the way to becoming a ghost town. At its height "it was one of the most important and prosperous settlements in New Spain with a population reaching 30,000. In comparison, in the mid 18th century Boston had a population of only 16,000 and New York 25,000. The town's apogee came during the transition period between Baroque and Neoclassical architecture and many of the mansions and churches have both influences. Mansions were larger than normal for a settlement of this size." (Wikipedia) What remained would stay frozen in time, as the new Mexican government, under the
INAH, declared San Miguel a “Historic and Protected Town” in 1926, establishing guidelines and restrictions aimed at keeping its colonial appearance. But by 1930, few people lived there and the mansions were abandoned.
Opera singer and actor(and later a Franciscan monk in Peru....and full circle back to the Franciscan founder, Father Juan de San Miguel) Jose Mojica, discovered this magnificent ruin of a town and restored a mansion here for his mother in the 1930's.
He had many friends in Hollywood, including John Wayne, Gary Cooper and John Ford who came to visit, and they told others about this "undiscovered" town.
In the late 1930s and early 1940s, the town began to attract artists and writers. One prominent artist and writer was
Stirling Dickinson, an American, who came in 1938. In the 1940s, Dickinson established the Instituto Allende. Another art and cultural school established around the same time is the Escuela de Bellas Artes. Despite their rural location, both schools would find success after the Second World War. U.S. veterans studying under the G.I. Bill were permitted to study abroad, and these schools took advantage, attracting former soldiers as students. Enrollment at the schools rose and this began the town's cultural reputation.This attracted more artists and writers, including
José Chávez Morado and David Alfaro Siqueiros, who taught painting at the Escuela de Bellas Artes. (A very strange occurrence happened here: Siqueriros, a Stalinist who helped with the assassination of Trotsky in Mexico City, taught painting to American GI's!) (Bill has a coffee mug from the museum that is Trotsky's home, left the way it was the he was shot...bullet holes in the window and wall.)
This,
in turn, spurred the opening of hotels, shops and restaurants to cater to the new visitors and residents. Many of the American veterans who came to study in San Miguel would later come back to retire, and have been credited with saving the town.
Thus the 1948 Life article “GI Paradise: Veterans go to Mexico to study art, live cheaply, and have a good time” . Room and board could be had for $45 a month. Many veterans married local girls and often families with Anglo names have long histories here. While there are many expats here, they only make up 5% of the population.
Today was my first day of Spanish school. I am now in level 2... The last time I took a class was in Oaxaca several years ago, and I came into this session in its third week so the learning curve today was very steep: we worked on the imperfecto, which is what we use when we say "was walking" or "used to walk" rather than "walked". So now I am learning several new sets of verb endings... My school is the Academia Hispano Americano and it's a 20 walk away. I have
class Monday-Friday for three hours each morning.
It is chilly here in the mornings and evenings, and very warm in the sun by mid-day...I need to dress warmer tomorrow for my 8 am walk to school!
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Carol McClain
non-member comment
El Imperfecto
The endings are reasonably easy. Deciding when to use the imperfect and when to use the preterite is much trickier. Suerte! Interesting history of S.M. de A. Thanks! C.