Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 3, 1994 TAG: 9404020001
SECTION: TRAVEL PAGE: F-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By CHRISTOPHER REYNOLDS LOS ANGELES TIMES
DATELINE: GUANAJUATO, MEXICO LENGTH: Long
Up in the hills behind us are the mines that began producing astounding volumes of silver in the 16th century, putting Guanajuato on Mexico's colonial map. To our left, the amphitheater seating leads back to the tall walls of the Alhondiga de Granaditas. From that building, which was built as a grain warehouse, Spanish colonial authorities in 1811 hung the severed heads of four rebels to discourage those who fought for Mexican independence. In another decade, the Spanish were chased out for good, and Guanajuato had an honored role in the quest for Mexican self-determination.
Now, suddenly, the crowd roars. A line of dancers advances across the stage, kicking and spinning, garbed in colors that surpass those of the houses on the hill. Young Rafael bombards me with questions about the climate of Los Angeles, the whereabouts of Michael Jackson's home, the hotel we're staying in and on and on. But when I turn the tables on him and ask about the music and dances, he is taken aback.
``You don't know these songs?'' Rafael asks me in Spanish. How, he wonders, could his city's history and culture be so underappreciated outside Mexico?
After three days in Guanajuato, I can't blame him for wondering.
Other visitors have described Guanajuato as a Tuscan village on steeper, drier slopes, or as a Greek island town with a wider color spectrum. I would add that it's a vertical city, like San Francisco, and as friendly as any American small town I've visited.
The population of the city is about 78,000, including about 15,000 students at the University of Guanajuato. The altitude is 6,000-feet-plus above sea level, and almost everything is within walking distance. There is no beach, no lake, no golf, and I don't think I saw a tennis court.
Silver mining built Guanajuato, just as it built Zacatecas 200 miles to the north. (Taxco, Mexico's oldest and perhaps most famous silver town, lies 300 miles southwest of Mexico City.) As in much of small-town Mexico, Guanajuato's older population is very Catholic and very traditional. The Holy Week concluding with Easter Sunday brings major crowds from surrounding cities, and on any day, in early morning light, the climbing and swooping cobblestone alleys of Guanajuato look quaint and sleepy.
But do not be deceived. This is a Mexican town with a double espresso under its belt and a dog-eared copy of ``Don Quixote'' in hand. The students are ubiquitous. The university is known for its arts programs. The renowned muralist Diego Rivera is celebrated here in a museum that was once his childhood home.
And every October, the city blooms into one of Latin America's leading cultural showcases.
Though the great 16th-century Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes never set foot in Guanajuato (or anywhere else in Mexico, for that matter), a group of students led by university faculty member Enrique Ruelas Espinoza started presenting ``entremeses'' - skits - from his work in the city's Plazuela San Roque in 1953. Just as Ashland, Ore., has parlayed its Shakespeare festival into a nearly year-round series of plays, performances and exhibits (despite having no particular connections to that 16th-century author), Guanajuato has built its Festival Internacional Cervantino into a three-week event that fills the city's hotels with students and affluent arts lovers from all over Mexico. The artists and performers who take part don't necessarily have any more to do with Cervantes than does the city itself; this year, for instance, they ranged from stars of the Kiev Opera Ballet to Olivia Olea - a Los Angeles filmmaker who brought ``Por La Vida,'' her documentary on Los Angeles street vendors.
Guanajuato is well-equipped for tourists. A government tourism study two years ago found 1,791 guest rooms in the city in 40 hotels, several of them - including the Real de Minas, the Parador San Javier and the Castillo Santa Cecilia - converted from haciendas of the mining barons into lodgings. The same survey estimated that of 4.1 million visitors to Guanajuato in 1991, just 280,000 came from outside Mexico.
Of those 280,000 or so non-Mexicans who visit the city each year, many have probably just come for the dead.
Out on the west edge of town, the state government displays under glass 100-plus corpses, all apparently preserved by rare minerals in the local soil, and this is all many Americans have ever heard of Guanajuato.
``Las Momias!'' small boys are likely to shout at you as you enter town for the first, second and third times. The shouting kids want to be tour guides, but they're not necessary. If you must go, drive or take a cab or bus to the mummy museum and hand over about $1.70 for a ticket (more if you have a camera). Then you are admitted to a series of rooms filled with dead of all shapes and sizes, down to the 8-inch-high figure billed as the smallest mummy in the world. The mummies are said to be evidence of the Mexicans' particular fascination with death.
Guanajuato's main street is Avenida Juarez, but one of the city's distinguishing features is the number of cars at any moment that are passing under town, instead of through it. After a flood in 1905, Mexican engineers rerouted the river that cut through the city into an underground tunnel. Above the river, in a tunnel of its own, much of the local traffic now flows, branching out into a perplexing network of subsidiary tunnels that surface here and there amid the monuments of downtown. Whenever there's a choice, travel by foot.
by CNB