San Miguel de Allende, where Americans abound
They say that you either love or hate San Miguel.
Right away, I did both.
San Miguel de Allende is a very livable small city, cradled in rolling
hills, with much of the city built in traditional architecture. Like
nearby Guanajuato and a number of other cities in Mexico, there are
restrictions on modern buildings, at least in the center of town, and
this creates a very pleasing look. San Miguel is clean and prosperous,
with a number of small parks and beautiful old churches.
The city is an art center, due to the longtime existence of the world-famous
Allende Institute, which offers classes in drawing, painting, lithography,
and other arts. There are numerous galleries, along with the pretension
that an arts scene often seems to include. The Allende Institute and
several other places offer Spanish-language courses for people at all
levels of skill, and many people come here to take those.
San Miguel's main plaza, called the Jardin (Garden)
Everywhere you go in downtown San Miguel, you see foreigners. Americans,
Canadians, Europeans - mostly older (guess Kelly and I included there!),
many quite old. And in line with Juvenal's image of the place, I mistook
a huge liquor store for the grocery store I was looking for!
San Miguel has a reputation for being one of the more expensive places
for a foreigner to live in Mexico, and certainly the number of upscale
restaurants was far beyond what we saw elsewhere. To buy a home in San
Miguel can be quite expensive, and we read ads of palatial homes for
rent or sale, for huge sums. But it seemed to me that if you had the
self-control, you could live about as modestly here as elsewhere. There
are low priced restaurants, and in many parts of the city, the foreign
presence is not dominant. We met an American couple who were renting
a charming two-bedroom apartment on a quiet dead-end street in a peaceful
suburb, with a rooftop with lovely views, for $175/month on a one-year
lease. Utilities only added a modest amount.
Riding a city bus one day, I asked a local Mexican woman how the Mexicans
felt about so many foreigners living in the city. I didn't expect she
would be anything but diplomatic, but her enthusiasm surprised me. The
income is very welcome, and it seemed that she found the foreigners
interesting.
The courtyard of the Public Library
Another San Miguel landmark is the Biblioteca Publica, or Public Library.
It is not like a public library at home, in that it has no government
funding. But it has a collection of thousands of books, in both English
and Spanish. They can be checked out, if you a small membership fee.
The library raises money in a variety of ways, through book sales, a
gift shop, a cafe, and its popular weekly tours of upscale San Miguel
homes.
I found the librarian at his desk on a Saturday afternoon. Like many
librarians, he had books stacked everywhere in his office, and he was
in the process of cataloging the pile on the middle of his desk. As
I have been a library director myself, we compared notes pleasantly
for a while, and when I said that we were thinking of spending more
time in Mexico, he said gallantly that he hoped it would be in San Miguel
- and that I would volunteer at the library. I assured him that if I
did spend time here, I would be glad to help out. Many of the activities
of the library are done by foreign volunteers.
One of the most impressive programs is the creation of school libraries
for the many small schools in the surrounding countryside. Typically,
those schools might only have a few textbooks, but the Biblioteca Publica
has donated small collections of some 200 books to over 300 of these
rural schools. Aside from the costs of acquiring the books, it is not
an easy matter to get the books out to the schools -- there were photos
of a VW van on rugged dirt roads.
I left the Biblioteca Publica with my heart full. Later, I read in
the weekly San Miguel English-language newspaper about squabbling on
the Library Board, something I have encountered in my own career. People
are people everywhere!
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