What is the history of San Miguel de Allende?

I am a big fan of the history of San Miguel. The whole history of the people that used to live in this area prior to the Spanish and those who were conquered it is amazing. Some of the names of our villages come from the Chichimecas and the Otomis, who were the indigenous people who used to live here. There are pyramids in and around San Miguel that were made by these indigenous groups.

 

Every small village that was conquered by the Spanish has a...

I am a big fan of the history of San Miguel. The whole history of the people that used to live in this area prior to the Spanish and those who were conquered it is amazing. Some of the names of our villages come from the Chichimecas and the Otomis, who were the indigenous people who used to live here. There are pyramids in and around San Miguel that were made by these indigenous groups.

 

Every small village that was conquered by the Spanish has a little chapel. Those chapels were made as a substitute to the pyramids. You will still see the coecillos (or the small pyramids) made by the indigenous groups in and around San Miguel. One of the bigger pyramids is now open to the public, which about 15 minutes away from San Miguel by car.

 

San Miguel de Allende was founded by the Spaniards close to the water reservoir that we have now even though at that time, we didn’t have that water reservoir. San Miguel was founded along the route of Camino Real, the Silver Route, which goes all the way up to the States. Essentially San Miguel de Allende is on the way of Guanajuato and the Silver Route so at some point, the Spanish discovered San Miguel and they founded it in the lowest part of the city where the water was streaming. You could pull water out just 20 feet underground so it was easy to start agriculture in that area. This part of the country has a lot of underground water.

 

When you look at the naming of San Miguel as a World Heritage Site, it is not only San Miguel, it’s actually combined with Atotonilco. In the Chichimeca language, “Atotonilco” means “the place of hot springs.” You will find many places across Atotonilco where people take advantage of the hot springs, so the city was founded where you can easily find water. Atotonilco is a small village that is also on the road of Dolores Hidalgo (the Golden Corridor) and it has a beautiful church called Santuario de Atotonilco that has the frescos. The artist who made the artwork of that church is Antonio Martínez de Pocasangre and because of his wonderful art, the church was dubbed “the Sistine Chapel of Mexico.” His art is just amazing and highly valuable.

 

Santuario de Atotonilco has Casa de Ejercicios Espirituales for many years now, which is a spiritual retreat facility for the Catholic Church. The story says that the independence of Mexico started in Dolores Hidalgo, which is close to San Miguel.  When it started, Father Hidalgo came to Atotonilco and got all the people doing spiritual exercise and took them to fight for independence. They were essentially the first the battalion fighting for the independence of Mexico from Spain.

 

They also took with them, from that specific location, the flag with the Virgin of Guadalupe. San Miguel, Dolores Hidalgo, and Atotonilco are essentially embedded into the very beginning of Mexico.

 

The people who were living in this part of the country were of independent thinking. San Miguel has a history of conspiracies. It has a history of Spaniards that were born in Mexico that were not treated equally by the Spanish. Allende was born in San Miguel and he is one of the main characters of the Independence of Mexico. The history of San Miguel goes along with independence, free thinking, and war. 

 

Later on, the city was moved uphill to where the views are but it is still next to a stream in the middle of the hill. That is where San Miguel is located now. San Miguel was then moved to a place where there was a stream of water, which they called Chorro. Next to this stream of water is a church called Iglesia de Chorro (Church of Chorro). That is the second place where the city was founded. The city of San Miguel started getting visited by some of the wealthiest people in Mexico at that time, who started creating beautiful buildings and bringing more and more industries to San Miguel. They brought in some nobles and created different places for them to live. These nobles were given different tasks, for example, creating industries like working with leather and cattle. San Miguel is very small and it had a lot of countryside around it but one thing in particular about San Miguel is that it was beautiful. It was already beautiful even at that time when there were no streets. The buildings were more grand than is usual for a typical small city.

 

At some point, San Miguel got into the textile industry, which is now called the Fabrica Aurora. The textile industry started blooming in San Miguel so the Zarate and a lot of the beautiful textile products of Mexico were made in San Miguel. Nowadays, what used to be that factory is now a beautiful place where you can find art, great restaurants, galleries, and artists. The artists of San Miguel have now created that space into this beautiful venue to see art in San Miguel.

 

At some point in the 1930s, a school in San Miguel called Instituto Allende (Allende Institute) was added into the US G.I. Bill. This was even before the Second World War. In the 1930s, we started getting people through the G.I. Bill to be educated in Instituto Allende. That was the first wave of Americans who came to San Miguel. Interestingly enough, there were a thousand people who applied in the 1930s and two hundred of them were admitted, so the Instituto was operating with those two hundred expats.

 

After World War Two, we had a second batch of expats who came to San Miguel and a lot of them never left. Some of those people that came through the G.I. Bill married local San Miguelenses and some of them married into some of the noble families; family names that have been here for four to five generations. Their families are now a mix between American and Mexican and they have children who have two last names.

 

This wave of Americans started shaping the artistic community of San Miguel and shaping what San Miguel was to become in general. A lot of these people were in love with San Miguel and they started creating ways to protect it.

 

The only reason why San Miguel is so beautiful, in my mind, and after speaking to many people, is because it was very hard to get to at some point. It was almost impossible to because the highway was very bad, which caused it to be separated from the industrial corridors of Mexico. The cities around San Miguel are all industrial towns. There are power assembly lines and big transnational corporations that are around San Miguel but the industrial route didn’t go through San Miguel. At one point, San Miguel’s population was very low and it was like a beautiful hidden town of Mexico. Because of these foreigners who came from different cultures that had a protective feel for the beauty in cities, they became almost like activists and they started protecting the historical beauty of San Miguel.  In Mexico the protective laws of these historic towns were just getting into effect, and San Miguel was one of the very first cities to be protected. There are people like Carmen Masip, who passed away several years ago, who was one of the big San Miguelenses who protected San Miguel. She was the daughter of a foreigner but was raised in San Miguel.

 

There is a very interesting relationship between the foreign community, the local community, and how San Miguel became what it is today. When the highways started getting better and services improved, then the type of people arriving in San Miguel starting shifting. 

 

Another interesting thing about San Miguel was the running of bulls in the center of town that was done every  year. When UNESCO named San Miguel a World Heritage Site, the running of the bulls was stopped because it does a lot of damage to the city. 

 

The San Miguel that we know today has to do with arts, the G.I. Bill, and foreigners coming to this town. Putting all that together creates this very beautiful city, which I don’t believe you could create again anywhere in the world because it took so many different aspects to create what San Miguel has today. What we have today is an amazing city that offers a great quality of life. There’s about 15% to 20% foreign population in San Miguel. It is an authentic city given that we have so many Mexicans and people who go about doing business and creating crafts. San Miguel is a living city. It is not just a place where people live or have a home. It is a whole dynamic that gives San Miguel this wonderful feel.

 

There are many illustrious community members in San Miguel. There are people like Leonard and Reva Brooks, who were artists that were in exile in Mexico. They created amazing art and amazing history in San Miguel. There is Stirling Dickinson, who is an artist who also contributed a lot to San Miguel. We now have a street named after him. There are so many foreign people that have chosen San Miguel to be their home. They have interestingly enough shaped this town so much to what it is today. The list of artists who have lived and still live in San Miguel is huge. As another example, Toller Cranston, who was a famous Canadian Olympic medalist, figure skater, and painter moved to San Miguel Allende many decades ago and just passed away in 2015.

 

( Instituto Allende, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, pictured.)