Guanajuato

I checked into Guanajuato for a couple days this weekend. It’s a pretty nice little colonial town, with lots of winding, atmospheric alleys lined with beautiful old buildings. It seems like there’s a beautiful park with sculpted trees and a Florentine fountain around every corner in the old historic section. Apparently, all the luxury came from the colonialists that were funneling all the product from the local silver mines back to Spain. My guidebook said that for 250 years, the La Valenciana mine at Guanajuato alone provided a staggering 20% of the entire world supply of silver. There was some serious cash floating around, and it’s plainly evident if all the opulent old colonial buildings.

The town is built up in the mountains, and is sprawled out in the valley with some of the narrow alleys climbing steeply up the hillsides. I actually got a fairly decent workout walking back to my hostel every night. It wasn’t too steep on the streets until the route crescendoes with a straight uphill climb of a bunch of stairs about 50 meters into an alley. The city also has a maze of tunnels under the center of the city. They apparently redirected the river a couple hundred years ago into all these tunnels which are now used as the through-routes for traffic and many of the buses. Because of all the history, the great architecture, the warren of tunnels, and the winding, twisted nest of old streets, alleys, and tunnels, the town is a joy to just walk around. It can be challenging, though. Thank god I had a data plan with my iPhone—I can’t imagine how many times I would have gotten lost without Google Maps.

The big hubbub while I was there was El Dia de Los Muertos, the religious holiday where Mexicans remember their deceased family by going to the cemetery and decorating their graves. It was a lot different than I expected. I knew there was going to be partying in the town, but the party extended right up into the cemetery way up in the hills. For one thing, tons of food vendors set up right outside the cemetery, almost as if there was a street fair going on. People were dressed pretty casually, too. Most surprisingly, there was live music. And we’re not talking about solemn, pouty, weepy crap here. They were playing a kind of peppy, upbeat stuff that would feel right at home in a cantina. The most amusing thing about this is that the bands that were there were clearly not playing to the live crowd, but to the deceased. A couple times I saw a band arranged in a semi-circle around a particular spot on the layered, vertical sarcophagi on the walls, facing the sarcophagus and playing with their backs to everyone at the cemetery that actually had a pulse.

Most graves were decorated with flowers or other kinds of arrangements for the deceased one might have in the use. If the grave had them, bouquets of flowers would be placed in stone vases built into the grave. However, the majority of the people that couldn’t affort this used leftover large 32-oz cans from pickled jalepeños. (BTW – you can tell that La Costeña brand is the clear market leader here in Guanajuato.) The graves I really enjoyed, however, were decked out a la el Dia de Los Muertos with all the skeleton iconography and with all kinds of additional swag left, Egyptian-style, for the deceased. This could include anything the deceased enjoyed, but common elements I saw included opened cans of Modelo beer, Mexican torta sandwiches, oranges, apples, candy, roasted peanuts, shots of tequila, bottles of Coke, pastries, packs of cigarettes, bags of pumpkin seeds or chips, and some special sweet bread they cook for the holiday.

 

 

In addition to all the stuff at the cemetery, there was also plenty of stuff going on in town, as well. Lots of people had altars constructed for them, with flowers, but also decorations make from rice and beans, oranges, apples, and lots and lots of skulls. There was also a lot of street art, almost invariably featuring skeletons or skulls. One of my favorites was a picture of a skeleton in a pair of heals, a bikini, and a big floppy hat, hanging out at the beach. And everywhere ladies were selling little skulls make out of sugar, skull chocolates, skull-shaped lollipops, etc.

One of the other interesting aspects of Guanajuato was the Mummy Museum. Yes they have a mummy museum there. These aren’t millennia-old mummies, though. These mummies are the petrified corpses that have been taken out of some of the above-ground sarcophagi in the cemetery to make new space. Most of them seem to have been deceased between 80 and 150 years ago. Upon removing the bodies, they found the dry air and particular climate of the place kept some of the bodies exceptionally well-preserved, so they stuck them in a museum. The thing that struck me about this is that the museum is right smack next to the cemetery. When I went it was filled up with Mexican people presumably there for el Dia de Los Muertos, too. So you’d have a Mexican family, with their young kids in tow, hit the museum, and then likely afterwards go say 'hi' to Abuelito and Abuelita, mummifying away in the cemetery right outside where these petrified bodies were pulled from. Okaaaayyyyyyyy. I’m not much of an anthropologist and I’ve still only spent a grand total of 11 days in the country, so I’ll quote what my guide book had to say about this:

“This popular place is a quintessential example of Mexico’s acceptance of, celebration of and obsession with death; visitors come from all over to see disinterred corpses.”

Well, all-righty, then. Note that if you’re faint of heart you may want to skip these in the photos, as some can be pretty disturbing.

I’m banging out this post as I travel back to Guadalajara on the bus. The buses here (at least the ETN ones) kick ass. They’ve got massive bucket seats that recline about 55 degrees, have full-leg foot rests, wifi, private entertainment centers for every seat, provided snacks and drinks, and better bathrooms than I’ve ever seen on a plane, even in first class. It’s a great way to watch the Jalisco countryside wiz by. It’s pretty nice out here. Lots of rolling hills, dotted with little farms growing corn and their little conical piles of harvested corn left out to dry. It’s making me feel like some taquitos when I get back into Tlaquepaque.