Diario las Américas Newspaper, November 18, 1956, Page 23

Fanciful murals and elaborate decorations cever chapel walls in Sanctuary of Atotonilco, dating back to 1740. wight sky while Indian dancers try a step or two. Thén one day comes a thunderous alborada, dawn fire- works that shake the entire village. This sets off a continouous round of parades, street dancing, and par- ties. During the final two days, no San Miguelense sleeps. The color- ful pre-Conquest conchero dancers the Indian dancers from Oaxaca and Mitla, the unique Michoacan. folk dancers, appear in strength. As many as three hundred of these vividly costumed performers gyrate tirelessly through streets and plaza. On the final Sunday there is a bull- fight, usually with some of Méxi- co’s top toreros, and the evening brings street dancing, band con- certs, and a breathtaking fireworks display. . San Miguel de Allende is one of the few places in México where the Christmas Posadas are celebrated Narrow, cobbled streets tuwist through town, adding te its charm, ; room is transformed into a crib or manger for the Christ Child. Every night from December 16 to 24 pro- cessions -wind through the streets to commemorate the journey of Mary and Joseph in search of lodging. The floats are accompan- ied by hundreds of children in gay shephered costumes singing the lilting Posada carols. On the night the procession is due on a given street, the rooftops and windows of the houses are strung with.color- ed lanterns, pifiatas bulging with sweets and tangerines are suspend- ed overhead, waiting to be broken open, and candies are’ showered from the rooftops upon the parad- ers below. Somehow San Miguel de Allende has managed to avoid commercializ- ing its spectacles. Fiestas are a heady wine the San Miguelense will share with visitors, but, outsiders or mot, he means to enjoy his wine to the full. Long before the rail- road and suitable roads touched the city, fiestas were bursting out all over, just as they do now. Once upon a time it may have been even more strenuous. The town used to pay homage to six patron saints and in 1789 the municipal govern- ment, worried by the number of festivals that needed celebrating, tried to abolish some of the saints — but without much success. Between fiestas this museum town and the surrounding region gets its work done — mainly ranch- ing, farming, and some handicrafts, such as the traditional tin work, silver work, leatherwork, _ sa- rape weaving, and hand embroid- ery. Although tourists bring addi- tional wealth to Sam Miguel, parti- cularly in the summer and winter seasons, a few San Miguelenses ex- cept hotel keepers gear their lives to the tourist trade. Happily, they have ketp the town from becoming a tourist trap littered with glossy curio shops and such. Though they work and play hard, the San Mi- guelenses are a serene people, as those living in a national monu- ment should be. When they build anew house, though it may be equippped with refrigerator and Mixmaster, it always shows a colon- ial face to the world. They are just as mindful of the town rule that fone of the original exterior walls of the old houses can be torn down or modernized. Even the police are a kind of an- achronism. They are retiring. They EX IAAAAN AAAS AAA IAI A AIA IA SII SSAA IAI AAAS SSI ISAS AISI ISD, WOODEN TREASURE FROM the biweekly U. §. news magazine published in Bra- zil as Visao (the Spanish. edition is entitled Visi6n) comes word of research carried out in the Bra- zilian jungle by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations: “The Amazon forest presents fewer. osbtacles to lumbering than any other large tropical forest in the world. There are no technical reasons to prevent its being exploited as long and as deeply as the consumer markets can absorb the results. The sup- erb fluvial network, the uniform topography, and the ease of penetrating the forest are favor- able to a sizable Jumber industry in the Amazon region. This is the conclusion of FAO technicians who have been studying the question for some years at the request of the (Brazilian) Min- istry of Agriculture. ~ “These experts. . .have just finished a timber inventory of the right bank of the Amazon River, between the Tapajés and Xingu rivers, covering about five million acres. In this project alone, directed by the. forestry enginéer Demis Heinsdijk, they plunged into the jungle ten times along the Curuauna, Curuatinga, . Cucari, Uruard, Jarucu, Xingu, Carrapato, Iguapés do Lamas, and Curupira rivers. During 355 working days, some 630. miles of trails were opened. “According to the findings of the FAO technicians, Amazon timber production could be tripl- ed in the next ten years. The first goal would be to develop the present industry to provide a steady market. As a side line, nitrogenous fertilizers could be produced by chemical conver- sion of the wood, and for far less than is paid for the Chilean import. Also,- various woods could be used in manufacturing pulp and paper products. .. “Six Amazon timber regions have been classified by these FAO experts. . . .The volcanic plateaus, cut by the largest rivers are... the home o fAfrican mahogany, and there the reddish soil suitable for coffee-growing runs deep Once a qauntitative estimate and an approximation of labor costs, including clearing the rivers, were made, lumber- ing operations would not meet any particular difficulties. “The FAO Forestry Mission experts have already classified twenty-eight different woods suitable for export. . ., and this year three new inventories. will be undertaken: two on the Para and one on the Amazon, with three teams working simultane- ously. The first, in the Rio Capim region, was begun late last March” station Spartan in equipment, with only a battered desk the color of an old yellow brogan, several an- cient benches. and-a rack filled with half a dozen elderly carbines, They have no radio, squad cars, or ambulance. When they must get somewhere quickly; they tumble out of headquarters and race across the plaza to one of the taxis sta- tioned in front of the Allende house. Their routine is a calm one. On Sundays when a celebrating ran- cher or peon takes on too much, you see pairs of policemen, wear- ing coarse olive uniforms in which they look like badly wrapped paper packages, moving back and forth between the jail and the market two- blocks away. The retrieving of drunks is done with good-na- tured informality. If a mam is too inebriated to walk, he is piloted down the street like an airplane, by three policemen — one holding each arm and the third support- ing his legs. At times the convoy is followed by a police captain, a sad - featured official who carries the drunk’s straw hat and personal belongings. With another fiesta always around the corner, the San Migue- lense demands little in the way of other entertainment. There is a local Sports Club, which, along with the town’s famous art school, the Instituto Allende, is the local social center. There dances are given and amateur theatricals are organized. La Peralta, formerly an opera house, serves a mixture of U.S. European, and Mexican mo’ vies. At the new theater connected with the church and at the Institu- to Allende, internationally known artists — singers, violinists, and form. As in most Mexican towns, there is a good sprinkling of bars. One, a dimly lit establishment with leather overstuffed furniture, call- ed the Cucaracha, is the hangout of a small number of U. S. lushes. The Catalan’s or Pepe’s Cantina, at ‘one corner of the plaza, is a much more wholesome place. Here the ranchers and local politicians play dominoes in their spare time, and on Saturday evenings.a traditional hot punch served from a teakettle draws in a lot of local workingmen. Most people, however, take their pleasure in the traditional paseos, the strolls around the plaza. In ad- dition to the Sunday noon and evening promenades, with the town band playing, on weekday evenings there is the paseo of the professional men, in which the town’s lawyers, doctors, professors, and businessmen gather in the pla- za to discuss anything from litera- ture to politics. On such evenings a visitor may encounter Leobino Zavala, one of México’s most en- joyable poets; he may overhear the Peruvian art critic Felipe Cossio del Pomar, the painter Rico Le- brun, and the Book-of-the-Month Club author Allan Smart discuss- ing a Tamayo mural or buried treasure. Treasure hunting is an enter- tainment pursued almost as en- thusiastically as fiestas by the aver- age San Miguelense. As a result of Curious towers of parish church, mason, dominate the landscape. Note bronze statue of town founder, Friar San Juan de San Miguel, several revolutionary tides that swept over the region, people got in the habit of burying money and family heirlooms in walls and pa- tios for safekeeping, and them for- got them. Several hoards have been found, and almost everyone in San Miguel de Allende has, at one time or another, dug up his yard or probed a wall in search of a leg- endary treasure. Many of these are said_to be haunted or guarded by ghosts. Not so long ago a Jeading citizen in town, an elderly and very cor- rect scholar, inherited some pro- perty along with the rumor of a buried treasure and a guardian ghost. He and a friend set to work of ning a hole through the three- foot thick colonial wall of stone and plaster where legend had it that the treasure lay. Probing the full length of his arm into the ori- the work of an untrained Indian in left foreground. you thief!” The treasure-hunting scholar had inadvertently cut a hole through the wall into the din- ing room of the adjoining house and had been removing his neigh- bor’s silver service from the side- board. San Miguelenses realize they have another treasure that in the long run will bring more pros- perity to the town than pots of buried doubldons. This is the Ins- tituto Allende, the outstanding art school in México, which was found- ed by Enrique Fernandez Martinez former governor of the State of Guanajuato, and Felipe Cossio del Pomar, and is affiliated with the University of Guanajuato. It oc- cupies the restored eighteenth-cen- tury mansion of the Conte de Ca- nal, set in acres of rolling lawns and gardens and hag its own mo- dern hotel, exhibition rooms, stu- fice, the scholar found what felt dios, workshops, and recreational like a rommy cavity filled with ob- jects. Enlarging the hole and reaching in again, he pulled forth a silver salver. Treasure indeed! Trembling with excitement he reached in again and drew out a beautiful silver candelabrum. The third time his hand explored the hole something within the cavity suddenly locked his wrist, pinning him to the wall. Struggling to free himself, he screamed, “The ghost has me!” His alarmed companion heard a muffled answer: “Ghost nothing, 7 facilities .Its staff and guest teach- ers include such men as the murla- ist and non - objective painter James Pinte, Rico Lebrun, Rufi- no Tamayo, and David Alfaro Si- queiros. San Miguelenses have become ac- customed to seeing students and artists painting in their pictures. que sunwashed streets. They look upon all this activity with a cer- tain benignity, for they know their national monument is rapidly be- coming the most painted and pho- tographed monument in the world, Patio of Instituto Allende, art school that occupies restored eighteenth-century family estate of the Conde de Canal. SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 1956. : HEMISPHERE Page 113 |