el crispito

Guanajuato is known for two things that seem to overshadow many of its other interesting aspects. Still, the facts that the city's most famous citizens are mummies and that the majority of the streets crisscrossing the town run below ground in tunnels is rather interesting, so I should probably talk about those things a bit first.

The so-called mummies are really petrified corpses, but they have been called mummies for so long that the distinction has become unimportant. One can go to a museum to view the city's collection of these petrified corpses, so preserved because of the dry climate and soil characteristics in the area. This unusual phenomenon would remain unknown however, were it not for an unusual policy at the graveyard that allowed for the bodies to be exhumed from their resting places. It used to be the case that local laws required families of the dead to pay a grave tax. They could pay it just once or yearly, with the installment plan being popular among the less wealthy families. If a family failed to pay their annual installment for three years running, the law allowed for the removal of the bodies from their graves, when they would become property of the municipality to do with as they pleased. The municipality seemed pleased to display them as a kind of freak show for the public, and now, even though the law has been changed and the removal of bodies from graves for failure to pay a grave tax is no longer practiced, the corpses removed during that period remain available for your viewing pleasure.

Taking pictures of the exhibits is prohibited, so I don't have any photos of them to post here. Still, if you're interested, you can view a few photos of the mummies of Guanajuato elsewhere.

Tunnel Entrance, Guanajuato

The other thing that comes up whenever Guanajuato is mentioned is the system of tunnels that run under the city. The city was built over the Guanajuato River, which continued to flow beneath it through a system of tunnels. In the middle of the last century, a dam was built to halt the flow of the river and provide the town with a reservoir, allowing the tunnels to be paved in with cobblestones and used for traffic. According to Charles, only two major roads running through the city are above ground. The rest are all running through the tunnels. They are quite amazing, and just like a developing city continues to build roads, the city of Guanajuato continues to dig new tunnels to serve the cars driving through it.

Plaza de la Paz and the Basílica Colegiata de Nuestra Señora de Guanajuato, Guanajuato

When people talk about Guanajuato, it is the discussion of these two subterranean oddities that dominate the conversation, but it is the stuff above ground that makes a visit to Guanajuato special. Not only are there a fair number of well-groomed parks and plazas, but there is a considerable amount of street life going on.

Street Scene, Guanajuato

Cafés, bars and shops line the streets of the city, which are filled with pedestrian traffic. This is unusual in colonial towns, because the city centers are usually filled with bumper-to-bumper traffic squeezing through the old, narrow streets. Because most of the traffic through Guanajuato runs beneath the city, the roads above ground can be used by people walking about town.

Street Scene, Guanajuato

During the day, street performers entertain tourists for donations.

Street Performance, Guanajuato

At night, traveling bands of musicians known as estudiantinas lead revelers through the streets in what is called a callejoneada. The same thing is done in Zacatecas, but there the bands play banda and the musicians don't wear 17th-century costumes like they do in Guanajuato.

People on Steps of Teatro Juárez, Guanajuato

The city also has a fine old theater for more formal productions, the Teatro Juárez, built in 1875.

Teatro Juárez, Guanajuato

We debated with Carmen and Charles whether the Teatro Degollado (in Guadalajara) or the Teatro Juárez is cooler, and we decided that the one in our town is best. I suspect guanajuatenses might disagree.

Teatro Juárez, Guanajuato

Another of the city's attractions is a very narrow street, which comes with its own legend. The Callejón del Beso or 'Alley of the Kiss' is supposedly where a father killed his own daughter upon discovering her kissing a miner across the balcony. You see, the balconies are just 68 centimeters apart.

Callejón del Beso, Guanajuato

Supposedly, if you kiss your partner on the third step, you are assured seven years of good luck. Leave it to Mexicans to put such a positive twist on such an unhappy ending.

Carmen and Charles at the top of the Callejón del Beso, Guanajuato

The Callejón del Beso illustrates well one of the more challenging aspects of Guanajuato for tourists exploring on foot: because the city is built up the sides of hills, there are always stairs between where you are and the place you are trying to reach.

Attractions Up Stairs, Guanajuato

While I found this a bit annoying and exhausting, it does reward those that perservere with some nice views of the colorful houses lining the valleys.

Hillside Houses, Guanajuato

Guanajuato has a lot of political history as well. When Miguel Hidalgo started the war for independence in 1810, he was in the state of Guanajuato. After his capture, execution and subsequent beheading, the Spanish put his severed head in a cage (as they did with the heads of his co-conspirators, Ignacio Allende, José Mariano Jiménez and Juan Aldama) and hung it from the corner of the granary in the state's capital, Guanajuato. That building is the Alhóndiga de Granaditas, which has since been converted into a regional museum.

Detail of Mural by José Chávez Morado in the Alhóndiga, Guanajuato

The stairs of the museum are graced with a mural by José Chávez Morado, whose style in this work greatly resembles that of Jaliscan artist José Clemente Orozco.

Detail of Mural by José Chávez Morado in the Alhóndiga, Guanajuato

Guanajuato has some pretty good food too. At night, in the strip running just below the Plaza de la Paz, we had some delicious gorditas de nata. These are like the most delicious pancakes you could ever hope to eat - they're sweet, fluffy and piping hot as they're fried on the griddle right in front of you when you order them. (Supposedly we can get them here in Guadalajara somewhere, but it's rumored that the ones from Guanajuato are superior.)

I was also able to try out a regional specialty called enchiladas mineras, or 'miners' enchiladas,' which are vegetarian because supposedly miners are too poor to afford meat. Too bad for the miners, I guess, but great for me, because these babies are delicious. (Ours were prepared with corn oil, not the "butter of pig" listed on the previous link.) They consist of cheese and onion enchiladas covered by fried carrots and potatoes. In Mexico, these are considered comida típica of the state of Guanajuato, although you also find the same dish, made in the same fashion, in Argentina. In Morelia, in the state of Michoacán, we enjoyed a type of enchilada that seems like a somewhat distant relative, known as the enchilada placera. I would have a hard time deciding which of the two I favor. Hopefully I will never have to.

Our finest dining experience took place on Sunday night, when Charles decided to track down a really nice restaurant with a great view of the city. After asking a few cab drivers, he was directed up a series of twisting narrow roadways to the Refugio Casa Colorada, a hotel with six nice rooms and a lovely restaurant perched atop one of the hills surrounding the city. It used to be a residence for Luis Echeverría (president of Mexico from 1970 to 1976) and his wife, but it was turned into a hotel in 1975. For Shawn and me, it was a nice change of pace from the same old dishes we've come to expect. Shawn had a salad and cream of pistachio soup, while I enjoyed a cream of guajillo chile with camembert and a canelloni stuffed with spinach in a light cream sauce. After dinner, one of the chefs came out of the kitchen, and Charles called him over to pay his respects. The chef was very nice, and took us on a tour of all but one of the rooms.

View of Guanajuato from the dining room of the Refugio Casa Colorada

We also did a number of other things: visited a former hacienda where torture devices and corpses of people buried alive by the Spanish were unearthed, went to visit the monument to El Pípila, and saw the Templo de San Cayetano de Valencia, which was adorned with very elaborate detail work plated in pure gold as a gift from the owner of the nearby Valencia mine.

Gold, Gold, Gold at the Templo de San Cayetano de Valencia, Guanajuato

Charles told us that the owner of the mine had a carpet made of pure gold that reached from his front door to the church so that his daughter could walk to the altar over it on her wedding day. The gold from that carpet was then used to create the three large ornamented structures like the one shown above that adorn the altar.

Visiting Guanajuato, I felt like I saw perhaps the widest stroke of Mexican history that I've seen at any one time in any of the colonial towns I've visited, from the history of the indigenous people of Guanajuato who gave the place its name (originally spelled 'Quanax-Huato' meaning 'Place of the Frogs') to the home of a relatively recent president. Tourists can find a lot of things to keep them busy in town, but there are two things they won't find. First, they won't find an elevator. I don't think I've ever climbed so many stairs in my whole life as I did during my two days in Guanajuato. Nor will they find a whorehouse. According to a cab driver we had, that's not permitted in the city of Guanajuato because it's a city for tourists. "You have to go to Leon for that," he told us.

Visitors planning a trip to Guanajuato may want to look at the Virtual Tourist guide to Guanajuato and the resources at guanajuatocapital.com.