Guanajuato, MX

The street by our language school, Escuela Mexicana. It was only a short walk from where we were staying and we all loved our classes. I took Mexican politics and literature and learned so much.


Beautifully colored houses.


One of our first days in Guanajuato was a festival for San Miguel with indigenous dancers parading through town. The sound of their drumming and their feet (many were wearing metal shoes) was deafening, but it was also hard to tell where they were given all the hills and weird geography of Guanajuato. We finally found them late in the afternoon in an alley high up in the hills, by Callejón del beso. Some groups of dancers were amazing, others mediocre. We thought it was really interesting that every group had 2 boogey men, who would push the crowd back from the dancers with whips or threats, often making the children scream. This particular group had white cowboys as their boogeymen.


This is the center of Guanajuato just after a storm. You can see Teatro Juárez and the many, many people constantly out on the street.


A view from Alhóndiga de granaditas. You can see a bit of the Alhóndiga on the right. It was a holdout for loyalists at the start of the Mexican Independence movement. The insurgents, led by "El Pípila," a local miner, burned down its huge doors and killed the loyalists inside. The insurgents --including Miguel Hidalgo and Ignacio Allende--were later killed themselves and their heads were hung from the Alhóndiga as a warning. However, the Mexican Independence succeeded some 10 years later, and the early insurgents were viewed as heroes.