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San Miguel de Allende History |
| Home >> Mexico Destinations >> San Miguel de Allende >> San Miguel de Allende History |
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San Miguel de Allende was founded in 1542 by a Franciscan monk as San Miguel El Grande. It was an important stopover on the Antiguo Camino Real, part of the silver route from Zacatecas, Zacatecas.
The town featured prominently in the Mexican War of Independence. General Ignacio Allende, one of San Miguel's native sons, was a leading player in the war against Spain for independence. Allende, captured in battle and beheaded, is a national hero. San Miguel el Grande renamed itself "San Miguel de Allende" in 1826 in honor of his actions.
By 1900, San Miguel de Allende was in danger of becoming a ghost town. Declared a national historic monument in 1926 by the Mexican government, development in the historic district is restricted in order to preserve the town's colonial character.
During the Cristero uprising in Mexico, when clergy and their family were persecuted, the grandchildren of Gen. Mariano Escobedo came to San Miguel de Allende, which was conveniently in a secluded condition while verging on being a ghost town.
The six children of the beloved daughter of Gen. Mariano Escobedo, Donna Maria del Refugio, were Don Anastasio Lopez Escobedo, Don Ezequiel Lopez Escobedo, Dr Ignacio Lopez Escobedo, and the sisters, Balbina and Isabella Lopez Escobedo. The elder child was a Cura, a charismatic head priest, Don Jose Lopez Escobedo, for whom the family was persecuted. The Cura Jose Lopez is interred at the main altar under St. Peter in the main Parroquia church of San Miguel, with a beautiful dedication to his work restoring the church in the 20th century. Dr. Lopez Escobedo is interred in the Church by the world-famous and miraculous Christ of the Conquest.
The family fled their native home hacienda, Hacienda de los Lopez, to San Miguel Allende, where the Gen. Escobedo had a home, on Calle de Mesones and where a plaque still identifies the house.
Few descendants from this family live in San Miguel, as only Don Ezequiel Lopez Escobedo had children. The eldest of his grandchildren is Marcela Andre Lopez, an international teacher and designer of jewel garlands now in residence in the historic district in one of Don Ezequiel Lopez Escobedo's homes. Sr. Ezequiel Lopez Basurto, son of Don Ezequiel Lopez Escobedo, has presided over many works by the Rotary Club.
In the early 20th Century, the family fortune of the Lopez Escobedo brothers and sisters was largely donated to schools for girls, convents for nuns, or lost to older distant relatives and people helped by the family who falsified papers or discovered hidden treasure after Don Ezequiel's sudden stroke and death. The impoverished barkeeper's assistant who found Don Ezequiel's property deeds and gold kept the find from Don Ezequiel's widow and five children who suffered hardships as orphans. The barkeeper's assistant had leased the store at Calle Relox and San Francisco Street from Don Ezequiel's widow and in the abundant inventory found more than could have been imagined.
Peruvian artist Felipe Cossio del Pomar established in 1938 San Miguel’s first art school, the Escuela Universitaria de Bellas Artes, located in the former convent that houses the present Bellas Artes. He offered the position of Art Director to American artist and writer Stirling Dickinson. Dickinson taught Spanish, botany and landscape painting, as well as taking students on field trips as part of his "Aspects of Mexico" course.
According to author John Virtue, who has written a new biography of Dickinson, "The Model American Abroad", Dickinson's impact on San Miguel was manifested in many ways. He had arrived in San Miguel before daybreak on February 7, 1937. At the Jardín, Stirling looked up at the spires of the Parroquia poking through the mist. “My God, what a sight!” he said to himself. “I’m going to stay here.” Besides his teaching, in 1942, after just five years in San Miguel, Stirling had been named a Favored Adopted Son, the only time the mayor’s office has so honored an American resident. Two years later, he was honored by the governor for his work with young Mexicans, a result of his founding the baseball team. So huge was his impact on San Miguel just through helping generation after generation of his baseball players, that the eventual baseball field he helped build and finance, was named Campo Stirling Dickinson. He also began what was probably the largest private orchid collection in Mexico, a lifelong interest that was highlighted by the discovery of one new orchid, Encyclia dickinsoniana—and having a second named after him in recognition of his work: Cypripedium dickinsonianum.
In the 1950s, San Miguel de Allende became a destination known for its beautiful colonial architecture and its thermal springs. After World War II San Miguel began to revive as a tourist attraction as many demobilized United States GIs discovered that their education grants stretched further in Mexico at the U.S.-accredited art schools, the privately-owned Instituto Allende, founded in 1950, and the Bellas Artes, a nationally chartered school.
GIs first arrived in 1946 to study at the art school. By the end of 1947, Life magazine assigned a reporter and photographer to do an article on this post-war phenomenon. A three-page spread appeared in the January 5, 1948, edition under the headline “GI Paradise: Veterans go to Mexico to study art, live cheaply and have a good time.” This was possible when apartments rented for US$10 a month, servants cost US$8 a month, rum was 65 cents a quart and cigarettes cost 10 cents a package. When Stirling had first arrived in San Miguel in 1937 he and his writing partner had purchased an old tannery on Santo Domingo on the way to the Atascadero Hotel above town for the equivalent of 90 U.S. dollars. The present property is worth in the millions of dollars.
As a result of the publicity, more than 6,000 American veterans immediately applied to study at the school. Stirling Dickinson thought that San Miguel, which then had a population of fewer than 10,000, could only handle another 100 veterans, bringing the student body to around 140.
Again, according to Stirling's biography author John Virtue, the ex-GIs were more demanding than previous students. Contemporary friend of painter/muralist Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, another icon of the Mexican mural movement and a vocal member of the Communist Party, was hired as a guest lecturer. He agreed to work with the students on a mural of San Miguel’s most famous son, Ignacio Allende. When Siqueiros reviewed the budget, he and the art school’s owner, Alfredo Campanella, had a falling out and the artist threw him down a flight of stairs.
The faculty and the majority of the students then walked out in support of Siqueiros. When this forced the school to close in 1949, Stirling opened one of his own. But it did not receive accreditation from the American Embassy, so most of the veterans either went home or transferred to other Mexican schools.
In the counterculture years of the 1960's, San Miguel began its career as a center for American expatriatism and was a popular destination for Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, as recorded in Tom Wolfe´s novel The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Beat writer Neal Cassady died beside the railroad tracks outside San Miguel after a party in town. |
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