The Vertical Souk of Guanajuato
Up I go. Up the steps, wide and narrow, up the ramps, up the long stony alleys that twist and wander and turn like locks of hair. What is this strange place, I still marvel, after six years of visits. The mysterious medieval haunting back lanes of Guanajuato. Today I am discovering a new callejon, Terremoto ("Earthquake"). Strangely named, but better than "Perros Muertos" (Dead Dogs Lane). I'm searching for the beautiful orange hanging flowers Barry and I plan to have on our patio, and see walls painted in fuscia, peach, even a bright hard orange, normally too brash for me, but not here where colors sing. In these alleys, in this vertical souk of a city, the beautiful and the sordid co-exist, the bursts of color, the litter, the shit, the mangy mutts with their anguished howls from the captvity of rooftops, the small kids running, playing, hiding, the women carrying plastic bags fat with groceries, climbing up to their homes from the abarrotes (grocery stores) down in the valley. No buses venture up here in these alleys. Signs on house walls scrawl “Bread,” “Sweets.” A man sits on a stoop, looking out vaguely, the empty stare of the unemployed. I hear the cry of the guy delivering pure drinking water in a huge cannister. “Agua! Agua!” His voice mingles with another shouting call, this man carrying an even heavier cannister of gas on one shoulder. “Gas!’
Still I climb, up and up. Finally I see la Panoramica, the highway that rings the city at the top. You go far enough up, you always end up there; you go far enough down, you always end up in el centro. Like other Latin cities, unlike the US or Europe, the higher you go, the poorer it gets. The less paint on the house exteriors, the more basura (trash).
Graffiti? It knows no class. It lives high and low, east and west.
Tony Cohan, who wrote the book "On Mexican Time," the book that put San Miguel de Allende on the retirement map—a town that has since become the Aspen of Mexico, with just as steep house prices—said of Guanajuato, the town he later moved to, the city I am calling my own:
“The town of Guanajuato, moody and faceted in a collage of dreams, a collapsed geography, a crumpled map of the soul. Lining a river valley gorge, above a cool stone labyrinth of subterranean roadways where once the river sluiced silver... its pale green and pink stone cut away to expose striated layers of memory.”
I pause and look out at the “collapsed geography,” at the triangle of churches: the brick-colored dome of the Templo San Diego; the custard Basilica cathedral where young couples get married on Saturdays; and the Templo de la Compania, a drip sand-castle of a church. Tightly wedged houses the color of watermelon, lime, tangerine, and violet crowd together in a poetry of rectangles and cubes. Beyond in the distance I see the dry, dun-colored hills Barry and I love to hike, dotted with white crosses.
I start down, but before long I see another thread of steps heading west. This is how it is when I go awandering. I start somewhere, who knows, it could be anywhere. It’s just a small barrio, I tell myself, won’t take me long. Before I know it, I’m in, I'm trapped, seduced, in love. OK, now, stop. I'm done. Really. But oh, look, there’s another twig of a callejon to the left. Might be only a private callejon leading to a home, but maybe not; it may go on and on, and sure enough it does, then again I think I’m at another end, but no, see, some steps on the right. I cannot stop. It often takes me over an hour to explore just a small area because there are so many tributaries within it.
Through a break in a wall I see the fire-red funicular on the opposite slope rumbling down the hill, a few lights of the city twinkling. It's dusk. In Spanish there is a lovely verb for dusk--"anochecer," the process, the becoming of night. Soon the streets will be crowded with people watching mime artists, eating hot tamales from vendors, sitting on the steps of the Teatro Juarez listening to music, strolling arm-in-arm, sitting close together on benches cradling in each other's arms.
I must head down before it gets too dark. Come, I tell myself, come. I must. I take one last lover's look at a melon-painted wall, and force myself to turn away.
Still I climb, up and up. Finally I see la Panoramica, the highway that rings the city at the top. You go far enough up, you always end up there; you go far enough down, you always end up in el centro. Like other Latin cities, unlike the US or Europe, the higher you go, the poorer it gets. The less paint on the house exteriors, the more basura (trash).
Graffiti? It knows no class. It lives high and low, east and west.
Tony Cohan, who wrote the book "On Mexican Time," the book that put San Miguel de Allende on the retirement map—a town that has since become the Aspen of Mexico, with just as steep house prices—said of Guanajuato, the town he later moved to, the city I am calling my own:
“The town of Guanajuato, moody and faceted in a collage of dreams, a collapsed geography, a crumpled map of the soul. Lining a river valley gorge, above a cool stone labyrinth of subterranean roadways where once the river sluiced silver... its pale green and pink stone cut away to expose striated layers of memory.”
I pause and look out at the “collapsed geography,” at the triangle of churches: the brick-colored dome of the Templo San Diego; the custard Basilica cathedral where young couples get married on Saturdays; and the Templo de la Compania, a drip sand-castle of a church. Tightly wedged houses the color of watermelon, lime, tangerine, and violet crowd together in a poetry of rectangles and cubes. Beyond in the distance I see the dry, dun-colored hills Barry and I love to hike, dotted with white crosses.
I start down, but before long I see another thread of steps heading west. This is how it is when I go awandering. I start somewhere, who knows, it could be anywhere. It’s just a small barrio, I tell myself, won’t take me long. Before I know it, I’m in, I'm trapped, seduced, in love. OK, now, stop. I'm done. Really. But oh, look, there’s another twig of a callejon to the left. Might be only a private callejon leading to a home, but maybe not; it may go on and on, and sure enough it does, then again I think I’m at another end, but no, see, some steps on the right. I cannot stop. It often takes me over an hour to explore just a small area because there are so many tributaries within it.
Through a break in a wall I see the fire-red funicular on the opposite slope rumbling down the hill, a few lights of the city twinkling. It's dusk. In Spanish there is a lovely verb for dusk--"anochecer," the process, the becoming of night. Soon the streets will be crowded with people watching mime artists, eating hot tamales from vendors, sitting on the steps of the Teatro Juarez listening to music, strolling arm-in-arm, sitting close together on benches cradling in each other's arms.
I must head down before it gets too dark. Come, I tell myself, come. I must. I take one last lover's look at a melon-painted wall, and force myself to turn away.
posted by Louisa at 5:02 AM
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