How a cotton factory (and the G.I. Bill) forever changed San Miguel de Allende
Weaving together a story about how this once crumbling Mexican town came to be an international arts destination — and home to all those expats.
San Miguel de Allende is a magnet for artists — and expats — and I’ve always wanted to know why.
For my birthday earlier this month, I spent a few days doing nothing on a beach in Sayulita, a small Pacific Coast beach town north of Puerto Vallarta that is known for its laid-back vibe and fresh ceviche.
But when I got to San Miguel de Allende to visit a friend who is living there while taking a six-week Spanish course, I remembered why I really love to travel: to immerse myself in the history and culture of a place that’s brimming with life.
I was only there for about 36 hours, but it was enough time for me to understand why so many expats and tourists flock there. But how did San Miguel develop into this art and design mecca in the first place?
To get a crash course in the city’s history, we took a food tour with Taste of San Miguel, where we learned why the neo-Gothic pink parish looks so different from most of the other churches in Mexico, what role SMA (as it is known to locals) played in the Mexican War of Independence, and how all that tourism attracts immigrants from all over the world looking for working visas at the restaurants and hotels.
Originally founded in 1542 as a stop on the silver trail, the town fell on hard times after the mines were depleted and then again after the country's years-long fight for independence.
Only about 7,000 people lived there at the turn of the 20th century — less than a quarter of its population in the mid-1700s.
But why did the fortunes of San Miguel change?
It was a trip to the Fabrica La Aurora where all the pieces of the puzzle came together.
A 10 minute walk from downtown, this former textile mill reopened in 2004 and now houses a maze of art galleries, studios, and small shops.
At its height, more than 300 people worked at the textile mill that, from 1902 to 1991, turned raw cotton from the fields of Sinaloa and Sonora into the thread used to make the muslin, percale and flannel that local weavers, seamstresses and cobblers made into blankets, table clothes, clothing and shoes sold throughout Mexico.
One of those weavers was the father of Carmen, the octogenarian who grew up in San Miguel de Allende with her seven siblings and now hosts students like my friend Kandice in her quiet, two-story home near the center of town.
Late one night after we’d returned from dinner, Carmen told us that her father worked two jobs, one at the factory and another in his own taller, where he employed half a dozen weavers who made blankets to sell in the local markets.
He was a third-generation weaver, she told us, but he lost his job at the factory when trade agreements in the 1980s and 1990s made it much less expensive to import these fabrics rather than make them by hand and old-world machinery in places like San Miguel de Allende.
But by the time the factory closed, San Miguel was already well known as an arts destination because of two schools that opened in the 1940s by a pair of artists: the Chicago-born artist Stirling Dickinson and the Peruvian artist Felipe Cossío del Pomar, who both came to SMA after meeting movie star Jose Mojica, who had a home there.
Dickinson and Cossío del Pomar started marketing the schools to American soldiers who were beneficiaries of the newly established G.I. Bill, which, in 1944, promised a free education to anyone who joined the military.
A Life magazine story in 1948 about the town’s burgeoning art scene sealed the town’s fate: San Miguel de Allende would become an international arts destination that locals would have to learn to love sharing with the world. (Some 6,000 students applied to the art schools after that story was published.)
Those schools, and many more, flourished, attracting thousands of students — and then art patrons — over the following decades.
Where the artists go, the tourists follow, including many who decided the temperate Bajío region would be a lovely place to call home.
More than 10,000 expats now call San Miguel home, about 10 percent of the population, which is why you’ll hear English in nearly every restaurant in the city center and why most of the studios in the new Fabrica La Aurora are owned by artists who are not from the area.
But San Miguel is also a prized destination for Mexican tourists, too, and you’ll hear conflicting opinions about whether its reputation as a hub for non-citizens is a good thing or a bad thing for locals.
Dickinson died in 1998 at the age of 87, and by then, he’d grown weary of the presence of so many Americans in his adopted home.
“Stirling must have shuddered the day he saw the first tourist bus arrive in San Miguel and disgorge tourists wearing shorts,” wrote biographer John Virtue. “These were exactly the type of people he railed against in his own travels abroad.”
According to a Smithsonian report, he spent most of his time in his later years helping local villagers, running a rural library program and donating money to an organization providing free medical service and shoes for rural children.
When browsing the old textile mill today, you won’t find anything about Dickinson, but you will find oil-stained concrete floors, massive iron machines quietly sitting in the high ceiling galleries, and an exquisitely maintained inner control room that forces modern day visitors to consider the building’s historic past.
For 90 years, La Aurora was the primary employer in San Miguel de Allende, and it laid the foundation for the city today, in more ways than one.
In the 1920s, workers at the factory began a citywide celebration that is now called La Alborada. It takes place every September, with fireworks and late-night processions that start at the former textile mill and end at the city’s prized jardin and iconic parish.
Alborada San Miguel is also the name of an “exclusive residential development” just north of the city with 54 colonial-style villas and a clubhouse.
After that day at the Fabrica La Aurora, I was reminded that tourism kills cities, but it also saves them.
This idea about “tourism kills cities” has been rolling around my head since I saw this sticker in Barcelona, en route to the popular Park Güell.
Barcelona, like so many popular tourist destinations, including San Miguel de Allende, has grown to depend on the influx of outsiders’ money to keep their economy afloat, but at what expense to the locals?
I am not going to have an answer to this question anytime soon, but I wanted to share this post about San Miguel’s history to get all of us thinking about the forces that shape a city and the stories we tell about them.
I could have spent weeks talking with Carmen about the nuances of how her hometown has changed over the decades, but one thing she wanted to make sure I saw before I left was the aguas termales, or hot springs, outside the city. There are several to choose from, and I picked Escondido Place, at her recommendation.
I was one of three white people at the springs that day, and it was lovely to be surrounded by Mexican (and Mexican-American) families enjoying the hot springs as much as I was.
I hope you all are having a great summer! I will be catching up on travel posts over the next few weeks, but first, I have to finish preparing for a storytelling event I’m performing at tomorrow night at the Austin Cinemaker Space, 2200 Tillery St.
My story is about Fanta Limon, and I’ll share the text of it next week. The event is free, and you can RSVP here!
And as always, thank you so much for your support.
I couldn’t do this project without you.
Addie
I remember my parents talking about visiting San Miguel in the 1950s. I suspect I might yet find a souvenir or two as I trudge through sorting all the Stuph I inherited when Mother died.