A SENSE OF PLACE

IMPRESSIONS
T
TEXT AND PHOTOS B Y D AV I D C O O P E R S A L A M O N

OF GUANAJUATO
he buildings of Guanajuato were never actually built; rather they grew. They grew out of the hillsides and then they grew on top of each other; they grew behind each other and around each other. Buildings that couldnt stand to be separated grew bridges and extended balconies toward one another. Rebar, like shoots of bamboo, sprouted from rooftops, patiently awaiting the arrival of su cient rain, sunlight, calm winds, marriage, pregnancy, or other ideal environmental conditions to facilitate the growth of second, third, or fourth stories. The bricks, nestled in beds of mortar and brightly colored plaster, are inspired by the plants to keep growing. Cacti sprout from miniature valleys created in gutters and tiled roofs. Tree limbs grow at right angles from steeply buttressed walls. Bougainvilleas silently scale the patchwork adobe and stucco. And poinsettias, which are relegated to a short life in a plastic pot under the uorescent lights of a supermarket most anywhere else, grow into magni cent trees in Guanajuato. The plants and the buildings ebb and ow in a pulse of receding and surging life. The narrow streets, or calles , are ornately paved with brick and inlaid with stone. The calles snake between buildings while even narrower streets, or callejnes , wind between them. Serpentine sidewalks preoccupied more by form than function meander in haphazard patterns, dodging buses and cars, making it impossible for lovers to hold hands for more than a hundred feet.

RIGHT:

Callejn at the mouth of Plaza San Fernando.

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On the banks of the calle.

Pipes creep from buildings along sidewalks and walls. They dip below the surface with an aquatic gesture and emerge again, their shoe-burnished backs gleaming in the sun. The pipes hiss and gurgle with water, gas, and ancient histories. They whisper an old story about why Guanajuato is known as La Ciudad Interra, the interred or buried city. Twice, nearly the whole of Guanajuato has been submerged, but like a phoenix it rose, though from mud rather than ash. In 1775 it rained and rained in the desert. The hills soaked up as much moisture as they could. Finally their muddy grip gave way. The torrents of dirt raced and rumbled through the arroyos, which ran straight to the city center. Carried onward by the once-calm river in the center of town, the brown and swollen avalanche pummeled the walls and lled the streets, bursting through doors and windows, the liquid hillsides reclaiming their adobe relatives. Eventually the rains stopped, but excavation was impossible. Mud, from street to rooftop, covered much of the city. Then something miraculous happened: new buildings grew from
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old, as new limbs sprout from a seemingly dead stump. In parts of the city, the roots leading down to the second Guanajuato have nally been cleared. Under the church across from the Jardn de la Unin, an excavated portion of the original church is exposed to air and light once again. Several rooms are partially restored, detailing the history of the inundacines . Scattered through town are buildings with blue and white tiles on the sides that mark the high-water line of the ood of 1905, the last major inundacin . Some measure higher than twelve feet. Tamed and sequestered, the exiled river is now stu ed through tubes and pipes that run below Guanajuato. The old riverbed, now dry, is known as La Calle Subterrnea, or Underground Street. A major tra c artery, La Calle Subterrnea tunnels beneath Guanajuato, supporting the city on shoulders made of stone arches, vaults, and niches. Between plazas, the Calle occasionally opens up to the sky, and buildings perched on wood or cement cantilevers romantically extend out over where the water used to be. At D E S I G N E R/builder

Sunday morning on the streets of Guanajuato.

the bottoms of the walls of the Calle are the crowns of arches, still visible, that had been the tops of the old walls, long since buried. Cars and buses roar through the sooty catacomb, paying no heed to the archaeological lineage beneath their wheels. While the buildings of Guanajuato grew and regrew from the hills, mines tunneled beneath them. A hunger for the rich minerals trapped in the hills and arroyos made Guanajuato one of the most prodigious silver producers in the Americas. The mines generated great wealth, hoarded by the few, and great misery, a orded to the many. The combination of great wealth and great misery produced churches such as El Templo de San Cayetano, an example of the opulent Churrigueresque , or Spanish Baroque, style, which stands next to a silver mine. One section of its faade over ows with stone angels and saints carrying forth their miracles, while another section is a large at expanse, totally devoid of ornament. The bare expanse is then o set by another section, greedily lled with angels and their virtues. El Templo de march/ april [ 2 0 0 5 ]

San Cayetano is rumored to have been built either in grateful servitude to God for the gift of the silver or as atonement for the exploitation of the labor and lives of the miners, or perhaps it was a little of both. Like the many Churrigueresque churches, the Alhondiga de Granaditas has an imposing presence. Originally built as a granary but now a museum, the Alhondiga looks more like a Greek fortress. It actually was used as a makeshift fortress, brie y, in the beginning of the Mexican ght for independence from Spain. Father Miguel Hidalgo led an insurrection army of Indians and peasants against the criollos (members of the ruling class) holed up inside the Alhondiga. Mexican independence might have been squelched at this stando had it not been for a miner nicknamed Pipila, who made his way to the only vulnerable spot on the massive granite building. With a huge slab of stone tied to his back to protect him from the gun re overhead, Pipila set re to the doors, and the tide brie y turned for the revolutionaries. One year later, Father Hidalgo and two other
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TOP: Echoes of Arches, an open section of La Calle Subterrnea. BOTTOM: Callejn with public altar.

leaders of the independence movement were captured. For ten years, their heads hung in cages from the corners of the Alhondiga as a warning to other would-be revolutionaries. The hooks from which the cages hung still watch silently from their perches, bearing witness as the present becomes the past. Above Guanajuato stands a monument to Pipila, which reads, Aun hay otras Alhondigas por encendiar (There are still other Alhondigas to burn). The revolutionary spirit lives on. Guanajuato tells other political and social histories through its architecture as well. Domes and cupolas poke above the crimson, sa ron, and pale green painted faades. Squinches begin at corners to form domes from square bases, while other ceilings are made from multiple rows of shallow brick vaults. This technology has passed from one generation of builders to the next since the time of the Moorish occupation in Spain. The technology then traveled with the conquistadors from Spain to Mexico and persists to this day. Mingling with the Moorish in Guanajuato is a conspicuous French in uence. In the mid-1800s France occupied Mexico for four years. However, this in uence likely owes less to the French occupation than to Mexican dictator Por rio Daz, who had a legendary appetite for all things French. Throughout town there are ne examples of art nouveau. Busty wrought-iron balconies protrude from pink-plastered adobe. French doors beckon to the streets below. Daz commissioned the extravagant Teatro Jurez, a theater with a neoclassical French exterior and a Moorish interior, which at its height was a world-class opera house. Supported by huge stone columns high atop marble steps, eight of the nine muses adorn the roof while Pipila on the hill high above looks over their shoulders. A mere stones throw from the Alhondiga is the Mercado Hidalgo, a large indoor market, which in a bizarre cultural juxtaposition was designed to look like a French train station. Though most urban centers are laid out on a grid, Guanajuato is laid out like a ball of string that three caffeinated kittens have been playing with for forty-eight hours. It is chaotic and utterly organic, shaped as much by the hills and arroyos as by people and commerce. The three stop signs in all of Guanajuato can attest under oath to the extreme lack of right angles that allow the city tra c to blend and merge. Guanajuato is full of hidden spaces, rich with mystery, that are not found in a rectilinear city. The meandering curves and multitudinous terraces invariably reveal secret paths and gardens, which lie behind enclosed
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TOP: An open section of the old riverbed, now La Calle Subterrnea. Buildings extend out over where the water used to be. BOTTOM: The road more or less traveled: Private moments in public spaces.

courtyard walls but are visible from sidewalks above. Light lters through vine-laden balconies, their shad ows buttressing the scoop of a curved wall. There is an undying magic and enchantment in these spaces. In the centrally located Jardn de la Unin, in a comical about-face from the distinctive organic nature of the city, the trees imitate the forms of typical buildings. They grow geometrically, squaring o their vertical sides, crew cuts on top, fty trees growing as one like rows of apartment buildings, blended, acute angles with de ned corners. It is here that people come to sit under their shade, to listen to the mariachis, or to just watch others pass by. Here is the heart, or maybe only one of the hearts, of Guanajuato, because Guanajuato is not one but many lively plazas. The hearts of Guanajuato beat to a rhythm of localism. High up any callejn there is an open door, a keyhole of a store, a place that sells tortillas, fruit, vegetables, toilet paper, light bulbs, and other small essentials. Compact neighborhoods ourish around the many plazas. Women in oral aprons sell fresh-cut owers in front of the groceries, cafs, and hardware stores. In the morning fresh tamales steam and gorditos fry. In the evening the taco stands appear. The plazas are dynamic public spaces that can accommodate di erent uses, whether impromptu soccer games or book fairs. There are places to sit and even to lie down. Sun and shade, color, shelter, children and old people, college students, diversity, complexity, and simplicity conspire to produce plazas that are for living. Guanajuato is a human-scale city where buildings are in the context of their surroundings. It is a city based on the meandering day, on surprise and delight in hidden nooks and crannies, of gifts revealed. It is a city based on anticipation as one gallops down the steep stairs of a callejn , pushed rapidly onward by gravity before reaching the sun-drenched plaza below. There is so much to love in Guanajuato. Though the sum is indeed greater than its parts, the parts of Guanajuato are endlessly fascinating.

David Cooper Salamon lives in Taos, New Mexico.

This article was made possible in part by the DESIGNER/builder Writers Project, through a grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts. march/ april [ 2 0 0 ] 5
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