JANUARY 15, WEDNESDAY

MIX OF CULTURES

Today Martha took me along to a meeting with a man, Pascal, who is going to do a couple of  musical performances and art tours, one for each of her two groups.  We met in La Cabre Illuminada, a very nice vegan restaurant which is downstairs from the Airbnb that I will be moving to for two weeks on Tueday.  San Miguel de Allende has a large expat community, about 10% of the population, mostly from the United States and Canada.  One man I met walking his dog had been visiting San Miguel for 17 years and then decided to move here in retirement 6 years ago.  So people you pass on the street are as likely to speak American English as Spanish. 

Pascal  is an example of this expat community.  He has a French father and an American mother.  He was born in Switzerland, moved to France when he was nine and learned French, moved to the United States to a hippy boarding school in New Hampshire for high school and college, fell in love with a Mexican guy and moved to Mexico where he learned fluent Spanish, writing songs and learning to perform along the way, taught languages for a while and then shifted to tourism where he also performs music.  He is balanced between three cultures.  

Uruguay, where I was for a month a year ago, has a mixture of cultures.  Colombia was much more of a melting pot with a mixture of races and cultures from Spain as well as central and South AMerica including a strong indigenous celebration of their pre Spanish history.  And here I have the same feeling of a mixture of cultures which I have felt in my brief visits to Texas and California (both formerly Mexican territory) as well.  But here I have the feeling of people’s ancestors coming from various places in Europe as well as from India and from all over South America.  San Miguel is certainly a melting pot still.  

After the meeting at La Cabre Illuminada Martha went grocery shopping for supplies to be ready when her first group of 15 arrives on Tuesday.  The dry goods shop, Super Bonanza,  where she shopped for nuts and grains had a narrow store front, maybe 20 feet wide but stretched back through narrow extension after extension with narrow aisles.  It was as unlike a Swannanoa Ingles grocery store as could be.  I am guessing there must be big box stores somewhere in Mexico and large grocery stores with multiple varieties of the same things as there were at times in Greece and Colombia, but in the old town of San Miguel with it multicolored buildings there is almost no compromise with modernity.  

Martha filled two large bags with groceries and the, because they were too heavy to lug the mile back to our rented mansion, we took a taxi back which cost 50 pesos, $2.50.