November 2009

I can be so oblivious at times. Early Saturday evening I stopped into Carol’s shop on Aldama. We’d agreed to meet for cocktails at Harry’s but when I arrived, she was still working on her computer. “Do you need more time?” I asked her.

“I’m just finishing up,” she said. “Let me just switch into my combat cocktail shoes.”

She reached beneath her desk and pulled on a pair of tan wedges with thick soles. “What did you call those?” I said as she locked up.

“What?”

“Your shoes.”

“Ah,” she said, looking down at her feet. “Marta’s famous combat cocktail shoes. Haven’t you noticed? Everyone wears them.”

“Everyone?”

“Well, the women. Take a look when we get to Harry’s.”

Marta's combat cocktail sandals.

And she was right. At least half the women in the bar were wearing some variation of this sandal, which seemed to come in a multitude of colors from candy apple red to lime green. “So what’s the story on these things?” I asked her as we ordered martinis.

Well, said Carol, maybe you’ve never noticed but the combination of hills and cobblestone streets in San Miguel is killer if you’re a woman. About the only thing safe to wear on your feet are athletic shoes. Or hiking boots. Which is a problem when you want to put on a little black dress and go somewhere fun for drinks.

Okay.

Thus the combat cocktail shoe. She held her foot out in front of her so I could admire it. “Feel the strap,” she said. I did. It was elastic. Like a thicker, firmer Ace bandage. “The thick rubber soles give you traction on the wet cobblestones and the elastic straps give you support. But they’re kind of cute, don’t you think?”

No bad.

They're $35 in San Miguel; $65 if you buy them on-line.

According to Carol, the combat cocktail shoes were created by a Leon accountant, Santiago Gallardo, and his wife, Marta Lopez. Gallardo came up with the concept and then Marta and her daughter, Paulina, opened a small zapateria in San Miguel to sell the shoes. They started with just one design and a couple of colors almost 15 years ago, with Gallardo making half a dozen pairs of shoes a day by hand. Now there are dozens of styles and colors, and Marta runs three shoes stores in town.

“I know women that have 20 pairs of these shoes,” Carol said.

“And you?”

“Three or four,” Carol said, sipping her martini. “Okay, maybe five.” And then, after a pause, she said, “I wish I’d come up with the idea. They’re brilliant.”

Obviously many of the women at Harry’s thought so as well. And to think I’d never even noticed them before.

So if you are a woman and you come to San Miguel, probably the first thing you’ll want to do is walk down Mesones and drop in to Zapateria Marta where for $35 or so, you can get a pair of her San Miguel shoes. Or you can order them from her on-line for the delivery in the states through Outersoul. But that will cost you twice as much. Just another reason to go to San Miguel.

Just for old times sake I had dinner at La Puerticita last night, the little boutique hotel where I stayed the first time I came to San Miguel de Allende over a decade ago. Amazingly enough Chema was still there, though I don’t think he remembered me. Why would he?

Chema was wearing a double-breasted suit and when I took a seat in the courtyard he came over, took my order, and then came back bringing me a Don Julio reposado on the rocks, carrying it on a glass tray. Though it was not yet dark, there was the muffled poppoppop of fireworks coming from somewhere in town and the squawk of wild parrots in the arroyo where the campesinos slowly moved their sheep and a few scrawny cows back up into the hills.

When it got dark, the waiters, wearing black pants and tuxedo shirts and red bow ties, lit the votive candles on the white wrought-iron tables and Chema, standing stiffly with his hands clasped behind him, told me of the dishes for the evening—chiles en nogada, chuletas en salsa pasilla, camarones al ajillo—and then raised his eyebrows as a signal to Felipe, the oldest and most elegant of the waiters, to bring me a bowl of pollo con champiñones soup, placing it, with two hands, slowly in front of me.

I ordered the shrimp and a bottle of rioja, slightly chilled. For dessert, Chema said the cook, Guadalupe, had made a pastel tres leches, and although this is one of my favorite cakes, I passed it up in favor of a brandy.

A mariachi band in the Jardin. Photo by David Lansing.

Afterwards, a little drunk, I walked down Santo Domingo, beneath the ancient arched stone bridge that crosses the arroyo, smelling the spicy smoked air, to the Jardín. There were several mariachi groups in the park, serenading lovers sitting on the green wrought iron benches, and the whole scene made me a little wistful.

I decided to have a drink at Tio Lucas but there was something about the crowd there that bothered me so I quickly finished my tequila and went next door to La Cave de Beso to listen to the fado. I sat at one of the tables in the back, in the darkness, listening to the sad Portuguese music and watching the two machodas sitting at the table next to me kiss each other. I suppose the two young women, who were both heavily made up, thought sitting in La Cave de Beso making out was all very scandalous and dramatic and perhaps it was, but to me it just seemed boring.

I finished my drink and walked home. The two cats, who had not yet had their dinner, were waiting up for me.

I don’t like Christmas Day. The tree always looks particularly dry and all the little decorations—the Nativity scene above the fireplace, the Danish nutcracker in the kitchen, the folksy blue Santa—all look ridiculous. Decorating the tree is always a major event. It’s the first evening you listen to Christmas music as you carefully hang one heirloom ornament after another, taking a break every few minutes to admire your work and take a sip of spiked eggnog.

But once Christmas is over, it’s over and you hurry to get the tree down, practically pulling the lights off the brittle limbs, so you can drag the tree out the back door, dropping needles in a path behind you, and deposit it next to the trash bag of wrapping paper. Then sweep up and move the furniture back to where it was. And there you have it. After weeks and weeks of preparation and anticipation, Christmas is over in a heartbeat.

That’s the way it was in San Miguel Monday afternoon. The ofrendas were gone. The colored flags hanging over Aldama had mostly disappeared. The ones that remained looked tired and faded. Street crews were sweeping up the remains of the flower art in front of La Parroquia. The sound system had been taken down as had the barriers in front of the church. The place, so filled with people the day before, was now practically deserted.

Mummers in San Miguel de Allende. Photo by David Lansing.

All that remained were a few costumed skeletons running around the Jardín. The mummers. Young men, mostly, wearing masks or full skeleton costumes, shouting and yelling at the sky. Chasing away the most stubborn of souls, those that find it the most difficult to return to Mictlan, the place of silence where the souls of all of Mexico’s dead repose after death. Until they’re called home again. Next year.

There was a show over the weekend at the Instituto Allende celebrating art related to Day of the Dead. Most of the it was the bad sort of student art you see anywhere: a collage of razor blades with what looked like blood dripping from them; a Virgin made from beer bottle caps. That sort of thing. But I was quite taken by a rather large oil painting done by Jeffrey Brown. It depicts a man in a blue suit awkwardly holding a barefoot young woman whose breast rises above the folds of a green dress. Both their eyes are closed. She seems to be leading him on down the cobblestone street while the man in the suit looks like he’s trying to hold her back. And there, lurking just behind the two of them, is a grinning calaca—a skeleton.

Jeffrey Brown's "Sin Titulo." Photos by David Lansing.

Of course, I could have it all wrong. And the artist doesn’t help, having named the painting Sin Titulo (Without title). I don’t know much about Brown except that he’s one of a handful of ex-pat painters in San Miguel who, it is generally agreed, is worth collecting. And if this particular painting had been for sale (it was being loaned from someone’s private collection), I would have snapped it up.

On Sunday afternoon, All Souls’ Day, I joined the throngs of people walking or taking the bus up the old road south of town to the cemetery, Panteón de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe. There was a bit of a carnival atmosphere along the camino viejo with both sides of the street lined with vendors selling menudo and sopa de tortilla and pozole. There were old women hawking tamales from metal buckets and la gente indigena hovering over blackened caldrons of boiling chicken feet or pig knuckles. And everywhere there were vendors selling flowers, mostly the bright orange cempazuchitl but also the blood red cock’s comb and white daisies.

A decorated grave at the cemetery in San Miguel.

The cemetery itself was like an outdoor festival in a park. Families were gathered around the gravesites eating, drinking, playing the guitar. Sometimes you’d see two or three women with buckets and scrub brushes gossiping in high sing-song voices while giving the gravestones a good scrubbing. Some of the people had obviously spent the night here and now they were curled up, in fetal positions, napping on the ground or covered by blankets as they slept above their father or mother or little brother. If you lingered for more than a moment beside a decorated grave, the relatives of the deceased would insist you share a sip of tequila or perhaps have a tamale. There was laughter and music and lots of conversation going on, but there was no crying. At least none that I saw.

The lonely American section of the cemetery.

In fact, the only sad thing about the Panteón de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe was the American section of the cemetery which was neither decorated nor visited. The markers here were simple (“Marie Von Horn Charlton, 1894-1987, Widow of Rear-Admiral Alex M. Charlton, U.S.N. Ret.”) the graves tidy, but it was so sterile and lonely here. You could just imagine the poor souls, like Marie Von Horn Charlton, hovering above the cypress trees that shade this part of the cemetery longing to join the party next door. It would be like never being invited to your neighbor’s fabulous parties.

After awhile, I’d seen enough and caught a taxi back into town. I’d planned to just eat some leftover chicken for dinner but there was something about seeing that American cemetery that made me desire company this evening. So I walked down to the Villa Jacaranda, which was very festive, and had a drink at the bar before sitting down for dinner. I didn’t know anyone here but it was alright. It was good just to be with other souls, even if we didn’t speak.

There was a lot going on Sunday, All Souls’ Day. To begin with, this is the only day of the year when they open up the ancient crypts in the basement of La Parroquia to the public. The only person I knew who had ever gone was Carol Romano, the woman who owns the Moroccan design shop up the street. She said it was interesting and worth the visit but definitely creepy.

I went early in the morning, during mass, figuring everyone else would be in church. The Protección Civíl had blocked off both ends of Correo to traffic in front of the Parroquia with orange cones and wooden blockades but they were allowing people through in small groups to look at the street art that students had made in front of the church. There were representations of Aztec warriors and Quetzalcoatl, the Nahuatl feathered-serpent deity, and Mictecacihuatl, the Aztec goddess of death, all made from seeds and flower petals—mostly orange and yellow marigolds.

Pagan Day of the Dead art in front of La Parroquia. Photos by David Lansing.

Pagan gods in front of a Catholic church on El Día de Difuntos. How perfect considering that the whole Day of the Dead stuff goes back to pre-Hispanic times when, during the month of August, the Aztecs and other Meso-American civilizations celebrated death, presided over by the “Lady of the Dead,” Mictecacihuatl, who was believed to have died at birth, in monthlong rituals.

When the Spanish couldn’t stop the indigenous people from practicing their pagan beliefs, they got smart and simply incorporated the festivities and moved the whole shebang to November 1 and 2 to coincide with All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day.

There were strings of papel picado hanging between the wrought iron fencing in front of the church and the lamp posts along the Jardín. The sky was overcast and the wind cool enough that I was glad I’d brought a sweater. The colored tissue paper flapped in the breeze and occasionally a square of purple or red would rip away from the enramadas and drift up, carried by the wind, disappearing over a building and into the heavens like a lost soul.

Ofrendas on the Explanada in front of the church.

On the Explanada, in front of the church, were various altars, the more elaborate ofrendas with melons and rows of limes and plates of tamales and a dish of pumpkin cooked with brown sugar, maybe a bottle of tequila or a pitcher of atole, and dozens of alfenique—skulls, pigs, coffins, miniature hamburgesas and cakes, chickens, snowmen in top hats, and lots of Iztcuintles, the small dogs said by Aztecs to serve as a guide and companion to the dead.

You could see that some of the altars had been set up by various groups—like the sprawling ofrenda put up by Aficionados al Teatro—while others were more rustic and probably put up by a family. Like the rough pine table decorated with the fat orange cempazuchitls and a few candles around a framed picture of a little girl, maybe five or six years old. On the table someone had laid out some clothing: a tiny embroidered blouse and a fine huipil decorated with cross-stitching, and a pair of black patent leather Mary Janes that were unscuffed, the uplifted soles on the toes still shiny.

The cool air was laced with the piney smoke of copal incense and the graveolent scent of thousands of malodorous marigolds. Loudspeakers had been placed around the Explanada and some sort of somber flute and drumming music—very repetitive, very hypnotic—had settled over the Jardín like an aural fog. I passed through the gates to La Parroquia and down the stone steps to the crypt, ducking my head in the low doorway, and entered a small room—maybe twenty feet wide and thirty feet long—with crypts set into the stone foundation from floor to ceiling. Some of the crypts were missing their faceplates and bones were visible sitting atop the soil. The writing had worn away completely on others and it was obvious that some of the crypts had not been maintained in decades—maybe centuries.

I sat down on a small bench in the middle of the room, alone, wrapped up in the smell of copal mingling with the musty scent of the underground burial ground, listening to the awful drum and flute music coming from outside, trying to discern the presence of the dead. But as hard as I tried, I felt nothing.