Category Archives: San Miguel de Allende

San Miguel de Allende

The Legacies of Emiliano Zapata: Apparently, the Personal was NOT Political

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By Deborah Van Hoewyk—

Even if you don’t know much about Emiliano Zapata (1879-1919), you’ve probably heard of the Zapatista movement he inspired. Dedicated to the proposition that land should be returned to the people, Zapata, as commander of the Liberation Army of the South, is one of the best-known heroes of the Mexican Revolution (1910-20). When Francisco Madero successfully ousted the dictator Porfirio Díaz and made himself president in 1911, however, he failed to implement any of the land reforms Zapata and like-minded revolutionaries expected.

Zapata went home to Ayala in Morelos (south of Mexico City) and wrote his “Plan de Ayala,” castigating Madero and ensuring that the peasants of Morelos would benefit from land reform. The Plan de Ayala was instrumental to creating Article 27 of the 1917 Constitution, which establishes indigenous land rights in communal holdings (ejidos and comunidades agrarias); it is considered a fundamental text for the Zapatista movement.

The Mexican Revolution was marked by chaos: coups, assassinations, hostilities between northern and southern factions in what was basically a civil war within a civil war. Zapata was a thorn in the side of Mexico’s various presidents – none of whom implemented any meaningful land reform, despite the 1917 Constitution. The Constitution had been promoted by Venustiano Carranza, governor of the state of Coahuila; in the wake of the Constitution, Carranza became president of Mexico.

Once in office, he was determined to get rid of Zapata, who took his ragged peasant soldiers into battle whenever his demands were ignored. On April 10, 1919, Carranza’s military organized an elaborate ruse to get Zapata to a supposedly secret meeting at Hacienda Chinameca (about 18 km, or 11 miles, south of Ayala). He arrived on horseback and saluted the military lineup; they promptly murdered him in his saddle.

Zapata’s Political Legacy

Politically, Zapata left behind a peasant movement that lives on today, mostly in Chiapas. The lengthy dominant-party role of the PRI (Partido Revolucionario Institucional) left many people, especially younger people, feeling there was no political avenue open to them except Zapata-style resistance. As the Revolution faded (it took quite some time for the fighting to stop), the Zapatistas began a long and complicated history of representing the indigenous peoples of southern Mexico, often clashing with northern anti-government groups

Three events crystallized the Zapatista identity and firmly located it in the Lacandon jungle area of Chiapas as the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (National Zapatista Army of Liberation, or EZLN).

· In 1992, reforms to Article 27 of the Mexican Constitution fundamentally changed the country’s agrarian system, ending the longstanding process of land redistribution and allowing new forms of ownership and transfer of ejido land.

· On January 1, 1994, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) went into effect, leading the EZLN to declare war on the Mexican government. The EZLN occupied four towns in Chiapas, including San Cristóbal de las Casas; after 11 days of bloody fighting, during which 300 people died, the Mexican government started negotiations with the EZLN. It took two years, but in 1996, the Mexican government and the EZLN signed the San Andrés Accords, granting autonomy, recognition, and rights to the indigenous peoples of Mexico. In other words, the Accords ostensibly restored some portions of Article 27 of the 1917 Constitution.

· Also in 1996, the EZLN convened an Intercontinental Meeting for Humanity and against Neoliberalism, becoming the de facto leader of leftist activists around the world.

As time has passed, the Zapatistas have had less impact on political issues; the EZLN still exists, and still fights for indigenous rights, but their activities are mostly confined to Chiapas. They are opposed to mega-infrastructure projects in the region and maintain ties with European activists. Drug cartels have used violence against local Zapatista governments, causing the EZLN to reorganize in more local collectives aligned with broader Assemblies of Collectives of Zapatista Autonomous Governments” (ACGAZ).

Zapata’s Personal Legacies: Men???
Zapata, an icon of machismo, had twenty or so kids with either 9 or 14 women (he only married one of them); he may also have been bisexual, a possibility that has recently been reexamined because of a painting.

A Controversial Painting.
On Tuesday, December 10, 2019, protesters stormed the usually staid and monumental Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City’s historic center. Many of the protesters were indigenous farmers – those for whom Zapata had fought. Their target was one particular painting in the exhibition Emiliano. Zapata Después de Zapata (Emiliano. Zapata after Zapata), held to mark the centennial of Zapata’s death.

It wasn’t this one …

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nor was it this one, odd as it may be.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was this one.

Note that the stilettos seem to be revolvers, Zapata’s sombrero is pink with painted flowers, and the horse is – um – aroused. The title is La Revolución.

Antonio Medrano spoke for the protesters: “This isn’t freedom of expression, it is debauchery! It’s degrading. They can’t exhibit our history that way … they can’t permit this kind of mockery.” Perhaps the strongest protests came from Zapata’s descendants, who said they would sue to have the painting removed. Jorge Zapata Gonzalez, Zapata’s grandson, asserted that “We are not going to allow this! For us as relatives, this denigrates the figure of our general – depicting him as gay.”

The artist, Fabián Cháirez, says he was surprised by the cries to take it down, hide it away, or burn it. Cháirez, gay himself, shows a number of similar paintings on his website – La Revolución was painted in 2014. At the time of the exhibition, the artist told the BBC he conceived of the painting as a counterpoint to the predominant image of masculinity as a white fortachón (strongman – Zapata was called el caudillo del sur, another way to say “strongman”); he said he thought issues of sexuality “had already been overcome or [were] under control: inclusion, respect for diversity or difference. Issues such as machismo, misogyny, homophobia.” Those who disagree with the protesters see the painting as an exercise in artistic freedom, or as an effort to quell the negative Mexican attitude towards anything effeminate.

The Palacio de Bellas Artes continued to show the painting for the duration of the exhibition.

Any truth to the rumors? While academic historians say there’s nothing to the rumors about Zapata and other men, that all the evidence is second-hand, others believe that at least two instances of same-sex behavior are plausible.

In 1906, four years before the Mexican Revolution began, Zapata, 27, met Ignacio de la Torre y Mier (“Nachito”), 40, who had been married to Porfirio Díaz’s daughter Amada since 1888. Rumors of Nachito’s homosexuality had been circulating for years. In 1901, the Mexico City police had raided “The Dance of the 41,” a private ball for 41 men, 19 of them dressed in women’s clothes. Word had it that there were 42 men involved, and that Nachito was #42, but somehow the “son-in-law of the father-in-law” was not arrested. The event was described extensively in the Mexican press, leading to open discussions of homosexuality – and to the notion that the dissolute lifestyle of the elite classes represented a moral failing. Not a good look when Revolution is imminent (you can find the 2020 film Dance of the 41, which covers the political aspect of the raid, on Netflix).

Nachito met Zapata at the hacienda of San Carlos Borromeo in Cuernavaca, where Zapata was working in the stables. As the story goes, Nachito invited Zapata to his house on Plaza de Reforma in Mexico City, ostensibly to take care of his horses. Amada spent little time with Nachito, was well aware of his sexual preferences, and kept a diary. Therein she recorded that she found Nachito and Zapata “wallowing” together in the stables.

Zapata’s personal secretary, Manuel Palafox (“The Black Bird”), was a closeted gay; he made cryptic references in his records to behavior that indicated Zapata had other homosexual relationships.

Zapata’s Personal Legacies: Women and Children

Emiliano Zapata may well have had relationships with any number of women that did not produce children, but the record shows he did have children with 9 and maybe 10 women.

Some children died young – a boy of five was bitten by a rattlesnake, a girl of three succumbed to a scorpion sting, several died at birth or shortly after, and a girl of 16 died of meningitis. Of those who lived long lives, only Ana María Zapata Portillo (1915-2010) followed in her father’s footsteps by working for agrarian rights.

On August 20, 1911, after the fall of the Díaz regime, Zapata married one of the women with whom he had children, Josefa Espejo Merino (1879-1968). There is no evidence that he ever divorced her – she died in Ayala. He had successive relationships with the Zúñiga Benítez sisters, Gregoria and Luz, who were soldaderas in the Mexican Revolution.

The role of women, and their children, in Emiliano Zapata’s life is unclear. He was never without one (or more), and there certainly were a lot of them. That Mexicans are interested in his relationships with women as well as with men can be seen in a new play, Emiliano Zapata’s Women, which premiered at the National Museum of Mexican Art in June 2023. The play presents women in his life – a midwife, his mother and sister, a lover – building up or tearing down Zapata’s image by sharing their intimate thoughts about him.

Deborah Van Hoewyk wrote and copy edited for The Eye for over a decade. She passed away in 2025 and is greatly missed.

Huatulco, San Miguel de Allende

The Long Political Tradition of Murals in Mexico

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By Marcia Chaiken and Jan Chaiken—

When the word “art” is mentioned in the same sentence as “Mexico” our minds leap to our memories of outstanding “murals.” Whether in the largest cities of Ciudad de México or Guadalajara, or small special places such as San Miguel de Allende or Huatulco, during return visits we are drawn back to experience again the murals that are etched in our minds. And we are always astonished to see details that have eluded us and to learn more about the history that inspired them during our many decades of exploring them.

It seems that a blank wall stimulates human artistic creativity. Some of the walls of caves in the mountains of Europe are decorated with prehistoric drawings of animals that were hunted or perhaps worshipped in the past. And although we found these 50,000-year-old creations awe-inspiring, they did not prepare us for the breathtaking murals in Bonampak, deep in the jungle of the state of Chiapas. In bright colors and detailed drawings, each of the murals in three temple rooms open a window to the life the elite Maya lived there more than twelve centuries ago. Displaying wars, musical events and religious rites, the Bonampak murals also have a political intent that is innate to the best and most famous of Mexican murals through the centuries – in this case establishing the hereditary right to rule of the portrayed nobility.

Centuries later, after the Spanish invasion, Catholic orders also used murals to demonstrate their right to rule New Spain and subjugate the indigenous people. Using artists’ techniques developed in Europe during the Renaissance, including understanding of human anatomy and ability to portray visual perspectives, the murals often presented the lineage of specific Catholic orders in tree-like form, tracing the founders and current religious heads of that era back to Jesus. We frankly find these monochromatic murals adorning convents and other religious buildings in cities around central Mexico including Cuernavaca, San Agustín de Acolman, and Malinalco, less memorable and inspiring than earlier and later works. Rather than drawing on the creativity of the native muralists, they were copies of prints from Spain that were painted by people who had been enslaved by the religious orders.

The Mexican Revolution, which began in 1910, challenged the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz and helped inspire one of the most prolific periods of mural art in Mexico. But even before the upheaval in 1910, the writing was literally on the wall. In 1906, Gerardo Murillo, known as Dr. Atl, published a manifesto calling for a distinctly Mexican art inspired by the country’s Indigenous cultures rather than European models. Closely allied with President Porfirio Díaz, Treasury Minister Alberto Pani, and the revolutionary Venustiano Carranza, Dr. Atl became the hero and teacher of three major muralists after the revolution: Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros.

These “three greats”, although linked together by art school affiliation (San Carlos Academy), revolutionary ideology and chronology, had radically different backgrounds. Diego Rivera, born in 1886 in Guanajuato, was a child prodigy producing drawings as early as age 2, including sketches on the walls of his home. His parents encouraged his art studies in the San Carlos Academy in Mexico City and then in Europe. Rivera was part of the now well-known avant-garde group breaking traditional forms of art, including Pablo Picasso. Although he was immersed in the paintings of the Impressionists including Gauguin and Matisse, he developed a style that was much more rooted in Mexican indigenous art, using bright colors and flat perspectives.

Orozco, on the other hand, was born in Jalisco in 1883 and as a child moved to Mexico City where his parents struggled financially. They decided that José should become an agricultural engineer and sent him to study in a rural area. Orozco contracted rheumatic fever and returned home to Mexico City. Shortly after, his father died of typhus and, to help support his family, Orozco became a draftsman and then was commissioned to paint portraits of recently deceased people. His interest in art was sufficient to begin classes at the San Carlos Academy. But before he could establish himself as an artist, another tragedy occurred; while he was mixing chemicals for fireworks, an explosion greatly injured his left hand and arm. His left hand and wrist needed to be amputated after they became gangrenous. Orozco struggled on, taking menial artistic jobs – but he was forever sensitized to poverty and pain in the world around him. These are reflected in the grey and red murals he eventually produced.

Squeiros, the youngest in the triad, was born in Chihuahua in 1896 to a well-to-do family who supported his desire at age 12 to study art and architecture in Mexico City. The young Siqueiros was a firebrand and soon was part of the prerevolutionary activists who demanded social change – including a successful student strike at the San Carlos Academy. He joined the Mexican Revolution Army at age 18 and advanced rapidly through the ranks. His political activism continued long after the Revolution, and he later became an outspoken Communist whose convictions shaped both his art and his life. His military career continued in Spain during the Spanish civil war. As part of this career, Siqueiros developed a passion for new technology. His murals reflect both the horrors of wars and the influence of technology.

In the decade following the revolution, all three of these artists received government grants to adorn much of the historic central area of Mexico City with their murals. These works are accessible today in the Palacio de Bellas Artes and other government buildings. The House of Tiles, (currently a restaurant and store owned by Sanborns) also has a fine example of a mural by Orozco. The intent of all these murals was less an appreciation of art than political propaganda – portraying the grandiloquence of both the Mexican and Russian revolutionaries. The murals pitted the excesses of capitalism (especially Rivera’s) and fascism (Siqueiros’) against the dream of the working class achieving independence. Both for Rivera and Siqueiros, fascination with new technology and its promise of freeing the masses from back-breaking labor became a staple topic in their work. For all three, documenting the pain and oppression of humanity under repressive regimes was paramount.

In Guadalajara, Orozco created monumental murals exploring Mexico’s history, from the struggle for independence to the violence, contradictions and aspirations of modern society. They are located in the Government Palace of Jalisco, the Museo Cabañas, and the Museum of Arts at the University of Guadalajara. As the fame of the three spread throughout the world, universities and philanthropists, especially in the US, commissioned murals – but for their artistic value and technological portrayal. Some of those who commissioned the murals had not done their homework and were aghast when the portraits of Russian revolutionaries appeared on their walls; in fact, Nelson Rockefeller ordered a mural by Rivera in Rockefeller Center covered up and then destroyed because it included a portrait of Lenin. But many murals are still accessible in major US cities and universities. Most of the art is still there as well as the political history.

Drs. Marcia and Jan Chaiken have been married for 62 years and have published many justice system research reports together.

Huatulco, San Miguel de Allende

When the Sign Becomes the Artwork

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By Jesús Rafael Arguelles Rangel—

A hand-painted sign does more than tell you where to buy tacos, get a haircut, repair a tire, or order a glass of agua fresca. In Mexico, the sign itself often becomes part of the place: letters lean, swell, cast shadows, turn gothic, or explode into color; a smiling pig may advertise carnitas, a fish may point toward a seafood stand, and a price can be painted with as much personality as a mural.

That visual language is easy to overlook precisely because it belongs to everyday commerce. Rotulismo grew as a practical trade, not as something made for museums. Sign painters learned to make a business visible from across a street, often working directly on walls, shutters, glass, metal, or food stalls. The result was advertising, but it was also authorship. Two shops selling the same thing could look completely different because the hand behind the brush was different.

Today that distinction matters more than it once did. Printed vinyl, digital templates, and standardized branding can make a sign cheaper, faster, and easier to reproduce. They can also make one neighborhood look more like another. A hand-painted sign carries small decisions that are difficult to standardize: how thick a shadow should be, which word deserves red, whether a letter should stretch to fill an awkward corner, whether a mascot should be funny, elegant, or slightly absurd.

Those choices have begun to receive formal cultural recognition. In late 2025, Mexico City’s Galería José María Velasco opened Los rótulos no deben morir, an exhibition that brought together nearly one hundred pieces and presented rotulismo as craft, visual language, and urban memory. In February 2026, the gallery also hosted Encuentro Rotulismo. Tepito, where sign painters, artists, researchers, and the public gathered around an art form long associated with neighborhood businesses rather than elite institutions.

The lettering itself tells stories. Researchers at UNAM have noted how gothic forms, for example, continue to appear on food stands, bakeries, wrestling-related businesses, product logos, and tattoos, where they can suggest tradition, age, prestige, or toughness. In a hand-painted commercial sign, typography is never only typography. It becomes a social signal: a promise about what kind of place you are entering and who it is speaking to.

That is why the old question – is it design or is it art? – may be too narrow. Rotulismo has always needed to work. It must identify, persuade, and survive weather, dust, grease, repainting, and changing businesses. But usefulness does not cancel expression. If anything, the constraint makes the creativity more visible. The painter has to make something memorable while obeying a wall, a budget, a deadline, and a client’s request.

A printed banner can do the job. A hand-painted sign can do the job and leave a trace of the person who made it. That trace is what turns a commercial object into part of a city’s visual memory. When the sign disappears, the business may still be there, but one small piece of the neighborhood’s voice is gone with it.

Jesús Rafael Arguelles Rangel is a Mexican writer and creator whose work explores culture, identity, and storytelling across literature and digital media.

Huatulco, San Miguel de Allende

Looking Back: Satisfying Reads of 2026, Part 1

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By Carole Reedy—

Reading is a deeply personal undertaking that, on reflection, can reveal an unknown side of the reader. It continually gives us new ways to view the world and the roles we choose to play in it.

The following books proved most satisfying to me this year, all unique in theme, approach, and style.

Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy
The biggest surprise of the year was this compelling read by an author totally unknown to me. The core of the novel is a topic outside my interest zone, but a rave recommendation by a respected editor/friend piqued my curiosity.

The story takes place on an island off the coast of Antarctica, where an environmental research team has just closed its operation due to rising waters, which will soon overwhelm the entire island.

One family remains to finalize the departure, and this is their story. It’s an exciting, intricately plotted story, with twists and turns that kept me on the edge of my seat.

Now I Surrender by Álvaro Enrigue
Sudden Death by Álvaro Enrigue
You Dreamed of Empires, Álvaro Enrigue’s highly energetic and entertaining novel, recently brought him deserved attention from both north and south of the border.

Enrigue’s newest, Now I Surrender (these words spoken by Geronimo), is a more serious yet equally engaging novel.

Although the story’s emphasis focuses on the Apaches, including Geronimo and The Long Walk, it reveals the truly convoluted history of the struggle in the region, now Arizona, New Mexico, Chihuahua, and Sonora, in the early nineteenth century.

Varying points of view zero in on the manipulations of those in power within Mexico and the US in an effort to annihilate the Apaches and other tribes. The manner in which Enrigue analyzes the governments of Grover Cleveland and Theodore Roosevelt addresses the cultural differences of the parties involved and reveals the author clearly in his element.

It is truly a work of art.

I couldn’t stop there. I had to read more of Enrigue’s work.

Sudden Death (2016) is a rollicking novel starting and ending in the sixteenth century with a tennis match between the controversial dynamic Italian artist Caravaggio and the Spanish poet Francisco de Quevedo, both well known for hot-headed impulsiveness.

The novel roams from the court of Henry VIII, in which the locks of Anne Boleyn’s severed head play a role, to the conquest of Mexico, where Hernán Cortés and his Indigenous interpreter and adviser, Malintzin, play central roles.

Enrigue’s imagination and style are unmatched, and his talented translator Natasha Wimmer deserves equal praise.

The Volcano Lover by Susan Sontag
The Art Thief by Michael Finkel
These two books come from different eras. Sontag’s novel is set in eighteenth-century Naples, while Finkel tells a true story from the late twentieth century. The lifestyles and circumstances also couldn’t be more disparate.

The tie that binds them is an obsession with collecting. The main character in both books is a collector who is fixated beyond reason with obtaining the objects of his desire.

It’s difficult to accept the facts of The Art Thief. Between 1995 and 2001, a young man named Stéphane Breitwieser casually slipped into 172 European museums in broad daylight and left just as easily with 239 works of art.

He never sold one piece. He simply took them to his mother’s house, up to the attic, where he also lived. Here he had the joy of looking at them. In his own mind, perhaps, he was a pure collector, interested not in selling the works but in possessing them.

Finkel does a marvelous job of telling this story straightforwardly from start to finish. It’s both this simplicity as well as the writing that make the book deeply engaging.

The Volcano Lover is a longer, richly detailed story, highlighting the consummate collector British Envoy Sir William Hamilton, who dedicates most of his life in Naples (1764-98) to collecting objects of beauty. He is particularly obsessed with the vases of Italy and elsewhere, becoming a most famous collector held in high regard.

The other significant character in the novel is Mt. Vesuvius, the active volcano that dominates Naples’ coastal landscape as well as the lives of the Neapolitans in its menacing shadow.

The outstanding feature of the novel is, of course, the descriptive atmosphere Sontag provides with her precision prose.

The Predicament by William Boyd
Brazzaville Beach by William Boyd
I find it impossible not to be thoroughly engaged by a William Boyd novel. You sense that each of his books was as smoothly and easily written as it is to read. Of course that cannot be true, as we know authors spend hours mulling over their words. Their editors and copyeditors give equal blood, sweat, and tears to the final product.

Boyd’s subject matter varies widely, but never the quality of his writing. In these two diverse selections, one is set at a research facility in Africa and the other is a political detective thriller spanning the globe.

The Predicament is the second novel in Boyd’s Gabriel Dax trilogy. British Dax is a travel writer who finds himself caught up in the midst of some rather dicey situations. This gem takes us from Guatemala to Berlin and the US. You don’t have to be an espionage fan to become engaged in Dax’s adventures. The novels are more about the human condition, focusing on human reaction more than complex plotlines.

The first in this trilogy is Gabriel’s Moon, and the third, Cold Sunset, is already published in the UK and scheduled for US release in November. Fans, including yours truly, are eagerly anticipating it.

Brazzaville Beach is definitely not a lighthearted beach story. In fact it’s quite the opposite. This serious novel draws in part on Jane Goodall’s research in Africa.

Its main character, Hope, is studying the behavior patterns of chimpanzees and is not always in tune with her colleagues’ assumptions. Hope also is dealing with conflict from her husband on the home front.

More of my best books of the year to be continued in the December 2026 issues (both Huatulco and San Miguel de Allende editions) of The Eye.

Carole Reedy has been writing for The Eye since 2011. She is an avid reader who has made Mexico her home for many years.

 

San Miguel de Allende

ON! Gallery: Where Art, Culture, and Contemporary Life Converge

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By Gina Weber—

San Miguel de Allende is home to more than 60 art galleries, artist studios, and cultural centers. In a city celebrated for its art scene, what inspires someone to open another gallery? For ON! Gallery, the answer lies in reimagining what a gallery can be: not simply a place to view or purchase art, but a space where art inspires conversation, sparks curiosity, and becomes part of everyday life.

ON! Gallery was founded on January 23, 2026, by Juan Carlos Limón Buergo and Emmanuel Razo. “Our vision is to bring something new to the art scene in San Miguel de Allende, something that challenges convention and makes a difference,” Limón explains. “While the city has no shortage of art ecosystems, we are taking a different approach: dedicating each exhibition to a single artist and presenting a cohesive body of work that allows visitors to truly discover and connect with the artist’s vision.”

Recently, the gallery presented The Place After the Place by Benito Rangel de María, featuring his Brick project and paper collages informed by migration, memory, and material exploration. It also exhibited They Have Given Us the Land, a contemporary ceramic series by Dolores Hidalgo artist Julio César Espinosa, inspired by Juan Rulfo’s short story ‘Nos han dado la tierra’, from his collection El llano en llamas (1953). The work reflects on land as both a promise and a burden, revealing the tension between expectation and scarcity.

The exhibitions reflect ON!’s interest in contemporary art in dialogue with Mexico’s cultural heritage. The gallery connects contemporary practitioners with traditional makers, including ceramicists, mojiganga artisans, and textile artists, exploring how inherited techniques and cultural memory can inspire new forms of expression. Artist talks enrich the experience, allowing visitors to explore the ideas, processes, and stories behind the work.

Luca Bray: An Exploration of Color and Form
On November 7, 2026, ON! Gallery will open Yo, Luca Bray, an exhibition featuring oil paintings on canvas brought from Italy. Through his expressive approach to abstraction, Bray explores color, texture, and material, creating compositions that balance gesture, form, and personal expression.

olor is central to Bray’s practice. It defines shapes, establishes relationships, and constructs spaces that draw viewers into the work. Words and personal phrases frequently appear beneath layers of paint, adding an intimate narrative dimension to his compositions. Although best known for painting, Bray also explores sculpture and ceramics, extending his investigation of material and expression beyond the canvas.

In an interview with Hotbook magazine, Bray was asked about the significance of incorporating words and phrases into his work. His response was a single word: “Fear.” “I write whatever comes to mind, and it immediately breaks the blankness of the canvas, which helps me,” he explained. “It’s the first stage of the work, because afterward I begin applying colors over the words. The magic is that sometimes the original words emerge through the layers of paint, becoming part of the story. I create a written narrative, and at the same time, my mind begins working with color. The two intermingle, and in the end, they coexist.”

Limón is particularly pleased to present Italian-born artist Luca Bray, whom he has known for more than 20 years. “I want this gallery to help make San Miguel a destination not only for weddings and traditions, but also for discovering outstanding artists and their work,” Limón says.

ON! Gallery
Diezmo Viejo No. 5, Centro Histórico
San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, Mexico
Instagram: @on.gallery.art

San Miguel de Allende

Alebrijes: From a Fever Dream to a Oaxacan Art Form

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By Shannon Jiménez—

Few examples of Mexican folk art are as instantly recognizable as alebrijes. Brilliantly colored and covered in intricate patterns, these fantastical creatures might combine the body of a jaguar with wings, horns, scales, or other features drawn entirely from the artist’s imagination.

Today, alebrijes are strongly associated with Oaxaca, where artisans carve figures from copal wood and decorate them with extraordinarily detailed designs. But the story of the alebrije actually begins hundreds of kilometers away, in Mexico City.

The Birth of the Alebrije

The original alebrijes were created in the 1930s by Mexico City artisan Pedro Linares López, a master of cartonería, the traditional craft of making figures from paper and cardboard.

According to Linares, while seriously ill he fell unconscious and dreamed of a strange forest inhabited by fantastic creatures. Some combined parts of different animals: a donkey with wings, for example, or a rooster with the horns of a bull. As the creatures appeared, they repeatedly shouted a mysterious word: “alebrije.”

When Linares recovered, he began recreating the creatures he had seen, using the paper and cardboard techniques he already knew. His brightly colored figures eventually attracted the attention of artists and collectors, including Diego Rivera, and his work became known in Mexico and abroad.

Contrary to a story sometimes repeated about the name, the word alebrije is not derived from the Spanish word alegría, meaning joy. Linares maintained that alebrije was simply the strange word he heard in his dream.

From Mexico City to Oaxaca

The wooden figures that most visitors now associate with alebrijes developed separately in Oaxaca. Woodcarving had existed in Oaxacan communities long before the alebrije appeared. Artisans traditionally carved animals, masks, toys, religious objects, and figures connected with local celebrations and everyday life.

One of the most influential Oaxacan carvers was Manuel Jiménez Ramírez, from San Antonio Arrazola, near Oaxaca City. Jiménez helped transform traditional animal carving into a distinctive artistic form, producing imaginative creatures that appealed to collectors and visitors.

Over time, the name alebrije, originally associated with Linares’ fantastical cartonería figures, began to be applied to these colorful Oaxacan woodcarvings as well. The tradition expanded particularly in communities such as San Antonio Arrazola and San Martín Tilcajete, which today are internationally known for their carved and painted figures.

How Oaxacan Alebrijes Are Made

Oaxacan alebrijes are traditionally carved from copal, a wood prized by artisans because it is relatively soft and workable when freshly cut.

The artist first studies the natural shape of a branch or piece of wood, sometimes allowing its curves and irregularities to suggest the animal that will emerge. The basic form is carved with tools such as machetes, knives, and chisels.

Separate elements—including ears, horns, wings, and tails—may be carved individually and attached later. Once carved, the wood must dry. It is then sanded and prepared for painting. Cracks that develop during drying can be filled before decoration begins.

The painting is often as impressive as the carving itself. Artists cover the figures with dots, lines, geometric forms, flowers, scales, and other elaborate patterns. Some artisans use extremely fine tools—even the thorn of a maguey—to create minute details.

Alebrije making is frequently a family enterprise, with carving and painting skills passed from one generation to another. However, the old generalization that “men carve and women paint” does not accurately describe every workshop today. Both men and women work as carvers, painters, designers, and master artisans.

Alebrijes, Tonas and Nahuales

Another popular misconception is that alebrijes are inherently ancient Zapotec spirit animals. The relationship is more complicated.

Ideas surrounding tonas and nahuales have deep roots in Indigenous cultures of Oaxaca, and contemporary artists sometimes draw upon these traditions when creating their work. Some artisans explicitly describe their figures in relation to nahuales or other spiritual concepts.

But alebrijes themselves are not an ancient pre-Hispanic art form. The term dates only to Pedro Linares and the twentieth century. The Oaxacan wooden tradition represents a fascinating meeting of older Indigenous carving practices, individual artistic innovation, tourism, the international folk-art market, and the influence of Linares’ fantastical creatures.

A Living Oaxacan Art

What began as one artisan’s fever dream in Mexico City evolved into something quite different in Oaxaca.

Oaxacan artists took an existing tradition of woodcarving and pushed it in remarkable new directions. Today, workshops continue to experiment with increasingly complex carving, painting, and design, while individual families develop styles recognizable as their own.

No two handmade pieces are exactly alike. Some resemble recognizable animals—rabbits, coyotes, jaguars, cats, armadillos—while others combine features from several creatures or spring entirely from the artist’s imagination. That individuality is part of their appeal. An alebrije can be playful, elegant, strange, whimsical, or even slightly unsettling.

And although they have become one of the most recognizable forms of contemporary Mexican folk art, their history is surprisingly recent: a Mexico City dream transformed by generations of Oaxacan hands.

Shannon Jimenez is the owner of La Vivienda Villa in Huatulco, Mexico.
http://www.lavivienda.com.mx

San Miguel de Allende

My Quest for Calm in San Miguel

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By Audrey Jacobs—

Everyone warned me when I moved to San Miguel de Allende, and I didn’t listen. Centro is still a city. Church bells, trucks, street vendors hawking their wares, New York City with the flavor of a small Mexican colonial town. They said I’d eventually crave nature, quiet, a kind of peace only living outside of town can give you.
Life got crazy, and I finally understood the warnings. But I love my duplex in Colonia San Antonio. I didn’t want to “vacation” to relax. So, I went looking for a staycation instead, a week immersed in nature, where someone else would take care of me and force me into self-care.

My life had quietly, then suddenly, turned upside down.
At 55, nine months earlier, I’d moved here alone to fulfill a 30-year dream, with a safety net, a well-paid consulting client I’d had for years. I’d spent my whole life multitasking as a wife, mother, employee, with passion projects as my side hustle: curating TEDx talks, building community, designing events, and matchmaking. I never flew without a net.

Then the net disappeared. My consulting contract ended, my job was eaten by AI. It was time to depend on myself. Terrifying. My body went into fight, flight, or freeze and stayed there. I ate too much, drank too much, didn’t sleep, snapped at my boyfriend, and turned into a whirling dervish.

Inspiration struck and in one insane month I built “Love in San Miguel”, a new social club, from nothing to 400 members and a launch event. It was supposed to fulfill me and sustain me. It did, and it also took a toll.

I needed a reset, a therapeutic escape to restore my nervous system. I made a list of what I wanted: nature, peaceful elegant rooms, a home feel rather than a hotel, places to write, a bio pool, a sauna, hot tub and views.

Most of all, someone whose life’s work was running that place, someone who’d decide exactly what I ate, drank, and did for one week. I wanted to be told how to reset. I’m from California, so I know the Golden Door style reset, where they control your every movement and you switch off. Never been my thing. I wanted a place where I could still think, and where the person running it could teach me a way of living so stress wouldn’t swallow me again once I got home. And I didn’t want it to break the bank. Reasonable yet valuable. It was a demanding list. I’m so demanding about homes and men that I honestly doubted this place existed.

Was I wrong!

Meet Viktor Hackl, owner of Cuna del Cielo. I googled San Miguel de Allende detox retreat, and his place was, literally, the only one that matched my vision. Everything else was a pretty place with massages, yoga, donkeys or simply day spas.

His website’s first line got me: “Cuna del Cielo is a lush four-bedroom oasis on a hilltop above San Miguel de Allende, inviting guests to rest and heal in a space of undisturbed peace and beauty.”

I ached reading it. How soon could I check in?
The property sits a ten-to-fifteen-minute walk from the main town square, yet worlds away quietly tucked right against the botanical gardens of the Charco del Ingenio, canyons and waterfalls. Viktor built his sanctuary around that stunning landscape.

It was everything I’d dreamed of. I live in San Miguel and love it, but up here, above it all, something in me unclenched. I didn’t realize how much I needed to see that much open sky.

Viktor’s regimen, food, supplements, exercise, healing modalities, is thorough and deeply researched. Yet he’s not rigid about whether or when you do it.

“Who are you?!?” I asked him. “Austrian”, he said. A more relaxed and casual hybrid of German/Italian/Slavic mentalities. He truly embodied his vision when I saw him grinning over the top of his hand-built wooden sauna box, tanned and peaceful.

Every surface here is made with love. My room, the World Loft, has a private library you reach by a wooden ladder and a round window that frames a single pirul (pink pepper) tree like a painting. I felt like I was in some sort of health time warp. I genuinely didn’t want to leave.

Viktor lives on the property full time and tends to his guests with sincere patience. I’m dating the man who opened San Miguel’s first organic grocery store, someone who takes a generous number of daily supplements, and even he was impressed by Viktor’s knowledge and protocol.

What surprised me most wasn’t any single treatment. It was how much of Viktor’s world quietly rearranged mine, without ever feeling like a lecture.

The days follow an intermittent fasting window. Orthomolecular supplements are dosed with real precision. A therapeutic cycle runs once or twice daily: stretching, wet sauna, gym, cold plunge, infrared sauna again. It never once feels like a chore.

But it’s the small things I know I’ll actually keep. On day two, someone knocked and asked if Viktor’s energy cleanser could come into my room for the weekly clearing. Sage, essential oils, incense, and it was done weekly. I’ve saged a new home before I moved in. I’d never once thought to do it weekly, as maintenance, the way you’d change sheets. I’m taking that home with me.

I also noticed that by day three, my cravings for junk had simply stopped, because the junk wasn’t in the house. Stupid simple concept I’d never applied to my own kitchen. If it’s not there, you don’t eat it. And the eating window, done by six most nights, isn’t a diet rule so much as a kindness to your own sleep. I’ll still go out for dinner sometimes. I’m not becoming a monk. But the logic of it stuck.

The bedrooms are massive and still cozy, and I never felt crowded by the other three rooms. The communal kitchen, dining room, and rooftop hot tub give everyone room to mix or disappear. I loved the outdoor gym more than I’ve ever loved a gym, including an assisted morning headstand with my boyfriend spotting me.

My nervous system had been on overdrive, inhaling stress for three months straight, and I won’t pretend one week erased that. I still snap back into old patterns when triggered. But for most of each day, I was genuinely, physically at peace, in a way my body had been begging for.

Cuna del Cielo also offers oxygen therapy, IV drips, acupuncture, and sound healing, a full menu I didn’t even get on this trip. Reasons enough to go back.

I would have guessed San Miguel had a dozen places doing this. It has exactly one operating at this level, and I’m grateful it does. If you live here, you don’t need a plane ticket for this kind of reset. Cuna del Cielo even offers day passes, a few hours with the saunas, the natural pool, and the jacuzzi, for anyone who just needs an afternoon of it. If you’re visiting, block off the week. I live in San Miguel, and I’m already plaanning when I get to go back.

Audrey Jacobs is the founder and chief matchmaker of Love in San Miguel | Amor en San Miguel. She is a TEDx speaker whose talk has been viewed nearly 200,000 times. Audrey lives in San Miguel de Allende and believes the city is too magical to love alone.

 

San Miguel de Allende

1968: The Massacre Mexico Was Supposed to Forget

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By Estefanía Camacho Jiménez—

When you visit the Plaza of the Three Cultures in Tlatelolco, Mexico City, on a quiet afternoon, when the old trees are almost the only sound amplified by the plaza’s peculiar acoustics, you can feel something like a stifled scream. It has always astonished me that so many tragedies could have taken place there.

The plaza contains traces of three major tragedies. In 1521, a massacre followed Cuauhtémoc’s defense of Tlatelolco against Hernán Cortés. “It was neither a triumph nor a defeat; it was the painful birth of the mestizo people that is Mexico today,” reads a monumental plaque. In 1968, students were massacred only four years after the inauguration of Mario Pani’s modernist housing complex.

Then, during the magnitude 8.1 earthquake of September 19, 1985, the Nuevo León building collapsed, killing many of its residents. Each tragedy has its own memorial in a plaza where beautiful apartments still stand, some seemingly frozen in the 1960s.

That Afternoon

That afternoon was confusing. According to the immediate accounts of journalists, residents and survivors, there was no way to determine how many people had been killed on October 2.

Tensions had been building throughout the summer of 1968. Mexico’s authoritarian government, controlled by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, used a clash between students from schools affiliated with UNAM and the National Polytechnic Institute as justification for intervening in educational institutions across the capital. The riot police known as the granaderos beat, tortured and detained students and, at times, teachers. As the students organized against the repression and demanded the release of political prisoners, every new protest brought further arrests. The government accused them of trying to sabotage the Olympic Games, and the conflict escalated when the Army entered UNAM preparatory schools with tanks, military trucks, artillery and a bazooka.

In the United States, some press coverage repeated unsubstantiated allegations that Fidel Castro and communist agents had infiltrated the protests. These claims reflected the Cold War obsession with preventing the alleged spread of Cuban communism throughout the continent.

What the public did not know in 1968 was that President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz was one of the CIA’s highest-level contacts in Mexico and had been assigned the cryptonym LITEMPO-2. His government shared information about the protests, student leaders and political opponents, while the agency closely monitored the movement. Documents declassified decades later also showed that Mexican officials misled the CIA about the origins of the violence and the government’s responsibility for it.

By mid-September, approximately 10,000 soldiers had occupied University City, UNAM’s main campus, while the arrests of high school and university students continued. UNAM Rector Javier Barros Sierra publicly sided with the students, infuriating Díaz Ordaz. Under intense government pressure, he submitted his resignation in late September, although the university’s Governing Board refused to accept it.

Much of the mass media had been co-opted by those in power. Newspapers, television programs and magazines were expected to follow the government’s version of events. Only a handful of journalists dared to criticize its actions, particularly after October 2, knowing that doing so could lead to censorship, persecution or even death.

International progressive movements, feminism, the counterculture, foreign music, the Cuban Revolution and protests against the Vietnam War were also influencing young Mexicans. This was a generation awakening to its dissatisfaction with an established order controlled by a repressive party that elected and reelected itself through processes bearing little resemblance to democracy. Those who questioned the system were branded as enemies and persecuted.

On September 30, the Army withdrew from UNAM’s main campus, leaving destruction behind. Students then prepared for an October 2 rally at the Plaza of the Three Cultures, followed by a march toward the Polytechnic’s Casco de Santo Tomás campus.

The Day

Despite the peaceful nature of the gathering, the Plaza of the Three Cultures had become a trap. The esplanade was enclosed by the Church of Santiago and the tall buildings of the housing complex. Government agents had infiltrated the crowd in civilian clothes, while troops, tanks and armored vehicles surrounded the area. The gathering included not only students but also families, children, teachers, workers and Mexican and international journalists. Estimates place the crowd at as many as 10,000 people.

Two movement leaders spoke briefly, but tense and cautious. The second announced that organizers feared a provocation and had therefore decided to cancel the march. The gathering would disperse as soon as the speakers had finished.

Above them, two menacing helicopters circled the plaza. Flares were fired into the sky.

The Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci, who was present that day, later recalled that her experience covering the war in Vietnam taught her to recognize the flares as an unmistakable signal that an attack was about to begin. She was alarmed, but it was already too late.

Troops moved into the plaza carrying machine guns and high-caliber weapons. Gunfire erupted from the surrounding buildings, and the soldiers opened fire. Armed men in civilian clothes, identified by a white glove or handkerchief, moved through the crowd and entered the Chihuahua building. Some belonged to the Batallón Olimpia, which had been assigned to capture the student leaders; later evidence indicated that a separate group of snipers linked to the Presidential General Staff fired on both the crowd and the Army. Amid the confusion, plainclothes agents shouted, “Batallón Olimpia! Don’t shoot!” to keep soldiers from killing members of their own side.

People ran into the surrounding buildings and pounded desperately on apartment doors, begging residents to hide them. Some did. But hiding proved futile. Security forces forced their way into the apartments, violating the homes of residents and killing or detaining people who had simply been going about their daily lives. Photographs documenting some of these acts would not become widely known until decades later.

Decades Later

It was not until 2000, when the PRI lost the presidency after more than seven decades in power, that Vicente Fox came to office promising to clarify what had happened. By then, writers, journalists, intellectuals and filmmakers had spent decades pursuing the same questions: How many people were killed? Where and under what circumstances did they die? How many disappeared? Was it possible to remove the bodies in a single night and then claim that only 20 or 30 people had died?

The Díaz Ordaz government never officially acknowledged the Batallón Olimpia’s role. For years, the evidence consisted mainly of survivor testimony and fragmentary footage, as government agents had confiscated film from some journalists. In 2002, journalist Sanjuana Martínez anonymously received an archive containing 35 previously unpublished photographs taken by Manuel Gutiérrez Paredes, who had worked for the government. The images showed detainees, torture, bodies, weapons and men wearing white gloves, further undermining the official account and its implausibly low death toll.

Fox knew the wound Mexico was carrying. By then, the slogan “October 2 will not be forgotten!” had echoed across the country for decades, particularly during the annual march commemorating the massacre. The demonstration traditionally begins in Tlatelolco and proceeds to Mexico City’s Zócalo. High school students, university students, young people and workers gather every year, with some traveling from other states to participate.

A presidential decree issued in 2001 ordered federal agencies to transfer records concerning past political repression to the General Archive of the Nation. The following year, Mexico’s intelligence service delivered more than 4,000 boxes containing approximately 58,000 files produced by the former Federal Security Directorate and the General Directorate of Political and Social Investigations. The Defense Ministry transferred a separate military collection.

International correspondents who had arrived to cover the Olympic Games inevitably noticed what was happening to students, teachers and workers. Despite government censorship, the information crossed Mexico’s borders. Díaz Ordaz may have feared that the country would be portrayed as sliding toward communism; instead, he became internationally associated with authoritarianism and grave human rights violations.

We remember the date because public protest is a right.

Because the declassification and opening of government archives happened only recently.

Because photographic and documentary evidence can expose lies repeated for decades.

Because alarms go off whenever military convoys, soldiers or armed deployments appear on streets where they do not belong.

Because police forces are not supposed to enter university campuses, and when they do—as they still have—it must be regarded as reprehensible and unacceptable.

Because, in theory, no event as grand as the Olympic Games should ever be considered more important than human rights.

And because when students from other states organize and travel to the annual October 2 commemoration, their lives should not be placed in danger—as happened to the 43 students from Ayotzinapa who were forcibly disappeared on September 26, 2014. Mexico, you could say, has an extraordinary capacity to remember.

Estefanía Camacho Jiménez is a freelance Mexican journalist working across media and digital magazines. She is a specialist in gender, SMEs, economics, and business.

San Miguel de Allende

The Curious Case of Mexican Nebbiolo

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By Melissa Lyon—

Spend an afternoon tasting wine in Mexico’s Valle de Guadalupe and sooner rather than later, someone will pour you a Nebbiolo. That may not sound particularly unusual. After all, Nebbiolo is one of Italy’s most celebrated red grapes, responsible for the legendary Barolo and Barbaresco wines of Piedmont. But there is something decidedly strange about encountering it in Baja California. Among other things, Valle de Guadalupe is thousands of kilometers from northern Italy, and its climate is considerably sunnier and drier. And yet Nebbiolo has become one of the valley’s predominant varieties.
There is just one problem. Some of the grapes being called Nebbiolo in Baja California may not actually be Nebbiolo.
The story begins more than eighty years ago, when Italian-born winemaker Esteban Ferro brought vine cuttings from northern Italy to Bodegas Santo Tomás in Baja California in the 1940s. But the journey from Italy to Mexico was not always an orderly one. Legend has it that in transit, vine labels were damaged or lost while moving through the port of Veracruz. Upon arrival in Baja, rather than discarding the unidentified vines, growers planted them. Robust harvests followed, with vines identified as Nebbiolo and others simply known as “Italian varieties” thriving in their new home.

Fast forward to 1965, when Italian viticulturist Camillo Magoni, who would go on to become one of the most influential figures in Mexican wine, arrived in Baja to work with L.A. Cetto. Having grown up surrounded by viticulture in northern Italy, and having studied winemaking in Piedmont, Magoni was uniquely qualified to recognize that something unusual was going on.
The grape being called Nebbiolo in Baja did not look or taste like the Nebbiolo he knew in Italy. Italian Nebbiolo wines, like the Barolo and Barbaresco wines of Piedmont, are famously pale in color but intensely aromatic, with high acidity, firm tannins and characteristic aromas of cherries, roses and violets.

In contrast, Baja’s “Nebbiolo” tends to be much darker and more deeply colored, with riper fruit, greater tannic weight and a more powerful profile.
Magoni, now 83 years old, recently remarked on his surprise encountering the vines upon arrival, “Of course,” he said, “I had my ideas. But I shut my mouth and just observed and didn’t talk.” Acknowledging the difference, Magoni specifically calls the grape Nebbiolo de Baja. So, what do others think of the Mexican “Nebbiolo”? “It’s not Italian. There’s more color, more intensity,” said Paolo Paoloni, an Italian winemaker working with Baja’s Villa Montefiori. Paoloni calls his version Nebbiolo de Guadalupe, emphasizing the wine’s relationship with its regional identity.
So what exactly is growing in those vineyards? Modern DNA analysis has provided a clue. José Vouillamoz, one of the world’s leading grape geneticists and co-author of Wine Grapes, has reported that at least one sample of the mysterious Baja vine tested as potentially being Lambrusca di Alessandria. If confirmed more broadly, this would mean that at least some of the vines long identified in Mexico as Nebbiolo may actually belong to another Italian variety.
However, the evidence is far from conclusive. The sample represented only a limited number of vines, and additional genetic testing would be required before the identity of the broader population of Baja vines could be established. Unquestionably, there are genuine Nebbiolo vines growing in Baja as well, sharing the beautiful valley with the older, mysterious population of vines historically labeled Nebbiolo.
This certainly isn’t the only case of mistaken grape identity to happen in the New World. Consider the more recent case of Mourvèdre in Paso Robles, California. In 2018, the wine world learned that beginning in 2012, more than 200,000 vines sold by a California nursery as Monastrell, the Spanish name for Mourvèdre, were planted in vineyards throughout the region.

As they harvested and bottled their wines, winemakers increasingly noticed that something was not quite right. The vines grew differently from their established Mourvèdre, and the resulting grapes produced wines with unusually deep color and higher acidity.
Genetic testing eventually revealed the answer: the vines weren’t Mourvèdre at all. They were Graciano, a relatively obscure Spanish variety associated particularly with Rioja. In other words, hundreds of thousands of vines, and years of wine production, had been given the wrong label. Even so, the Paso Robles Graciano was praised for its color, fruit and acidity, and its curious origin story has only enhanced its consumer appeal.
Similarly, the Nebbiolo of Baja has won over wine enthusiasts the world over. Of course, while the Paso Robles vines were ultimately confirmed as Graciano through genetic testing, the identity of the Mexican Nebbiolo remains unclear.

So, does the name really matter? For some winemakers and oenophiles, absolutely. For others, perhaps not so much. Kristin Magnussen of Vinos Lechuza takes a refreshingly pragmatic view. “Is it really Nebbiolo? Well, it’s Mexican Nebbiolo.”