A Few Thoughts and Reactions to San Miguel from Our Fiction Contest Winner, Martha Otis:
I was downtown on the night that San Miguel was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site. I met up with some other UNO folks and we watched the impromptu festival that erupted in the town square. The fireworks, set off from the parochia, were loud and colorful and ridiculously dangerous, pieces of burnt explosives falling into our hair. It was quite exhilarating to be in the middle of all this.
If you can get out of town and walk through the desert somewhere in the environs of San Miguel, or even just up somewhere high in the city, at the ridge where the houses stop, I’d really recommend it. The quality of light, which apparently attracts a lot of the artists who like the area, is indeed special.
I also would like to recommend a couple of dishes to try while you are in San Miguel: pozole and chiles enogados, the first being a hominy soup and the second being poblano chiles stuffed with spiced ground beef and smothered with walnut sauce, then topped with pomegranate seeds. You can’t get this kind of food in most US cities, even in decent Mexican restaurants, and it’s standard fare here, which means good and reasonably priced. Don’t miss the Guanajuato excursion, and when you go, try the enchiladas mineras, which are topped with potatoes and carrots; they really stick to your ribs and if made well, which they usually are.
One thing I was a bit wary of was the reputation of San Miguel for being a place for US ex-patriots. Honestly, I feared that this would mean more ugly American presence than I found. Call me paranoid. In fact I did not sense this at all when I was there. I felt after the month we all spent in the city that the foreigners who had chosen San Miguel as a place of residence were respectful of the place and keen on learning its language, customs, and history. As an example, the owner of our hotel was an elderly American woman who had married a Mexican and had a family in Mexico – 3 generations! Obviously, if you stay in San Miguel and start a family there, there is a lot at stake in knowing and integrating with the local culture.