Chapter XXIX: Guanajuato

The peculiar situation of Guanajuato, the capital city, with its crooked and irregular streets and its fortress-like houses, makes it look very ancient and feudal, and, oddly, amid all this antiquity stretch the wires of the telegraph and telephone, linking the old civilization with the new in a way that is strangely paradoxical. The heart of the city is the Plaza de Mejia Mora, where there is a tablet which states that here was born Benito Leon Acosta, Mexico’s distinguished engineer and man of science.

It is one of the quaintest and most delightful places in the world, a walled city among the mountains, set upon the sides of heights so steep that the houses seem to cling to the rock, and that a misstep might precipitate one into the midst of the plaza three or four hundred feet below.

This lovely, bewildering spot is full of lanes and archways and winding market-places, where the picturesque people seem to be selling every oddity imaginable. The upper balconies of the beautiful homes are gay with awnings and flowers; the old church of the Jesuits with its fine arches of soft pink stone and carvings like lace-work is magnificent; the overhanging hills show brilliantly against the blue sky wherever one turns; through a hundred different arches some vision of slender-pillared inner courts, bright with blossoms and fresh greenery, continually flashes out.

The climate of Guanajuato is temperate; no extremes of heat or cold. It is a land of blue skies and fresh breezes; the atmosphere is clear and invigorating. Mellow sunlight pours its flood of gold on fruitful fields. The forests are rich in timber of great value. Guanajuato is one of the oldest mining regions of the New World. Only one-fourth of the area of the State has been scientifically explored, and yet there are already over three hundred mines perfectly studied and capable of giving good profits.

The celebrated mines of Valenciana, discovered in 1770, and abandoned during the War of Independence, in 1810, had up to that time produced two hundred and seventy-one million dollars. Baron de Humboldt, on his visit to Guanajuato, found a shaft eight hundred feet deep. He made a special study of these mines, an account of which is to be found in his records.

The earliest settlers were the Tarascan Indians who, upon arriving here, found a large stone in the shape of a frog, of which they made an idol, and they named the site of the future city Guanajuato, or the Hill of the Frogs. It was founded in 1554 and made a city in 1741. The site of the city was a gift from Mendoza to Don Roderigo Vasques, one of the conquistadores, as a reward for his military services.

The curious and picturesque cemetery of Guanajuato or “pantheón,” is among the “sights.” The burial place is on the top of a steep hill which overlooks the city. The pantheón is enclosed by high walls entered through ponderous gates. The dead are buried for the little time that the peculiar dryness of the soil and air takes to mummify them. Then they are filed away in pigeon-holes in the walls. When the rentals cease the partially mummified remains are taken out of the pigeon-holes and corded up in subterranean chambers tunneled out of solid rock. Here the skeleton-guarded walls are musty, the light is pale and gruesome and the air is laden with the odor of the decaying dead. On all sides are the spectral forms. They are arranged upright around the walls, and there they keep their silent vigil until disintegration. A few years ago, when William Jennings Bryan visited Guanajuato he was horrified on seeing these mummies in the catacombs and suggested to the authorities that they be covered, as the sight was very offensive to him. Out of respect for the opinion of their distinguished visitor the municipal authorities have voted sufficient funds to keep these mummies properly garbed. It is almost as gruesome a sight to see them now clothed in long flowing robes as it was when they were disinterred and placed there.

The Manuel Gonzalez Dam was commenced on the 5th of March, 1889, during the governorship of General Manuel Gonzalez, the former president of Mexico, and completed in 1893. The material employed is a metamorphic deposit known in the locality as green rock, and exceedingly handsome. In the ornaments are used sandstone of different colors. The effect of these combinations is beautiful beyond description, and all these varied materials are the products of the immediate locality. A wall, containing over forty thousand cubic metres, has been built, measuring one hundred and sixty-six metres in thickness at the base, or foundation, and twenty-four at the upper part. The maximum height in the interior is thirty-three metres and eighty-eight centimetres. This dam contains one million six hundred thousand cubic metres of water. On account of the short distance from the capital, only about three miles, and the difference of the height of the ground, the City of Guanajuato is supplied with water enough for all its needs and it will be possible to establish hydraulic motors of calculable usefulness.

The picturesque and dangerous stream which churned its way through the centre of the town causing many times great disasters by flood and wrecking properties at different intervals no longer wreaks this damage as Guanajuato is now protected from this inundation by a wonderful tunnel called the Porfirio Diaz. It is the work of Governor Joaquin Obregon Gonzalez, who has caused so many innovations and improvements in the city.