Literati, Go Home

...They are nervous about what San Miguel might do if they wore out their welcome...

...Among liberals and conservatives alike, there always has been a feeling of security in the presence of Mexicans...

...Most Americans here, from the avant-garde artist to the retired stockbroker, still feel the warm superiority that comes from living in a simple world but believing that they themselves are anything but simple...

...If there were others who toiled—and perhaps there were—I missed them...

...One suspects the colonists of San Miguel somehow recognize that their vision of the town's future is incompatible with that of the Mexicans...

...A two-pound bag of onions recently fetched $3...

...As a result of this growth, San Miguel has become a fashionable bedroom community for Mexicans...

...Members of the former group are generally conservative people who believe in the superiority of the American way of life...

...In an abstract sense, most of us favor "progress" in the developing world...

...Literati, Go Home by Philip Weiss The $8.95 he had just paid for a chicken wasn't the only thing disturbing Stirling Dickinson the day I met him in San Miguel de Allende, a moderately sized town about four hours north of Mexico City...

...That pretty much covers it...

...Much of what's happening to San Miguel is ugly and depressing —and, one suspects, unnecessary...

...What the colonists are afraid of losing is the best of both worlds...

...There was also the burgeoning shantytown at the edge of the city, surrounding the beautiful 17th-century church of San Antonio— "an architectural gem," in Dickinson's words...

...As with the story about the hippies, most Americans are more like the colonists than we'd care to admit...

...Stirling Dickinson had almost singlehandedly discovered San Miguel 45 years ago—discovered it, that is, for the 1,500 American and Canadian expatriates who live in their own colony alongside 40,000 Mexicans...

...Despite the colonists' complaints about rising prices, it's still cheap to live in San Miguel...

...An elevation of 6,300 feet blesses San Miguel with dry summer days, cool desert nights, and a clear high southern light that some artists swear is identical to that of the Mediterranean...

...Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow The feelings of persecution, real and imagined, have led to widespread self-pity among the colonists...

...Stand in the tree-lined central square—the jardin— at sunset, and you'll often find the twisting stone streets and the high, stucco walls of colonial dwellings more than 300 years old charged with a thick, golden-pink glow...

...Many complain the Mexicans do not appreciate their many contributions to the community, which include a scholarship program for Mexican students and a fine library with branches reaching to some of the outlying ranches around San Miguel...

...Most everyone I met seemed to be thoroughly enjoying themselves...

...They are certainly more secure in San Miguel...

...What's happening in San Miguel is that the expatriates are finding themselves living in a society whose notion of progress increasingly resembles the one they've rejected by moving here.The expatriates prefer that San Miguel remain what it's been: a sleepy, pretty village where Mexicans walk their burros down pitched streets and colonists own most of the fine houses on the square...

...A common gripe among Americans is that Mexican cab drivers don't like to pick them up...

...And in their desire to preserve the town as it is, the colonists are being quite disingenuous—Americans trying to convince Mexicans that Mexicans really don't want the things most Americans already have...

...I am the dumbest lawyer in the world...

...You can have servants (and live well) on $1,000 a month and avoid drudgery," explained Evan Bennett, a friend of Dickinson...

...It's not the story itself so much as the way it's told, a little too frequently and much too self-consciously...

...There was something else, a fear he didn't need to express out loud...

...They not only sense that the Mexicans may no longer need them—they may not even want them...

...Yet in pointing these things out, the colonists' motives are far from pure...

...The retired businessmen who congregate at the bar of the local American Legion post and the bohemian artists and writers who frequent the town's galleries at first seem to have so little in common...

...A warren of crooked alleys and shacks without plumbing had erupted, inhabited by squatters who'd moved to San Miguel from the surrounding countryside...

...Each one told her the real reason they didn't like to pick up Americans: they slammed the doors too hard when they got out, and their taxi cabs were slowly falling apart...

...Most of them don't even know it...

...A rotund man with white hair combed back over his head, the lawyer gave his explanation of why the colonists had come to San Miguel—and why they cared so much about staying...

...For the colonists, it's all very disorienting...

...The colonists' relationship with the Mexicans is changing, and not just in San Miguel, but throughout the country...

...Some no longer have to work for $30 a week as maids...

...They do not grow their hair or fornicate in the public square...

...It's apresumptuous attitude the Mexicans quite understandably resent...

...This is not acknowledged, but it shows, I think, in a story many of them tell...

...Most of all, the colonists are urging Mexicans to recognize the importance tourism plays in their economy...

...Taxing Patience If the transformation occurring in San Miguel were purely a matter of lost aesthetics and higher prices, the expatriates' next move would be simple...

...Neal Cassidy, the beat hero of Jack Kerouac's On the Road, died here while walking out of town counting the railroad ties...

...Here, too, Clifford Irving, the showman who faked the book on Howard Hughes, washed up with his wife Valdy...

...If Americans proclaim their support for "progress" and "development," why, they wonder, do so many of them seem to begrudge them these same things...

...our banks lend money in its name...

...Islands whose inhabitants don't aspire to have the same things we've left behind, if only temporarily...

...About 30 of the hippies were rounded up and put in jail...

...Yet when we visit places like San Miguel, it is most likely as tourists, looking for that unspoiled town square or that elegant, centuryold hotel where a room costs $20 a night...

...Not surprisingly, many have taken this as further proof Mexicans despise gringos...

...It was the realization that, at long last, the party might be over...

...But the admiration went only so far, and the foreigners were seldom confused over who was ultimately superior...

...Napoleon Negrete Quintana, a Mexican lawyer who works closely with many Americans, admits, "We do feel inferior...

...It feels good to the colonists to tell this story about the hippies, even 14 years later...

...Greed and ignorance certainly are evident in Mexico's enthusiasm for development...

...The San Miguel that both the colonists and American tourists find so charming is the San Miguel most Mexicans would just as soon escape, and for good reason...

...He is best remembered not just for bilking the local country club, but for delivering a lecture at the local art school on ethics in writing...

...It's also telling that few colonists— Dickinson is an exception—have bothered to learn Spanish...

...these local [Mexican] lawyers call me and ask me questions...

...It goes like this: In the late 1960s and early 1970s San Miguel was popular among American hippies...

...He was a victim, older residents say matter-of-factly, of doing too much speed for his own good...

...Now, after so many years of happilydisparaging the Mexicans, there's a feeling the attitude is being reciprocated...

...More time to drink, more time to paint, more time to write," he 6:31d me...

...All of us have secret cravings for places like San Miguel de Allende, places where the world stands still, that are free of luxury hotels, traffic jams, and hordes of other Americans paying American prices...

...The American Legion also has built a school and given mattresses and toilets to the jail...

...Real estate prices have soared, along with those for staples such as chickens and tortillas...

...And when we run across things that are common back home—a McDonald's or high prices—we often resent it...

...Gossip...

...Put more crudely, a place where most of the natives are born poor and stay that way, grateful to Americans who frequent their restaurants or hire them for odd jobs...

...It's probably no illusion on the colonists' part that some Mexicans do fix them with dirty looks or make them wait in stores...

...Who's sleeping with whom and who's drinking too much and has to be shipped back to the states...

...The expatriates who have followed Dickinson to San Miguel are a mixture of artists, writers, and pensioners...

...The taxi cab story is an instructive one...

...the intelligent colonist might admire the Mexican's avowedly spiritual orientation...

...It's not hard to understand why Dickinson never left...

...Old wrecks of homes without roofs now sell for as much as $50,000 if they are near the jardin...

...They would grumble and complain, and then pack up and move to another undiscovered village...

...A few of the colonists have arrived here with some notoriety...

...The town sits in a high valley of the Sierra Madres, surrounded by soft, old mountains, yellow basins, cactus, and hot springs...

...The Mexican oil boom and the promise of quick money had brought these Philip Weiss is a freelance writer...

...All of them ultimately want to preserve San Miguel, not because it's in the best interest of the Mexicans, but because it's in theirs...

...Banomex, one of the country's largest banks, has moved its headquarters from Mexico City to Queretaro, which is perhaps one reason San Miguel now has seven banks clustered around its town square—about five more than a town its size ordinarily could boast...

...Where's Jose?' It is this attitude that makes the transformation of San Miguel de Allende so interesting...

...But this wasn't the only thing Dickinson was nervous about...

...It's no less ironic that the Mexican part of San Miguel resembles a certain American stereotype —the western boom town...

...The attitude itself isn't as noteworthy as how universally it's held...

...Members of the latter group are politically liberal and embarrassed, if not ashamed, about the way their country has historically treated disadvantaged people at home and abroad...

...But the laughter the story elicits is too forced...

...Thus, while the bulldozers, the oil money, and the new banks are giving San Miguel a squalid shantytown, they're also bringing prosperity to many of its residents...

...Most of them quickly blew town...

...But the colonists' anxiety goes far deeper than the high prices...

...The then-mayor of the town, Senor Antoni Gil Vega, a petty dictator much admired, claims that even sex acts went on in the square late at night...

...The colonists say that in the rush to develop its oil, Mexico risks driving away its' traditional source of hard currency...

...People like Dickinson would be appalled at such sentiments...

...They're eager to exploit it and build the refineries and factories that will give their impoverished citizens better-paying jobs, jobs that will make them less dependent on outsiders...

...Perhaps he's right...

...Mexico is risking a revolution," he said, quoting Octavio Paz...

...It was an act comparable to a Mexican burning an American flag in downtown Kansas City, something the colonists, were they back home, might not find so amusing...

...So when the American comes here it's our chance to either equalize the relationship or make ourselves feel superior...

...The colonists have patronized these people, but now those they've presumed to help have a vastly different program for their own betterment—one ultimately irreconcilable with the colonists' vision of San Miguel...

...For what's occurring here is hardly peculiar to these colonists or this Mexican town...

...Where's Jose...

...They did not work...

...Avant-garde sculptors live alongside former infantrymen, all of them fugitives of one sort or another...

...Accordingly, many Americans have enjoyed living off the Mexicans...

...he asked recently, only to be told that yet another restless youth had moved on in search of better work...

...But here I'm better than anyone...

...Yet, despite such sincere intentions, all the expatriates share the same goal: keeping San Miguel exactly the way it is...

...In this town without a traffic light you can hire a maid for six days a week for only $30...

...The colonists' leisurely days revolve around such events as mid-morning tennis games and afternoon forays to the post office...

...A lawyer explained this to me one afternoon in the stone courtyard of the American Legion post, as he and other veterans sipped their drinks under a tumbling red bougainvillaea...

...Our politicians, particularly liberal ones, endorse the idea...

...It's also true, with so little Spanish spoken and understood by the Americans, that small slights can quickly foster full-fledged paranoia...

...Only a few people enjoy the bulk of the benefits the outsiders bring—the storekeepers, the restaurant owners, those who run hotels...

...Still, the attitude is reflected in more subtle ways throughout the colony...

...There are the stories people laugh at—like that of the American who urinated late one night on the statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe in the town square, unaware that it was sacred...

...None of them will say it...

...In a week's visit to San Miguel I met only one artist who worked feverishly, seemingly oblivious to his surroundings...

...It is no small irony that the colonists closely resemble that most obvious of crude stereotypes: the lazy Mexican...

...Accordingly, they consider themselves far more sympathetic than the other colonists to the Mexicans' aspirations for a better life...

...One night in early August of 1968, Gil took action...

...I barely passed the bar exam...

...One of the nation's fastest-growing cities is nearby Queretaro, just 25 miles from San Miguel and the terminus of a high-speed rail line that will soon cut the usual four-hour drive from Mexico City in half...

...So the Mexicans are not about to keep their oil in the ground...

...They, too, are escaping an established culture, for whether it's a young hippie or a retired infantryman taking the sun in the square, both are basically conservative...

...A former mining engineer, author, amateur anthropologist, and pillar of the expatriate community, Bennett still sparkles at 89...

...Like the hippies, although this is a bit of a dirty secret, they do little or no work...

...They did not wash themselves or their clothes...

...people here—and with them had come pollution, traffic, and rising prices...

...D. H. Lawrence and other writers might grow mystical over the Mexican's black, centerless eyes...

...Hairclippers were distributed to the rest of the inmates and the next morning, 30 bareheaded and shaven hippies emerged into the clear light of the square...

...Theirs has been the security, financial and psychic, of living in a place where the natives use wooden plows but where they didn't have to use those plows themselves...

...And whether you call it cultural imperialism or just plain selfishness, it's an attitude that accounts for why foreigners are so often suspicious of our intentions...

...If they could, both would return San Miguel de Allende to those halcyon days when there were only 35 cars in town and oil was something only Americans knew about...

...Under the banner of its continuing "Revolution," the Mexican government is using revenue from its oil fields to aggressively promote industrialization...

...deep down the colonists seem to sense the hippies are more like them than they dare admit...

...Even so, I finally find it impossible to get angry at most of theeolonists...

...For they are not like the hippies, they tell themselves...

...But they want to feel superior, to feel better than the people around them...

...They are clean...

...Though there are no oil fields near the town, the forces of capitalism unleashed in Mexico have not passed San Miguel by...

...For the expatriates, many of whom are retired on a fixed income, the inflation is terribly unsettling...

...Some can now buy automobiles, televisions, and better houses...

...But there are other changes occurring, ones that are more fundamental than those involving just San Miguel and its economic future...

...For most residents of San Miguel and the surrounding countryside, life remains difficult if not desperate...

...Modern Mexico had finally arrived in San Miguel: rude, vigorous, and, to Dickinson, potentially fatal...

...They've come to San Miguel seeking little more than a warm climate and an affordable place to live...

...Dickinson is puzzled these days by the high turnover of caddies at the golf course he helped establish years ago...

...To test the theory the wife of the Episcopal priest in San Miguel took five cab rides and put the question—in Spanish—to each driver...

...They colonized the jardin, spending their days reading, writing, and hugging one another beneath the trees...

...More time to sit around the jardin and argue...

...Look at me...

...The same backwardness we publicly deplore is both what we expect and part of what we want...

...A 75-year-old expatriate from Columbus, Ohio, who has lived in San Miguel for 13 years, warns bluntly that the unfettered growth in the area and the lack of concern for the colonists' interests may end up "killing the goose that laid the golden egg...

...Islands out of the mainstream and unto themselves...

...It was happening so quickly, so senselessly...