Book Signing
Robert de Gast
The World of San Miguel de Allende: An Uncommon Guide
Mon, Nov 23, 3pm
Sala Quetzal
Biblioteca Pública
Insurgentes 25

For the curious reader

San Miguel de Allende may well be the prettiest, most interesting town in Mexico. After its nearly 500-year history and its half-century of art center prominence, there is now a book that provides an informal, comprehensive look at the city. More than 200 color photographs portray the people, the town and its surroundings, and the local celebrations. The architecture of the city is depicted with wonderful detail.

A long-time resident of San Miguel, Robert de Gast offers the reader a journey through the city’s history, including observations of early visitors. Using a sharp sense of humor, he gives the reader visual delights—its fountains, scrambled house numbers, door knockers—along with countless other details that decorate the homes of this colonial town. The book includes an extensive calendar of events.

The author has written an uncommon guide for the curious reader, as well as provided a memorable souvenir. It will inform and entertain the many visitors who enjoy San Miguel’s beauty, climate, and culture.

Born in the Netherlands, de Gast in his late teens emigrated to the United States. He became an award-winning documentary photographer and writer working for national and international publications, corporations and institutions. He and his wife, Evelyn Chisolm, settled in San Miguel in the 1990s, where he continues to write, teach, lecture and make photographs. Robert de Gast also contributes weekly as a volunteer proofreader for Atención.

Pick up a copy of The World of San Miguel de Allende: An Uncommon Guide this week and have it signed by the man himself. De Gast is surely one of the most interesting people you’ll meet in the world of San Miguel de Allende.

________________________________________________


San Miguel Literary Sala

Jason Beaubien
Wed, Nov 25, 5pm
Posada San Francisco
Cnr Canal & Hidalgo
70 pesos, or what you can pay

Following the news
By Sara Fasy

Jason Beaubien in Haití The San Miguel Literary Sala is pleased to have Jason Beaubien, the award-winning NPR correspondent, discuss his work reporting on social, political and cultural stories from Mexico and throughout Latin America.

If you follow the NPR podcasts, you may have heard Beaubien’s fine reporting on the Mexican drug wars. But his work in Mexico has led him to culturally quirky stories too, like his report on the Michael Jackson dance contest in Mexico City. He has filed stories on the rich and famous, like the telecommunications mogul Carlos Slim. He has explored the struggles of the common man and woman. As the economic downturn took hold in Mexico, he interviewed vendors about the plunge in sales at Mexico’s sprawling produce market, Central de Abastos. And he answered questions we were all asking. How did the swine flu reports affect the economy last year? What is really going on in the drug wars?

Sometimes even the grim stories of drug smuggling turn up cinematic details. In the port city of Progresso, in the Yucatan, police discovered nearly a ton of cocaine stuffed into frozen shark carcasses. There was a conclusion to be drawn from this. According to Beaubien, in the wake of concerted efforts by the government to break the cartels, it’s not as easy as “picking up suitcases from the airport. The drug cartels have had to refocus how they do this, and they’re doing such things as stuffing sharks with cocaine.”

Baubien joined NPR’s Foreign Desk in 2002. He was one of the first journalists to report on the exodus from Sudan’s Darfur region into Chad, and covered stories throughout Africa in the years preceding his work as Latin American correspondent. In 2006, Beaubien was awarded a Knight-Wallace fellowship at the University of Michigan to study the relationship between the developed and developing world.

Although his stories often cover crime and corruption (“Kidnapping Expert Kidnapped in Mexico”), he has also reported on hurricanes and extreme weather. He follows stories that have a gentler arc as well (“Endangered Sea Turtles Return to Mexico’s Beaches”). Last year, he traveled all of Cuba by car to report on that country’s fiftieth anniversary of revolution. His human-interest stories are filled with the voices of memorable interviews. In a multi-part story, he has driven the US-Mexico border from Tijuana to Texas’ Gulf Coast.

For American expats who live in Mexico, his observations may have a special resonance. Beaubien comments poetically on US-Mexico relations: “It’s a place where the richest nation in the world dances with its southern neighbor, flirts with her, courts her, lures her with promises of riches and a good life—yet pushes her away with concertina wire, beckons factories to the fence but no farther, uses her to wash the dishes, make the beds, toil in the fields and tar the roofs, yet arrests and expels her if she happens to get caught.”

Join the San Miguel Literary Sala for a fascinating presentation that promises to produce lively discussion. The 70-peso admission includes the wine reception preceding the presentation