Atención in the past tense
By John Edwards, Sept 22, 2006
In this new section we look back at San Miguel’s past through the lens of Atención San Miguel and report on what was happening 5, 10 and 20 years ago this week.
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Five years ago this week (September 24, 2001) |
The celebration of the city’s patron saint, Saint Michael the Archangel, took front-page billing this week. The story opened with a description as apt today as five years ago:
“Celebration of the day of the city’s patron saint, San Miguel Árcangel, will begin at 4 a.m., Saturday, September 29, with what might seem to the uninitiated like a war breaking out in the town square. It’s the alborada, or dawn salute to Saint Michael, when salvos of rockets whoosh into the air to explode high over the town. Sizzlers whiz over the heads of thousands gathered to watch the fireworks, and bands will play until spectators begin to drift home for breakfast.”
In another front-page story, a somber gathering of a very different sort: “ Several hundred San Miguel residents—both Mexican and foreign—and tourists from many countries gathered in the Jardín Tuesday evening to honor the victims of last week’s terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C. The Rev. Vincent Peterson, currently a student at the Instituto Allende, organized the event. Several musical groups played. Many people lit candles.”
The letters section, understandably, was dominated by writers expressing their grief and shock over the terrorist attacks of 9/11. One of the contributors was Alice Denham, writing from New York. She begins: “We stood on Sixth Avenue, looked south, and watched the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center burn, wreathed in smoke, a huge plume of black smoke rising in the east. For about an hour and fifteen minutes, people on floors not yet destroyed calmly made their way down 80 to 90 flights of stairs. Suddenly, smoke poured down the sides as the towers collapsed and the buildings imploded, crushing and burning untold innocent workers. We’ve watched it endlessly on TV, as you have in San Miguel.…”
Five years ago the city spent 200,000 pesos on the sanmiguelada, raised by contributions from hotels, restaurants, bars and other businesses, as well as the municipal government. The event’s organizer noted that the sanmiguelada had only been cancelled once since its inception, in 1985 following the Mexico City earthquakes.
Unlike this summer, which has brought rain almost daily for several weeks, five years ago a drought ruined many crops, and Presa Allende was at half-capacity.
The municipal department of education reported that due to lack of funds the awarding of more than 300 scholarships had to be postponed.
This issue of Atención San Miguel included four pages of classified ads and 43 total pages and cost 5 pesos.
Ten years ago this week
(September 23, 1996)
This year’s very soggy weather may have dampened the clothes and spirits of those gathered to hear the Grito proclaimed from the balcony of Allende’s former home. Ten years ago, Atención’s front-page headline announced “Fiestas Calm Despite Tourism Rise.” The lead paragraph reports: “Government offices, hotels, hospitals and emergency services all reported this year’s Fiestas Patrias are relatively peaceful and normal compared with other years.” With the Grito and Independence Day behind us and the sanmiguelada imminent, it remains to be seen whether 2006 will be as calm as 1996. (The front-page headline for September 30, 1996: “Thousands Watch Pamplonada; 95 Injured; One Bull Dead.”)
Urban traffic in 1996 seems to have been as much a concern as it is today. In an article titled “Taxis, Buses Nearly Double in Two Years,” the focus was on the rising numbers of vehicles for public transportation in San Miguel de Allende and the control the state government of Guanajuato had over the number of permits given to cab and bus operators and the bus routes. Nowadays, the municipal government controls public transportation, but with a growing population there probably won’t be an end to grousing about the traffic any time soon.
The International Jazz Festival held an interesting fundraiser in 1996, the Trash Chic Fashion Show. According to the story, “Entrants and their models will compete for prizes and instant fame in the guise of mushrooms, flowers, famous lovers, lions and anything else that imagination can create using recycled materials.”
A headline on page 11 asked a question that wouldn’t come up much in conversation these days: “Are Mexican Cities the World’s Cheapest?” According to the Corporate Research Group, headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, Mexico City and Monterrey ranked 132nd and 134th, respectively, out of 139 cities worldwide in terms of cost of living (Tokyo was number 1).
On the night of September 26, 1996, sanmiguelenses were looking skyward, viewing a total lunar eclipse.
More like this year than the drought five years ago, crops and neighborhoods suffered flooding during the rains of September. The village of Juventino Rosas, a town near Salamanca named after its most famous son, a composer, suffered from a deluge: “On the melancholy trail of flooded neighborhoods and flooded crops, Juventino Rosas must take its place. Ten colonias were flooded in the recent two-day downpour, as well as an extensive area of plantations of sorghum, onion and garlic. However, with municipal authorities on the alert, the situation is more or less under control.”
Technologically speaking, the issue of September 26, 1996, heralds big news: “Internet Comes to San Miguel.” As a piece of nostalgia, this excellent article by Fred Carpenter is fascinating. It begins: “Unless you have been living in a cave, you can’t avoid hearing all the hype about the Internet. The Internet seems to be the hot topic of discussion these days….” The article is a primer on the use of email and web browsers and even discusses internet phone service.
This issue of Atención San Miguel included three pages of classified ads and 40 total pages and cost 5 pesos.
Twenty years ago this week
(September 26, 1986)
A glance at the issue price on the front cover may make your jaw drop: 200 pesos for a 26-page paper!? This was before the 1993 revaluation of the peso. At the end of 1992, Atención cost 1,500 pesos, and the next week, in January 1993, the cover price was 1.5 new pesos.
Produced before the advent of computerized word processing and page layout, 1986’s Atención San Miguel looks crude by today’s standards, rather like a typewritten Christmas letter duplicated on a mimeograph machine.
Having started working on a newspaper in 1979, I know the ingenuity involved in producing a weekly using an IBM typewriter equipped with a magnetic card reader then slicing and waxing the sheets of type and pasting them on boards on a light table. The smears, the broken type, the stray slices, the frustration. Kudos to our technologically challenged forbears.
The lead story in 1986 was a printing of the fiesta schedule for late September and October 1; many things remain the same, although these days there doesn’t seem to be as much emphasis on cockfights or sack races.
The paper reported the arrival of four doctors from Mexico City, part of team of six who came to San Miguel to work with the Centro de Crecimiento.
An homage to the late José Francisco de Guadalupe Mojica, a priest, singer and film star, was held in San Miguel’s most “modern” chapel, Guadalupe de Mexiquito. The mass marked the 20th anniversary of the chapel.
In 1986, San Miguel was still small enough to have a “New Faces in Town” section, a society page that informed readers about newly arrived expats.
This edition of Atención San Miguel boasted two pages of classified ads.
Taxistas talking
By Jesús Ibarra
Taxi drivers are eye witnesses of the daily happenings in the city. Vicente Muñoz, 24, a taxi driver for three years, talks with Jesús Ibarra about his work and different city issues.
Jesús Ibarra: What level of education do you have?
Vicente Muñoz: I’m studying Business Administration at the University of Leon at the campus on Plaza Cívica.
JI: So what are your hours?
VM: I study from 7am to 10am, then drive the taxi from noon to 8pm.
JI: Are you the owner of the car?
VM: My father owns the car but I work for him, and he pays me according to the passengers I take in a day.
JI: How many passengers do you take daily?
VM: It depends on the season, usually 12 to 15 passengers a day; in high season about 20.
JI: Are taxi drivers well trained to deal with tourists? And you?
VM: Many drivers do not speak English and do not know many things about the city. Well, I read and try to be informed about the main tourist attractions and places in the city.
JI: Do you think the local authorities should offer special tourist training to drivers?
VM: It would benefit both the drivers and the city. By training us, the city has better tourist services, and we would improve our work. We must give tourists a positive impression of our city. When a taxi driver gives bad service, the client not only says that it was a taxi driver but a taxi driver from San Miguel.
JI: What has been the most memorable incident in your work?
VM: As a general rule we are instructed not to accept injured people or pregnant women but sometimes you have to do it for humanitarian reasons. One incident was at the Bonanza supermarket. A girl asked me to help her friend who had collapsed inside the store. She was so ill I could not deny. I carried the girl to the car and took her to the hospital. In a second case a woman implored me to take her ill daughter to a hospital because she had no man to help her. You cannot say “no” in those cases.
JI: Do you think the foreign community has appropriated San Miguel?
VM: In a way. But they are not totally at fault. Some ambitious Mexicans have sold their well-located properties to foreigners, some for a lot of money, others for little. I know people who lived on calle Sollano or Umarán, and now live in colonies on the outskirts, like Luis Donaldo Colossio or Santa Cruz de la Paz, because they sold their properties. My grandmother is an example. She sold her house in Umarán and now she lives in colonia Independencia.
JI: What do you think of security in San Miguel?
VM: Gangs are a problem in some colonies—the police are even afraid to go there.
JI: How can security be improved?
VM: Better training for police officers.
JI: What do you think of the migration problem to the United States?
VM: It is due to a lack of jobs. However, some leave only for tradition.
JI: What do you think of the current administration?
VM: They have done well. They put in water and drainage for many poor colonies. However, I think they should have paid more attention to people’s needs.
JI: Where do you think they failed?
VM: In repairing streets. They repair the same street so many times. Streets are constantly damaged by buses. In a small city like San Miguel, with narrow streets, there cannot be such big buses. Even traffic would improve with smaller buses.
JI: Do you think Jesús Correa will be a good mayor?
VM: I would have preferred a different candidate from the same party, but I think he will provide continuity to the current administration.
JI: What do you think San Miguel needs so people will not leave the city?
VM: A public university and well-remunerated jobs. Industry on the outskirts would not affect the historical center and would provide jobs for people.
JI: Do you expect to have to leave the city in the future?
VM: Yes, when I finish my university career. There are not enough employment options.
JI: What do you think about the TRIFE’s (Federal Electoral Tribunal) resolution about the elections?
VM: I think it was the right decision. I think the PRD candidate’s reasons for refuting the elections were not valid. In the elections of July 2, there was a representative for each party in each voting booth, so it is supposed the results were accepted by them.
JI: Do you think Felipe Calderón will be a good president?
VM: He seems honest. He showed a lot during the debates, the opposite of the PRD candidate. Although Calderón was constantly quarreling with López Obrador during the campaigns, I believe he has a different way of thinking.
JI: What would you suggest for improving the country’s situation?
VM: To support students of scarce economical resources with scholarships. To create more well-remunerated jobs..