La Alborada: Keeping traditions alive
By Edward Swift

La Alborada was introduced to San Miguel in 1924 by a group of textile workers who had come to La Aurora from the Fábrica La Virgen in Ciudad Hidalgo, Mich. and Fábrica la Reforma in Salvatierra, Gto. The workers, under the capable direction of Don Camilio Gonzales, organized this first Alborada in conjunction with the celebration of the Immaculate Conception on December 8, 1924.

That year, the festivities originated in front of Las Monjas church. That Alborada was a combination of traditions these two groups brought with them. They included music by the best local bands, processions carrying the honored saint, a colorful array of stars on poles, a 4am firework display and the first appearance in San Miguel of the dancing mojigangas, the giant puppets of papier-mâché that continue to amuse us at almost every event. 

The task of reproducing the mojigangas fell to Don Ebodio Garcia and for that alone he should receive a crown or a statue in the park.

Today, Emelio Ledesma, a former Aurora worker and union official, also known as “El Gordo,” is in charge of the construction and storage of the mojigangas. He works diligently to make sure that the traditions, so much a part of San Miguel’s past, are preserved.

He is also responsible for reproducing the giant stars on poles that are placed in front of the Parroquia by the ex-workers and families from Colonia Aurora. The stars represent the comets, the sun, the moon, the seven cabrillas and, for some reason no one seems to remember, the eyes of St. Lucy.

That first Alborada was such a success that the municipal officials and the priest from the Parroquia decided to incorporate it into the celebration of the town’s patron saint.

That decree marked the first official Alborada, the feast day of San Miguel Archangel, which was held on September 29, 1925. Over the years there have been a few changes to the timetable and the order of events, but the festivities still culminate with the Saturday fireworks extravaganza that continues to attract hundreds of spectators, the most sensible of whom carry umbrellas as protection from the falling sparks.

Throughout all the changes made to the original Alborada, Fábrica la Aurora continued to play a major part in the events as well as the preparation. Early on, factory administrators created a fund into which the textile workers would make weekly contributions from their salaries to pay for the expenses, which included the fireworks and the music.

When San Miguel was a small town, there were no local musicians of the quality needed to honor a patron saint, so musicians were imported from various municipalities in the state of Guanajuato. A committee of textile workers would travel around the state listening to the various bands and selecting the best talent from such places as Salvatierra, Tarimoro, Santo Tomas, Ojo Seco or Apaceo el Alto.

For many years, there were no roads in or out of San Miguel, so the musicians were brought in by train. They arrived on Friday afternoon and went directly to Fábrica la Aurora to play for the workers and other citizens of the town who gathered on the factory grounds. At 5pm, the procession carrying San Miguel, accompanied by the band and a makeshift cannon (made by the workers), left Colonia Aurora for the Jardín.

In the Jardín, the various bands entertained the crowd in anticipation of the arrival of the mojigangas, the stars and the fireworks ushered in by the first blast from the factory’s cannon.

As the crowds in the Jardín grew larger and more exuberant, the Parroquia priest refused to allow the image of San Miguel to be carried through the revelry. The procession, with a smaller statue of San Miguel, was then moved to a time when the patron saint could be celebrated in a more dignified manner. This procession now goes through several neighborhoods and finishes in Colonia Aurora. The statue of San Miguel is kept overnight on a specially prepared altar in the home of Señora Natalia Morales, whose family has been involved in this celebration for more than 60 years.

This Friday, in keeping with the tradition started in 1925, La Banda de los Hermanos de Aguascalientes will play the first concert at 3:30pm in front of Fábrica la Aurora and everyone is invited to attend. The band will then proceed to Colonia Aurora where the statue of San Miguel will be removed from its temporary altar and returned to the Parroquia. For the return procession, a young boy dressed as San Miguel Archangel will ride on a float decorated with flowers and tulle. Several children dressed as little angels will accompany him and, of course, the band will provide the music for this procession.

In the Jardín, the music will continue into the night and the crowd will grow larger by the minute. Around 2am, the dancing mojigangas and the stars will once again arrive. At 4am the fireworks display will usher in the dawn—(M)in honor of San Miguel Archangel and with a special thanks to those early textile workers from La Virgin, La Reforma and Fábrica la Aurora.

Edward Swift is a novelist and a visual artist. He was born in Texas, spent most of his life in New York City and now lives in San Miguel where he runs his own gallery in Fábrica la Aurora.

San Miguel, an excess of fiestas?
By Robert Somerlott (Excerpted from San Miguel de Allende)

Even in Mexico where a fiesta can be launched at the drop of a sombrero, San Miguel stands out as a fiesta town. The penchant of the local people for public celebration is revealed not only by observation but by history.

In the 18th century San Miguel had no fewer than six official patrons and every one of them was honored annually by a full scale town-wide festival. The party town became so notorious that in 1789 the government took steps to cancel some of the fiestas, after a high official declared that industry and piety were suffering from “an excess of fiestas.” The puritanical authorities met stiff resistance and local citizens even took the matter to court. Either they lost the legal case or a declining economy settled the matter without appeal.

Today St. Michael is the only patron, and this has diminished the number of major and minor fiestas to thirty or forty—(M) depending on how you count them. Principal fiestas feature parades, band music, and sometimes conchero dancers. Every fiesta has fireworks and at least one castillo or it isn’t a fiesta at all.

Castillo is the Spanish word for castle, but in Mexico it also refers to the tall, spindly towers of wood that support pinwheels, rockets, roman candles, and other fiery displays.

(Note: The fireworks seen and heard in San Miguel are mostly of hometown manufacture, and this is a hazardous calling. One year during a fiery display, a spark ignited fireworks stacked against a wall of La Parroquia. In the subsequent blast, a fireworks maker was killed, part of the wall blown open, and a priest sleeping some distance away hurled from his bed. A few years later the son of the unlucky artisan, continuing the family trade, blew up his house while he was in it. But however dangerous the profession is, there are surprisingly few injuries to the tens of thousands of spectators who cheer the fireworks each year.)

Some foreigners scowl at the pyrotechnics displays, muttering about a poor country spending so much on smoke and complaining of “bread and circuses.” But fireworks are cheaper than circuses and bread. How else can you entertain a multitude for so little money?

It is said that when Mexican Independence was declared officially in Spain, the Spanish monarch summoned the leading Mexican envoy to his presence and asked what the Mexicans were doing in reaction to the news. On three successive days the envoy replied, “Your majesty, they are shooting off fireworks… They are shooting off fireworks… They are STILL shooting off fireworks!”

All fiestas offer some sort of band music, and most of the pickup bands are better seen then heard. Squealing trumpets and uncertain trombones produce an unbelievable caterwauling. Musically the kindest description is “quaint, folksy and energetic.” Even the worst bands render an identifiable version of “Over the Waves,” which was composed in Mexico.

One ejido, a cooperative farm near Atotonilco, has such poor land and so little water that it has turned to band music as its source of cash. Every male resident plays some instrument, usually before age ten. For a long time they had an agreement to provide weekly band music for the town and played in the jardín bandstand; they played surprisingly well.

The lusty mariachi bands with their fancy sombreros and embroidered trousers appear unofficially at fiestas in hopes that someone will hire them to play. During Fiesta Patrias in late September and early October, norteños sometimes come to San Miguel in hope of earning a bit of cash. Their music is native to the northern border, their costumes like cowboy rodeo clothes, and usually they work in trios; two guitars and a woodblock, with the percussionist also dancing, and pounding the rhythm with hard leather heels that are metal-capped.

The late Robert Somerlott, a long-time San Miguel resident, contributed to the community working as a volunteer editor at Atención and a board member for the Biblioteca Pública and as a director of PEN. He was a widely published author.

Mexico: What happens after the oil dries up?
By Jim Karger

Mexico’s Bolsa has outperformed most world stock markets since the beginning of the decade. Indeed, had you invested in the stocks that make up the Mexican Bolsa at the end of 2000, you would have enjoyed a gain of 130 percent by 2006. Had you invested in the US S&P 500 during the same period, you would have lost 13 percent. 

But, as we are often reminded, past results are not necessarily predictive of future performance. There is no better place than Mexico to remember that truism.

Mexico has prospered in large part over the last 30 years because of its oil reserves. Indeed, Pemex, the state-owned oil monopoly, accounts for about 40% of total federal government revenue. In 1971, when the Cantarell field was discovered, it was the second largest oil find ever measured by production. Cantarell peaked at 2.3 million barrels a day in 2004. By 2006, Cantarell’s production had fallen 12% and is forecast to fall another 15% this year. It will decline to 600,000 barrels a day by 2013—(M)producing only 25% of what it did 10 years earlier. 

Some experts predict the country’s production of oil will fall to the point that within the next decade Mexico will no longer be an oil-exporting nation. Absent replacement revenue sources, few dispute that Mexico will face dire financial consequences. 

So, what are Mexico’s alternatives for the near future? 

Manufacturing is the most obvious option, with its low-cost labor and geographic proximity to the largest buyer of goods in the world. 

The questions are just how attractive is Mexico as a global production center and what needs to change if Mexico is to continue on a path that has seen an increase in the middle class and a lessening of abject poverty. Mexico must continue attracting capital that builds businesses, decreases unemployment, and insures a better economic future for a population that many believe has been mired in the Third World too long.

There are many opinions on the topic and few statistics. But what numbers do exist are revealing, to include those found in the Global Competitiveness Index (GCI) developed by Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University. This index, along with the Business Competitiveness Index (BCI), statistically parse the Executive Opinion Survey from the World Economic Forum held each year, a place where those in control of the world’s capital come to discuss, among other things, where to put their money to work. The Forum captures the opinions and experiences of executives and entrepreneurs worldwide. One important task they perform is to evaluate the quality of the business environment in countries where they do business. 

Rating everything from institutions to infrastructure, health care to higher education, and market efficiency to innovation, the likelihood of continued economic growth is predictable. The most recent competitiveness rankings find Switzerland, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Singapore and the United States in the top six positions, followed by Japan, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. 

The highest ranked Latin American country is Chile in 27th position, with Mexico a distant 58th, behind such countries as Portugal, Thailand, Italy, Poland and Costa Rica. Trailing Mexico were El Salvador, Colombia, Brazil and Argentina. 
At 58th, Mexico finds itself near the middle of the pack of 125 nations evaluated in the most recent study, the authors noting the country’s “uneven performance . . . with relatively good scores on health and primary education, goods market efficiency, and selected components of technological readiness . . . offset by the same institutional weaknesses prevalent in the rest of Latin America.”

Just what are these “institutional weaknesses” that predict Mexico will be an also-ran in global competitiveness? The most substantial failing noted by the authors is an absence of “basic elements of good governance,” which includes the absence of “transparent and open institutions” as well as “poorly defined property rights,” “undue influence in decision making,” “inefficient government operations,” an “insufficiently independent judiciary,” “security costs associated with high levels of crime and corruption,” and “unstable business environments.” This will make it difficult for the Mexican business community to compete effectively. In short, the market doesn’t like uncertainty, and uncertainty in too many critical areas is what Latin America holds in spades. 

The Business Competitive Index (BCI), which evaluates more closely the macroeconomic underpinnings of competitiveness, finds Mexico ranked 57th, scoring 42nd in “company operations and strategy,” and 56th in “quality of national business environment.” Digging further into the report and the one preceding it, the culprit is a phenomenon the authors label a “governance deficit,” defined as “the shortfall in the country’s actual quality of governance, as compared with the governance level required to support the country’s income level,” looking at factors such as “corruption” and “excessive bureaucracy” and their effect on the ability to compete in the global marketplace. Indeed, deficiencies in governance are considered by world business leaders to be even more debilitating than high inflation and distortions in the exchange rate.

In the immediately preceding series of GCI and BCI reports, researchers concluded that “a country that significantly improves key governance dimensions such as the rule of law, corruption, the regulatory regime, and democratic accountability can expect in the long run a dramatic increase in its per capita incomes and in other social dimensions.” Looking at Mexico, the researchers concluded that “a mere one standard deviation improvement in voice and accountability . . . from the level of Mexico to that of Costa Rica would . . . be associated with an estimated fourfold increase in per capita incomes [in Mexico], as well as similar improvements in literacy and in reducing child mortality.”

Mexico is not alone. For all of Latin America the authors opined that “by the late 1990s most countries in Latin America had a substantial ‘governance deficit’ in that their actual per capita incomes were higher than would have been predicted by the prevailing levels of governance,” an economist’s convoluted way of saying “living on borrowed time.”

The net-net of this numeric complexity is simple and straightforward: business leaders within the global marketplace decide where to put investment capital. When measuring competitiveness, Mexico finds itself in the difficult middle ground. The country has decisions to make in the next few years. To move up the scale of global competitiveness and thus become a more desirable place to locate businesses and expand existing ones, Mexico must no longer rely on excess oil to mitigate its “governance deficit” as perceived by world business leaders. Rather, several key governance dimensions must be addressed if Mexico is to continue on a path to prosperity. 

Jim Karger is a resident of San Miguel. He writes the “Business, Real Estate and Investing” column for Atención.