A stroll through the past in Pasaje Allende,
February 23, 2007
By Jim Blakley

Most long-term residents and experienced visitors will have already come across a small gem in San Miguel called Paseje Allende, but newer visitors and residents may have missed it. I might never have found it if I didn’t live next door.

Basically, Pasaje Allende (the Allende Alley) is a commercial, pedestrian walkway that connects Mesones with a one-block street that leads to the Mercado Ignacio Ramírez called Puente de Umarán (not to be confused with Calle Umarán). I am assuming that a couple of hundred years ago, when Mesones was a street of inns and close to the center of the action at Plaza Cívica, an entrepreneurial individual realized that the density of shops could be dramatically increased by converting the space into an alleyway lined with shops on both sides between the two existing streets. He or she was kind of an early Donald Trump. For all I know, this may be North America’s first strip mall!

Today, you can find a laundry and several shops and services. But it is not the shops that make the difference here—it is the beauty and balance of the passageway. I am pretty sure that modern architects like Luis Barragan or Frank Lloyd Wright could not have done any better.

Starting from the north, a visitor will find a clothing store and a kitchen goods store, a bazaar (selling hard-to-define used or antique items), a lawyer, a dentist, a beauty shop, a laundry, a professional photo studio, a framing shop, a veterinarian’s office and an animal hospital, and finally another clothing shop. Almost everything you need in one little strip of shops and services. 

Because Mesones is significantly higher than Puente de Umarán, there are several steps and sloping walkways that descend to the latter street. 

What I really like about Pasaje Allende (other than the utter and absolute joy of dropping off my laundry in the morning and then picking it up washed, dried, and folded so well and tightly that the finished result is far better than any ironing job I could do—all this for about US$3 per week—but I digress) is that Paseje Allende is quiet with no vehicular traffic, not that many people, and, like many places in San Miguel, you imagine you are living 250 years ago. 

The design and execution is perfect to my eye, beautiful yet very utilitarian. And then, you walk through one of the archways onto a busy street with a bus stop, a cantina and many other shops, and you are back to present day. Well, kind of—it still seems like it is 80 years ago to me. 

Jim Blakley is a part-time San Miguel resident living the rest of the year in beautiful Canada.