Amid the ghosts of Mexico's long-deserted silver mines, a new wave of cultural bohemians is breathing life back into towns like Pozos and Real de Catorce
At first glance, Mineral de Pozos could be the dead-end one-horse Mexican town in every western you've ever seen. A silent, sun-scorched jumble of empty streets and shadow-dwelling dogs, where saloon-doored tequila bars shelter bad men, and there's an atmosphere of the whole town holding its breath, waiting for a stranger to enter the square, kick the spurs of his cowboy boots into the midday dust and start something.
There's no good reason to be here, visitors might think at first, but if they look a little closer, stay a while, peek behind those unfriendly doors and closed shutters, they'll discover an unexpected world, not of gun-wielding matriarchs and drunken cowboys, but of artists, musicians and cultured bohemians who are opening B&Bs, galleries and shops here.
For most of the past 100 years, Mineral de Pozos, founded in the 16th century, has been a virtual ghost town. At the end of the 19th century it was a thriving silver mining centre, home to 80,000 people, and so prosperous that Mexico's first stock exchange ? the Bolsa de Valor ? was established here to sell shares in the mines. But the Mexican Revolution of 1910, coupled with a dramatic fall in the price of silver, flooding and more war, meant that by 1927 all 306 mines had closed. By the 1950s, only a couple of hundred people remained.
Now, though, along with several other former silver mining towns in Mexico's central highlands, three hours north-west of Mexico City, Pozos is experiencing a revival. A growing community of creative types ? Mexicans and (mainly American) ex-pats ? are restoring buildings and starting projects to attract art buyers and culture-hungry travellers, like me and my boyfriend, who are on a road trip.
Texan Nick Hamblen, a former magazine photography director, and his landscape gardener boyfriend ManRey Silva have created a new gallery space, Galería 6 (Galeria 6), with a boutique B&B, El Secreto de Pozos, attached.
"We're on a high! We sold four pieces this morning," grins Nick as he leads us through a heavy wooden door off the main square, Jardín Juarez, to a corridor lined with cases displaying quirky silver jewellery. Beyond is a beautiful courtyard garden dotted with cacti and Maya-inspired sculptures by the former owner, John Osmond, a successful Australian sculptor. Hammocks sway. A wall is hung with artfully battered cowboy hats; our room, one of three, has its own little garden, visited by hummingbirds.
Inside the cool gallery we discover a range of pieces on the theme of "revolution", simple photographs of landscapes and lucha libre (Mexican wrestling), and quirky portraits of bandits. Priced at about $3,500 are huge gaudy sculptures, embellished with beads, mirrors, sequins and skulls, by American artist Anado McLauchlin, who lives in San Miguel de Allende, a quaint ochre-and-rose-coloured silver city 45 minutes' drive away. The works all look very Mexican, but I notice many of the artists aren't.
"Yes it's a shame," says Nick, who opened El Secreto three years ago, five years after moving here from Dallas. "I really tried to just have Mexican work but I can't find enough that's of a quality that people would pay for."
This is surprising: Mexico's modern art scene is thriving, particularly in the capital, but by "people", I suspect he means rich Americans, with certain tastes. Plenty of them visit this region: San Miguel de Allende is one of Latin America's most popular destinations for US tourists. There, slick bars, luxury hotels, art galleries and boutiques abound, but despite it once being a favourite among the Beat poets (Neal Cassady died there in 1968, after falling asleep outside in the cold while stoned), many say it is now too touristy.
Pozos is the perfect alternative: a real Mexican town a couple of hours' drive from the border, with the green shoots of an artsy scene.
"There's been a renaissance in Pozos in the past two years," says Nick as we set off to tour the town. "There are a few shops, galleries, more outsiders. Something happens to people when they come here ? it just grabs you."
Colourful, tumbledown streets are strung with bunting, and a man with a long beard is serving tequila at a bar on the plaza. We pass giant cacti and a wonkily parked Beetle, Moorish arches, the domed San Pedro church, and a snack bar selling nothing but chicharrones ? pork scratchings. Nick points out the town PA system, used to broadcast opera, or the names of residents who haven't paid their water bill.
In Arte y Diseño de Pozos (arteydisenodepozos.com), I buy gorgeous silver jewellery inlaid with turquoise and ceramics; in a boutique called Sopresas (sorpresaspozos.com) I pick up a beaded bag from the southern state of Chiapas. We check out Venado Azul (+52 468 117 0387), a hostel run by a shaman which also offers therapeutic temazcal sweat lodge sessions, and has a shop selling dried bats, animal skins and indigenous musical instruments ? another Pozos speciality.
Camino de Piedra is a shop specialising in these instruments, run by two sisters married to two brothers. While I'm browsing they offer to perform an impromptu gig, leading us into a back room where turtle shells, bowls of water, conches, gourds, pebbles and bones are laid out on the floor before large drums. The musicians jump between them all, playing simple hypnotic rhythms broken by ethereal calls and hoots.
"By studying instruments found around ancient Mayan ruins, and carvings and paintings, we've worked out how to play these replicas," they explain. "The problem is the music itself has been lost. We have to guess what it might have sounded like."
Exploring the more recent silver mining history is tricky, too: the mines are abandoned and dangerous, though local guides will take you. But it's easy to visit three tall, pyramid-like kilns built in the 1500s by Franciscan monks a few miles out of town.
Some historic buildings have been turned into hotels: Posada de las Minas is a restored mansion around a yellow atrium with hanging baskets, a fountain, a good restaurant, exotic caged birds and rooms with fireplaces and detailed woven rugs. But Pozos has still only six small places to stay. One is LavenDar, a new lavender farm on the outskirts, where our hosts invite us to spend Thanksgiving with their friends.
"By the way, this will be an all-girl party, if you know what I mean," says ManRey as we drive out at sundown along dusty tracks towards the looming Sierra Gorda foothills silhouetted against a pinky sky.
Here we are welcomed to our first Thanksgiving by a dozen or so tequila-guzzling Texan lesbians, who own land here in a sort of co-operative. Post-turkey they regale us with ghost stories as we recline on rocking chairs on the veranda, surveying the High Chaparral desert and magnificent starscape.
"That hill over there is considered sacred by the local Indians," says Dar, owner of LavenDar. "That's where they bury their dead. It caused a few problems, being so close: our labourers refused to work here past 4pm, they were so spooked."
Ghosts are a very real part of Mexican culture, and as we are here in November, just after the Day of the Dead celebrations, their presence lingers. Decorative skeletons and skulls are on display at many houses and hotels, nowhere more so than at a fantastic little hotel we discover at another must-stop on the silver town trail, the state capital Guanajuato, a picture-perfect colonial gem, full of partying students, craft markets and mariachi bands.
The Casa de Espíritus Alegres (house of happy spirits) in Marfil, a village just outside, was a silver-processing hacienda in the 1700s, and is now a bizarre and magical hotel so full of folk art it's practically a museum. Since the 1950s it has been cared for by artists, including, since 1979, present owner Carol Summers, from California.
As soon as we open the Secret Garden-like door into the overgrown courtyard I feel like I've entered a fairground ghost house. Every inch is covered in grinning wooden skeletons, intricately painted tiles, patterned rugs and giant animal figures.
Even the breakfast table, where we eat freshly baked chocolate-chip bread off crazily painted ceramics, is covered in skeleton fabric. There's an artist's workshop in the basement, a help-yourself bar in a Rajasthani tent in a garden full of sculptures, and monstrous carved ceremonial masks on every wall. All pre-Hispanic communities had a mask-maker, whose pieces were worn for ritual "devil dances". Mask-makers sprinkled a tree with blood or mezcal before cutting wood for the mask, and some used hallucinogenic herbs and mushrooms before carving.
Almost every Mexican village has its folk art tradition ? areas will specialise in ceramics, wooden animals, weaving, tin, rugs or silver jewellery. The work is riotously colourful, detailed and fascinating, especially as ? unlike folk art from Asia and India ? we rarely see it in Britain. It is mainly these treasures, rather than modern Mexican art, that buyers and travellers trawl the silver mining towns for. Taxco, Querétaro, San Luis de Potosí and the Unesco city of Zacatecas are worth visiting for their shops and bright colonial architecture. In the adorable rainbow-painted town of Dolores Hidalgo, 45 minutes from Pozos, we buy some of the decorative tiles for which it is famous (from 10p each), visit the stunning cathedral and eat delicious tortilla soup, chicken enchiladas and guacamole.
While these relatively prosperous silver towns are a joy to visit, it is the ghost towns like Pozos that are most intriguing. Real de Catorce, further north in the state of San Luis Potosí, is perhaps the most exciting of all.
It was founded in 1779 at the height of silver fever, and though its inaccessibility ? it lies 2,750m above sea level, in the heart of the Catorce mountains, with no natural water supply ? meant at first it was a tough, lawless, anarchic place, eventually it became one of the greatest silver towns. By the late 18th century it had a bullring, and shops selling European wines and fashions. The revolution put paid to all that, though thousands still return each 4 October, to pray to St Francis of Assisi at the large church.
At the same time of year, another very different religious pilgrimage was made here too, by the Huichols. This indigenous tribe trekked from the Pacific coast to collect peyote, a hallucinogenic cactus that grows in the deserts here, which they use in shamanic ceremonies. Though many Huichol still visit, since the 1970s the peyote tradition has been hijacked by experimenting backpackers, too.
Our own pilgrimage involves a six-hour drive along the infamous Highway 57, supposedly used by drugs traders (narcotics go north to the US; guns come south). Trucks full of gun-toting soldiers do zoom by as we drive past escarpments covered in cacti, and desolate stretches where villagers sell dried rattlesnakes by the roadside.
At Matehuala, a seedy-looking city surrounded by neon-lit motels with no windows, we leave the highway for a bumpy cobbled desert track. We turn onto a mountain pass that winds higher until, by moonlight, we arrive at the entrance to a 2.3km long tunnel, the only way in to Real de Catorce by road. At the other end, the village is so dilapidated that it looks like an earthquake just hit, but our hotel room in Mesón de la Abundancia is gorgeous ? like somewhere Penélope Cruz would stay. In fact, as it turns out, she probably did: many films have been made in Real de Catorce, including her 2006 action comedy Bandidas.
Despite the remoteness, and the spookiness of our journey, we soon realise that, like Pozos, the town is a lot more friendly and jolly than it first appears. There's a saint's day festival going on in the plaza, with a terrible accordion player entertaining the whole town. We spot a tequila bar, duck in through the saloon doors and find a purely male clientele in an interior plastered with pornography. Thank god the drinks are short so we can down one and leave.
Over a breakfast of papaya and yoghurt, banana milkshakes, and huevos banditos (spicy scrambled eggs) the next morning, some fellow guests introduce themselves. More Texan hippies ? he with a long grey ponytail and black polo neck, she in a folksy dress ? and they tell us they have been here many times, often to "go into the desert" ? a euphemism for taking peyote. Weirdly, the town shows very little sign of this element beyond a couple of psychedelically decorated hostels and a few shops selling beautiful Huichol beadwork, including bull skulls covered in tiny beads. But the Americans tell us: "You can't go looking for the peyote ? if you are ready, the peyote will find you."
We're not ready, so we focus instead on the spectacular hiking in the hills above the town, where we peer into mine shafts and enjoy the sharp fresh air of high altitude. Another high is meeting Umberto, the owner of the El Real hotel and bar, who has almost single-handedly turned Real de Catorce from ghost town to tourist attraction. Over beers he tells us how he left Mexico in his youth to become a hippy on the US west coast, and returned after reading about the Huichol and the ghost town of Real de Catorce in the "esoteric" department of a bookshop.
With his US connections he helped arrange for film director Gore Verbinski to make The Mexican here, with Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts. Verbinski promised Umberto a bit part in a future film, and now El Real's walls are plastered with photographs of him as a Pirate of the Caribbean, hugging Johnny Depp.
Umberto is more than a convincing pirate: he has worked hard to use tourism to save the town from ruin. Tourism may be the modern-day silver rush, hoteliers and gallerists the new conquistadors, but what they've achieved is impressive ? and they do it out of love.
Way to go
Getting there
Netflights.com has flights to Mexico City from Stansted from £1,140 return with KLM (klm.com)
Getting around
Car hire in Mexico City with carrentals.co.uk costs from £70 a week
Where to stay
Pozos El Secreto de Pozos, +52 442 293 0200, elsecretomexico.com, doubles from $70; Posada de las Minas, i-escape.com/posada-de-las-minas, doubles from $75; LavenDar, +52 505 670 2200, lavendarfarmsofpozos.blogspot.com, eco casas from $75
Guanajuato Casa de Espíritus Alegres, +52 473 733 1013, casaspirit.com, doubles from $80
Real de Catorce Mesón de la Abundancia, +52 488 887 5044, mesonabundancia.com, doubles from $65
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2011/oct/14/mexico-silver-mines-pozos
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