Try This: Pozos
Three bus rides away from San Miguel De Allende in the central Mexican province of Guanajato, is Pozos, an old mining town. Pozos is actively promoting an “Art Walk,” and the mysteries of its abandoned silver mines.
Over five hundred barely noticeable circular cement markers are scattered around the outskirts of the town, indicating the presence of mine shafts, some over 150 feet deep. You can walk through the faded red ruins of the mining industry – brick buildings where equipment was stored and accommodations for the workers. The first ruin up the road from the main square is adjacent to a shaft equipped with a string of light bulbs, and frayed rope. For twenty pesos, we paid an old woman perched at the entrance of the shaft, to let us climb about 100 feet down and gained vague sense of what it must have been like to be a Mexican mine worker in the 19th century.
Wacky artists are trying to put Pozos on the tourist map with eclectic workshops making pre-hispanic instruments (among other things), and the town regularly holds festivals when stands of local sweets and roasted maiz pop up on otherwise dusty streets. The most captivating thing about Pozos, is the example it provides of life in a town after mines close, and the stark difference from nearby San Miguel de Allende.
To get there from San Miguel: take the bus to Dolores Hidalgo, then to San Luis de la Paz, then finally to Pozos (this can take up to three hours; we hitchhiked back in a third of the time, and were regaled with fascinating stories; a peek into the tumultuous relationships many Mexicans have with the U.S.)
Photos by Adam Vaught
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