Departures Middle East Summer 2019

“This is where the revolution started,”
González said. “It’s also the centre of
the country. And the light! It’s the
reason why artists and photographers
fall in love with this place”
All kinds of tourists: athleisureclad
seniors basking in the year-round
perfect weather; college students
taking pottery and weaving workshops
at venerable cultural institutions like
Bellas Artes and the Instituto Allende;
and Mexican wedding parties from
Monterrey and Guadalajara posing
for family photos in the stately Parque
Benito Juárez.
“I never really had a desire to
visit, because I had heard it was full
of tourists,” said Laura Kirar, an
artist and designer who moved
from Brooklyn to Yucatán in 2017
to restore an old hacienda with
her husband, Richard Frazier. She
started visiting San Miguel for
business and to escape Yucatán’s
summer heat and was soon
enthralled.
“The creative community here
is strong, and it isn’t just painters
and musicians,” Kirar told me.
She works with Mexican artisans
across the region to make her sisaland-henequen
woven bags and
copper objects, which she sells at
Dôce 18 Concept House, a stylish
retail complex in the historic centre. “The entrepreneurial
spirit seems to be thriving here,” she said. “It’s a place of
connectors and doers.”
For the most part, the Americans and Europeans
who’ve settled in San Miguel aren’t just snowbirds
here for the weather. Whether it’s designers and
decorators working with regional craftsmen to make
their wares, hiring local chefs to cook in restaurants
serving new riffs on traditional Mexican cuisine, or
volunteering (there are nearly 100 charities in the area),
the expats who’ve settled in the area tend to be actively
engaged with the community. On Halloween night,
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