Calzada de Guadalupe
The first interaction I had with Calzada de Guadalupe was when Google maps instructed me to turn on to it. Unfortunately, it failed to do so until I was several dozen feet past the turn, committed to going down a one way tunnel. The tunnel ejected us on the other side of town. Our route was recalculated to send us up a precipitous cobblestone alley to Panoramica instead, and that was the last we saw of Calzada de Guadalupe that night.
But we returned the next morning, led to our first day of Spanish Immersion class by Señora Victoria. From her house, atop a hill overlooking Centro, an alleyway made of cement and cobblestone stairs descended a couple hundred feet to Calzada de Guadalupe. We followed its winding path further down, under the arches of the Universidad de Guanajuato, to the Plaza de Paz.
Where it passed under the university, the street was barely wide enough for trucks to pass, but pass they did, the sides of their loads sometimes inches from the sheer stone walls. Anyone trying to walk along the perilously narrow sidewalks would dart out of the way into some alcove or the other, emerging after the truck was past to breathe in air thick with diesel exhaust.
For the first two days of our stay in Guanajuato, we’d pass down Calzada de Guadalupe every day and it remained much the same. Street vendors would set up shop in a corner sometimes, or a beggar would be on the curb. We found the laundry and which tacos were the best. We got so that we could navigate it’s twisting cobblestone route and confidently find which alley would lead us back to the stairs and our temporary home.
Then, on Wednesday, when we turned out of alley and on to Calzada de Guadalupe, we were confronted with a sign, spray painted on to a bedsheet and hung across the way: No hay liberdad sin verdad. There is no justice without truth.
Beyond that sign was a sea of young people. All appeared to be in their early to mid twenties. They filled the streets, their pamphlets covered the walls on either side. Yellow “Precaucion” tape hung over every entrance into the university. A student strike. They had shut down the university.
On the way back up, we were handed a flyer. I read it as best I could and gathered that the students were tired of the violence in the city. They were demanding to meet with the president of the university, the mayor of the city, and the governor of the state to know what, if anything, would be done about it.
Throughout the rest of the week, the protest spilled out into the city. Men dressed in period custom sold tickets for the mariachi walking tour of the city alongside students chanting slogans in impressive unison. Museums of Art were festooned with flyers and hand-painted signs. Tourists looked on curiously at the placards declaring that the government and the university were complicit in hiding rapists and murders.
In our Spanish classes at Escuela Mexica we got some news of the protests. Many of the teachers there were students at the university, working at the language school part time for a bit of extra cash. Usually they stayed focused on the intended lessons. We talked about our last vacation to practice the difference between preterite and imperfect. We read stories about Mexican history. But from time to time some information would come out when we asked. The city wasn’t safe. There had been assaults and murders around the university. Investigations were kept under wraps if they happened at all.
On Friday, the protests were still in full swing. One of our instructors showed up to class, clearly very tired. The lesson jumped about. She forgot about the writing she had assigned us. She said she’d been up all night at the protest. On the way home past the university I noticed that tents were set up outside the main entrances. Students standing vigil.
We were heading out of town for the weekend to hike around in the local mountains and see San Miguel de Allende. We wondered if the protests would still be going on when we returned.
They were. On Monday, walking down Calzada de Guadalupe to class, there were still the flyers. Still the yellow tape over every door in or out of the university. We were surprised to see them still there
But then, on Tuesday, it was all gone. We came around the corner and looked down the street, and it was like the protest had never happened. The walls were cleared of every flyer. Staff passed freely through the doors. Even the streets had been washed clean overnight.
I will probably never learn the exact cause of the protest’s end. English language media didn’t cover it at all, and while there are a number of local news stories concerning the protest’s genesis and effects, I could find none covering its conclusion. But final exams were over, most of the students probably needed to head home for the holiday break or out on whatever their next plan was. They couldn’t hold out forever.
It also seemed that the protests were sparked by the death of Ana Daniela Vega Gonzalez, a student at the university. On the day after the protests ended, her ex-boyfriend was arrested, with evidence tying him to her murder. Although that clearly could not have been a factor in ending the protests, the presence of a public investigation would at least take away the argument that nothing was being done. I doubt the general discontent, nor the well justified fear of living in the city, would dissipate after a single arrest. But the spark that had inflamed that discontent into action was, for now at least, extinguished.
That day the street returned to normal. Trucks once again coughed up the tight curves, beggars once again took up whatever space was left, and the only students around were lined up in front of Cafe Tal for their morning espresso. But the return to normal proved to be short lived.
The very next day, we began to see the vendors appear. Carts squeezing into whatever space could be found. Ten foot long staves of sugar cane lining the walls through the tunnel so it felt like passing through a jungle. Everyone preparing for the Festival of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Calzada de Guadalupe, as the main thoroughfare leading to the Templo de Guadalupe, was to be the center of the city’s celebration.
All night the city prepared. Bells rang. Fireworks exploded. Shrines to the virgin were set outside homes. Sitting in the back patio of a bar, we watched a parade of motorcycles ride into town. All the riders dressed for the occasion, and the lead motorcycle ornamented with a statue of the Virgin herself.
The next day, even on our way down to class in the morning, the street was crowded. Vendors made their last minute preparations for the evening. Anyone who had the day off went up to the church, or just wandered the streets to see the sights. By the time we returned from class, the street was packed. From wall to wall it was standing room only, people bustling between vendors. Taking pictures of their children next to shrines to the virgin. Spitting chewed up bits sugar cane on the ground.
That day, Señora Victoria’s siblings were in town for the celebration. They’d been at the church service all morning. We all ate a late lunch together, and then Julia and I headed back down to find some friends from class.
We ran into them at the bottom of the hill, standing near a pony, which had been tied up near the university entrance as a photo prop. We began to push our way back up the hill, and found the crowd to be, if anything, more crowded. We made it about a block and bought some sweet nata gorditas. Then, as we were preparing to keep on, we heard a thunderous racket behind us. Somehow, the crowd found a way of parting. People pressing up against walls, between food carts, and into alleys, as the marching bands came through. There were probably a dozen bands. Each led by a battery of drummers, pounding out their parts, and followed closely by several lines of buglers, each playing proudly, if not entirely in tune. After each band passed, there was a brief moment of respite where we could talk, shift our position, and begin to move back up hill before the next came. Then we were all pressed back to the side of the street and every noise was drowned out except for the marching band.
But then: an earsplitting explosion. Fireworks were being set off over the church. One after the next they went off, every minute or so, getting louder and louder with each block that we drew up the hill.
Until finally, we came around the corner, and face to face with the church. The bells in its towers spun around and around as fast as they could go, clanging twice on each revolution, filling the square with their clatter. Another firework exploded. A band marched into the square, led by four men carrying a palanquin, a statue the Virgin astride it.
There was an unbelievable crush of people all pushing to get into the church, so we decided to turn away then. Up the hill a bit further to where Panoramica wound along the hilltop overlooking the city. Finally, the din of the festival was muted by some distance. The drum lines and bells were joined by the day to day sounds of the city. Cars and motorcycles roaring up the hills. Dogs and roosters calling out into the late afternoon. Below us, Calzada de Guadalupe cut up its hill, a vibrant line of color through the brick and pastel-painted city.
The next day was our last in Guanajuato. When we walked along Calzada de Guadalupe that morning, it had already been cleaned from the night before. The vendors were long gone, along with the shrines and decorations. We pass a lady cleaning the cobblestones in front of her business. Scrubbing them with a long handled bristle brush and a bucket of soapy water. The water runs down the street in dark rivulets of grime, chewed up sugarcane, and the butts of cigarettes. Behind, the cobblestones are left shining cleanly in the morning sun. Ready for whatever comes next.
