The Santa Brigida Mine
Cresting a dirt road hill, the appearance of three pyramids alerts Paul and me that we have arrived at the Santa Brigida Mine. To my eye, their purpose is unmistakeable: they have to be smelters. Within, fires burned fiercely under piles of silver ore. Tall chimneys provided lots of draft, raising the temperature of burning charcoal enough to melt silver.
Draft is one form of controlled air movement. Draft can be used to provide oxygen for combustion or for respiration. The builders of Santa Brigida Mine were masters at controlling airflow.
Photo: Paul Latoures
Raymondo, our self-appointed guide and teacher explained all this to us. Raymondo is the last miner in Pozos. He was working at this mine when it closed in 1965.
I wanted to know what metals were mined here besides silver.
“Lead, mercury, copper, bronze (he meant tin), and iron.”
“Was the mercury used to separate out gold?” I asked.
“No, Señor. Para bombas atomicos.” Sheesh.
Photo: Paul Latoures
Raymondo explained that the small smokestack and some associated rusting cylinders were parts of a system for pumping air into mine shafts. This and the ruins of a small hospital give thin evidence of the owner’s concern for the miners’ welfare. During Santa Brigida’s heyday, more than a hundred miners were injured every year. Three or four of them died. Children hauled ore to the surface in wicker baskets—even into the 20th century.
The main reason I wanted to explore this particular mine was the rumored existence of El Túnel de los Vientos—a passive device for creating huge amount of draft. Paul’s photo captures about a quarter of the tunnel’s length. The figure at the end is me, aiming my camera toward a hole in the roof at the up-wind end of the tunnel.
Photo: Paul Latoures
The wind tunnel is constructed of stone. It is nearly 600’ long. A series of archways pierce one side of it every 30’ or so to admit outside air. Baffles alternate left and right, forcing air moving through the tunnel to veer away from each archway so that ever more is pulled into the tunnel at each opening.
Air movement through the tunnel is initiated by building a great charcoal fire at the downstream end. As the fire begins to draw, airstreams from all the side openings combine to create a mighty blast, forcing the charcoal to burn at white heat—hot enough to smelt iron ore.
El Túnel de los Vientos is a fine example of mid-19th-Century technology. Its design required thinking every bit as sophisticated as that of many 21st-Century engineers. (And, may I add, way more sophisticated than the design my of Mac’s power cord.)
Exploring and deciphering objects like this old wind tunnel just thrills me. But then, as nerdy teenagers, my friends and I used to chuckle at camshafts with radical grinds. I really haven’t matured much, these last sixty years.
About the scene I was shooting when Paul caught me pointing my camera upward: here it is. I took it looking straight up at the tunnel’s only roof air inlet. I include it here because I think it looks kind of cool.
Ownership of the Santa Brigida Mine is in dispute. Raymondo says that when the owner died eighty years ago, an interloper squatted on the land and initiated legal processes to validate his claim. Proceedings have dragged on for decades, and I imagine will continue for many more years. Well-placed individuals with strong financial resources can keep issues simmering in dysfunctional Mexican courts indefinitely, sometimes winning through attrition if not by merit.
Meanwhile, someone is maintaining the owner’s mansion. No one lives there now, but if ownership of the mine is ever settled, it’ll be there waiting for the victor.
The land surrounding Pozos is an ecological disaster, as is much of the Bajio. In the Seventeenth Century the owner’s mansion would have been surrounded by trees instead of the present-day scrub and cactus. But all the trees have been cut, principally for making charcoal. (Note: The Atlantic seaboard east of the Appalachians was once covered by an ancient forest. It too was cut for iron-making using charcoal.)
Soil, no longer secured by plant roots, washes into watercourses with every rainfall. Ponds, lakes and reservoirs fill with silt, their waters gray from suspended clay particles. Piles of spoil slump across the landscape: sterile heaps upon which nothing will grow in our lifetimes.
I have heard no reports of heavy metal contamination of the water table, but such pollution nearly always accompanies mining operations. The absence of reports of groundwater contamination almost surely is attributable to no one bothering to investigate. A mine may look like no more than a hole in the ground, but excavating and processing ore is incredibly destructive to the environment.
The Santa Brigida Mine is one of 500 surrounding Pozos. It’s one of thousands scattered from Zacatecas on south. Their presence has contributed to the desertification of central Mexico.
Hospital los Angeles
Today I’m writing from Laura’s room in Hospital los Angeles in Querétaro. She’s here for a surgical procedure that will require her to spend the night. I’m here as support staff and worrier-in-chief. I’m writing this post while she’s in the operating room as an alternative to fretting about how she’s doing.
This place is unlike hospitals in the USA. First of all, it’s almost luxuriously overstaffed. Today, two nurses attended Laura while installing an IV line. (Is install the right word?) One performed the procedure while the other distracted her with small talk. When nurse #1 had difficulty with Laura’s tiny veins, she called in a third nurse (apparently the resident expert in such matters) to complete the task.
Hospital staffers are not overworked. They have ample time to give personalized attention with warmth and empathy. Six years ago, I spent a week in Hospital los Angeles recovering from a heart attack. Nurses made frequent and unhurried visits to see how I was doing. A hospital stay in Mexico can almost be pleasant.
A nutritionist visited three times a day to see what I wanted to eat. No resuscitated frozen turkey and jello for me: I asked for and got a grilled torta de pechuga de pollo with frijoles and a big side of jalapeños. Mexican nutritionists know that capsaicin is good for the heart.
Every day, two giggling nurses aides gave me a bath in my bed. They rolled up towels and placed them around me to form a dam, and then poured buckets of soapy warm water over me: something I’d like to try at home.
Laura’s room is set up for family. Besides a standard-issue hospital bed, adjustable tray, call buttons, TV remotes, water bottles and such, her double-sized room contains a convertible sofa, an end table, a side chair and a recliner chair. Hospitals know about treating the entire family unit, not just the patient. Laura has facilities for two people to spend the night with her, and the hospital will make provision for even more if desired.
She was wheeled down to surgery shortly after she arrived. No interminable waits for a gurney to become available. No constant security checks to see if all her ID numbers matched: the people here knew who she was. No phone calls to an HMO administrator to see if her procedure was pre-approved.
After she left, I thought I’d refuel while I had the chance. I went to the cafeteria for breakfast: cooked-to-order huevos Mexicanos, frijoles, warm tortillas, a big fresh-squeezed orange juice and a pot of coffee. They don’t serve pre-packaged food at Hospital los Angeles.
Doctors are sensitive to the worry and stress suffered by loved ones. One of Laura’s doctors called me repeatedly to update me on her progress—reassurances I badly needed.
At this moment, she has emerged from the off-limits-to-me operating room. She’s sleeping peacefully, and I’m on duty.
A final note: At Hospital los Angeles, open wifi hot spots are available in all patient rooms and public areas. That is why you are able to receive this post in real time. Free broadband—the acme of enlightened hospital management. Take note, St. Lukes in Houston.
A Boutique Opens
Being 100% engineer, I’d rather visit a hardware store. But Edoardo is a good friend, which is enough to get me to come look at a collection of fashions instead of a bunch of socket wrenches.
My idea of proper clothing is jeans and a tee shirt. Nevertheless I find myself taken with the color and style of his designs and with the sophistication and elegance of his boutique.
Given that Edoardo is newly transplanted from Mexico City, the large turnout is most gratifying. Guests lose no time digging into the collection, enthusiastically trying things on.
Edoardo helps a patron with a hat, adroitly following the salesman’s dictum: “Get the product into the customer’s hands.” Or in this case, onto their bodies.
The collection includes designs for men. My friend Michael Gibney models a shirt you won’t find at Wal-Mart.
The collection faces competition from clothing worn by the guests. This is a creative, artistic crowd. Near as I can tell, Edoardo’s designs are up to the challenge.
I wish I could comment knowledgeably about the clothing I saw, but let’s face it—I’m hopeless. This is not to say I am without a powerful interest in Edoardo’s boutique. Laura tells everyone that she WILL be shopping here.
Well, OK.
Los Cinco Señores
Paul (El Guapo) Latoures and I made the short drive from San Miguel de Allende, looking for a few hours’ diversion with a pair of digital cameras.
In the Eighteenth Century Jesuits arrived in Pozos bent on converting the indigenous Chichimeca. Finding the locals engaged in small-scale mining of precious metals, the monks lost no time executing a hostile takeover. As the old expression goes, they came to do good and they did well. In 1767, Charles III threw the Jesuits out of New Spain, and mining ceased for seventy years.
Mexico won independence from Spain in 1821 and within a generation, entrepreneurial miners arrived in Pozos. A boom ensued during which a few became very rich and many others slaved to help them get that way.
By the early Twentieth Century, mining profitability had become marginal, and the boom died with the onset of the Cristeros War in 1926. The last mine limped to a close in 1965.
Mine owners left behind monuments to their wealth. Ex-Hacienda Cinco Señores gives a sense of the opulence they enjoyed.
Spacious grounds, stately buildings, and lots of servants: baronial surroundings mediated the travails of living out here in the boondocks—more than a day’s travel on horseback from someplace cultured like Querétaro.
The ruins have an entirely different look than most old Mexican buildings. I am accustomed to the colonial architecture prevalent in San MIguel de Allende. These are much newer.
Ex-Hacienda Cinco Señores even has its own chapel. Paul’s photograph captures the forsaken loneliness of the region. Deserted buildings left behind after a mining boom remind me of Bodie, a wind-swept ghost town in Northern California.
Photo: Paul Latoures
(Photographer’s note: Paul photographed the chapel using one of my cameras. I had forgotten to tell him I had fitted it with a polarizing filter, which is why the sky looks so blue.)
Ordinary Pozos residents lived in houses made of adobe, not stone like those of the rich folks. Roofs have collapsed long ago. The only reason rain hasn’t dissolved the walls is that there is so little of it.
Entrance to the property enclosed by these adobe walls is discouraged in the time-honored way: doorways and windows filled with loose stones and bricks. Probably more effective than a NO TRESPASSING sign.
During the last two decades, foreigners have become interested in Pozos, attracted by tranquility, picturesque ruins, and low prices for houses and land. Several artists have moved here. Someone told me there were exactly eighteen hotel rooms in town, all of them comfortable and charming. There’s a couple of nice restaurants.
Efforts to promote Pozos as an artists’ colony have met with limited success up to now. For me, though, the draw is in the ruins, the history, the solitude.
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Thank you, all of you who shared your kind thoughts in the comments and emails in response to my post about my prostate cancer. They mean more to me than I can say.
Improving Mexican Justice
Now, if we can just fix the schools...