NEWS & REPORTS

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March 4, 2005
“50 Years of Foreigners in San Miguel”
The 50s and 60s

by Holly Yasui

The first half of the century ended with a bang for the foreign community of San Miguel with an incident that underlined not only the vulnerability of foreigners who live in Mexico at the pleasure of the government, but also the importance of having good Mexican friends.

At the end of the 40s, McCarthy began his “witch-hunts” in the U.S., with far-reaching consequences. Thousands of miles away, the owner of the Escuela de Bellas Artes in San Miguel, Alfredo Campanela and the temperamental muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros had an explosive conflict regarding the administration of the school. Many teachers and students, tired of not having adequate equipment and supplies, sided with Siqueiros, who also happened to be a “card-carrying” member of the Mexican Communist party (which of course was not a crime in Mexico).

One night, a number of foreigners including Canadians Leonard and Reva Brooks, Yugoslavian-American painter James Pinto, and all-American boys Jack Baldwin and Stirling Dickinson, were summarily deported – rounded up by the federal police, put on a train, and shipped north to the border. After languishing in limbo for several days in a shabby hotel in Laredo, they were finally allowed to return to Mexico thanks to efforts on their behalf by General Ignacio Beteta, one of Brooks’ students.

After this incident, Felipe Cossío del Pomar, who had originally founded the Escuela, came back to Mexico from his homeland, Peru. Along with the dedicated Stirling Dickinson, he joined with the ex-governor of the state of Guanajuato, Enrique Fernández Martínez and his U.S.-American wife, Nell Harris, to found a new art school in San Miguel. They purchased a rambling property at the edge of town, the country home of the Counts of Canal, which had been built by Don Tomás de la Canal in the 18th century. After two years of extensive renovation and refurbishing of the beautiful colonial building and gardens, the first art classes at the Instituto Allende started in 1951.

The Instituto Allende, before and after restoration, 1950-51.

During the 50s and 60s, the Instituto boasted an impressive international roster of teachers and associates, including Italian artist Rico LeBrun, German sculptor Lothar Kestenbaum and his Estonian wife Mai Onno, and Filipino painter Romeo Tabuena and his Swedish wife Nina. Thousands of young people, mostly from the U.S. and Canada, swarmed into San Miguel to attend summer courses at the Instituto, which was incorporated with the University of Guanajuato, and many stayed to live and work in the increasingly cosmopolitan town. Thus San Miguel became a nucleus of creative and international activity.

Nagualfilms and the San Miguel Archives / Oral History Project has produced a short demonstration video that includes interviews with Instituto Allende founders Stirling Dickinson and Nell Harris, and artists Leonard and Reva Brooks (among others). This tape will be screened on Saturday, March 12 at the El Recreo Cultural Center, Recreo #4, at 5 PM, followed by a roundtable discussion with three people who lived and worked in San Miguel during the 50s and 60s: Barbara Barlow de Dobarganes, Dorothy Birk Vidargas, and James Hawkins.

Barbara Barlow was born near Toluca, in the state of Mexico, of a British father and a U.S.-American mother (Nell Harris). She grew up in Mexico City – enjoying the fact that Mexican boys who talked about the pretty blonde at the next table in restaurants or waiting in line behind her never realized that she spoke and understood Spanish perfectly. She went to high school in the United States, then returned to Mexico and moved to San Miguel in 1950. She married a medical doctor, sanmiguelense Felipe García Dobarganes, affectionately known as Dr. Pin (“Felipin” is a diminuitive of Felipe). She and her mother worked at the Instituto Allende from its inception.

Dorothy Birk came to San Miguel from Chicago in 1947, and quickly made many Mexican friends, in part because of her adventures as the first woman picador in local and regional bullfights – a career started on a dare made at the Cucaracha bar, which at that time was located on the Jardín. “The public was very much enthused to see a gringa being a picador,” she remembers modestly. Dorothy met her future husband, sanmiguelense José Vidargas, at the bowling alley in a tournament … her team from the Escuela de Bellas Artes lost the match, but Dorothy won a husband. She also worked as a bilingual secretary at the Instituto Allende for several years, as well as several other ventures including a dairy and interior decorating.

Jim Hawkins was born in Caspian, Michigan, raised in New Mexico, Arizona and Portland, Oregon. He came to San Miguel from New York City in 1954 and met his future wife, Carmen Masip, when she came by the boardinghouse where he was staying to sell tickets to a concert. A year later they married and in 1957, opened an art supply and framing shop / bookstore, El Colibrí, on the main square next to the Cucaracha bar. In 1959, they founded the Academia Hispanoamericana, the first dedicated Spanish language school in San Miguel, to serve the growing community of foreign residents.

The Center for Global Justice is sponsoring the video screening and roundtable as part of its “50 Years of Foreigners in San Miguel” project. The half-hour video was directed by Fran Robbins and Leticia Echelin, and produced by Adeline Medalia, Paula Zacharias and Carlos Pascual. Admission to both the video screening and roundtable discussion is $50, and donations to help continue this project will be gladly accepted. In particular, funds are needed to cover the cost of additional videotaping, editing and research. Volunteers who can transcribe from DVDs and audiotapes are also very welcome. For more information, please call the Center for Global Justice at 150-0025.

Fourth of July fiesta at the Instituto Allende, 1950s. Founders Enrique Fernández Martínez, ex-governor of the state of Guanajuato, his wife Nell Harris from Hot Springs, Arkansas, and family. Photo by Peter Olwyler, courtesy of San Miguel Archives.