Travel Guide Mineral De Pozos

Just 45 minutes from San Miguel de Allende, Mineral de Pozos is a small village of 3,000 souls in a hilly, semi-desert region of starry nights. As early as 1576, the Spaniards established a guard post 5 km from today's village, in a territory then dominated by tribes hostile to their presence. The invaders soon learned of the existence of seams exploited in pre-Hispanic times, and it was here that the Jesuits founded the Hacienda Santa Brigida a few years later, whose three conical stone chimneys would become the symbol of the village's mining wealth for centuries to come (gold, silver, copper, iron, lead, mercury, etc.). However, until the middle of the 19th century, the history of mining was marked by upheavals and abandonments, as conflicts arose over the War of Independence, the Reformation and French intervention. In the end, it was the consolidation of power under President Porfirio Diaz that led to an unprecedented demographic and economic boom, attracting national and international capital to the area. By the end of the 19th century, over 300 mines were being exploited around the village, with some 30 haciendas carrying out the work. At the beginning of the 20th century, the town's 80,000 inhabitants (compared with 8,000 50 years earlier) saw the arrival of railroads, telephones and theaters, as well as the installation of some of the big names of the time (including La Fama, still open today in the main square). But then came the revolution that broke out in 1910 and upset the plans of the mining industrialists, not to mention the devastation wrought by the Cristero War (1926-1929) and the accidental flooding of a large part of the mines in 1923. A new era of abandonment began, leaving the village with barely 200 inhabitants in the 1950s, giving the place its reputation as a ghost town... In the mid-1990s, a few artists began to settle here, as did a few hotels, but it was above all the job opportunities in the industrial basin of the neighboring state of Queretaro that preluded the village's rebirth. In 2017, the Modelo school, a flagship of popular education under the presidency of Porfirio Diaz, reopened its doors as an arts training center. The village hasn't said its last word..For visitors, its allure is truly fascinating, as Mineral de Pozos has retained most of its old buildings along cobbled streets. It's easy to stroll through its small squares, around which most of the hotels and restaurants are concentrated. The ruins of more than thirty metal-mining haciendas, which once made the area famous, can be explored (on foot, by bike or on horseback), and the surrounding landscape, bristling with these splendid buildings, is a pleasure for the senses.