San Luis Potosí

I spent just over a week in the city (and state) of San Luis Potosí, Mexico. I planned to do archival research but did not know what to expect.

I picked San Luis Potosí because it was the only state not on the highest level of “do not travel” from the Canadian and US governments in a region known for mining. Since I am traveling with the support of internal grants, I thought this might mean less paperwork (looking back, I am not sure it would have mattered).

I went to two museums, one dedicated to the work of the Mexican surrealist painter and sculptor Remedios Varo.

I also wandered around the downtown, and saw a monument to victims of feminicide (genocide of women) and graffiti protesting the fact that the government is not doing enough.

I had found an article that gave an outline of every archive in the state, which was super useful, and I figured that the easiest archive to access would be the one from the state government, since government offices are typically open to the public.

The first day I went to the archive, the archive workers were doing some kind of training until later in the day. I solved the problem of “too much time” by having delicious Mexican breakfasts overlooking one of the many beautiful squares in downtown San Luis Potosí. Sidebar: it transpired that this training was a weeklong event but that was only posted after I left on Wednesday.

The archive staff gave me clear instructions on the kind of letter to bring back the next day so that they would have a record of my visit and they let me use the search database and read documents without this letter. There were very few people in the archive, which meant I had plenty of time to ask questions. I chatted a bit with a grad student, and it looked like a few other grad students, and then some older men who could have been academics or academic adjacent, or who were either researching family history or the history of their towns.

I learned that almost the entire state was mined for some kind of natural resource from conquest onwards. Today, companies from my home on native land (Canadian mining enterprises) are doing a very good job of using 21st century technology to get whatever minerals are left. I found some interesting maps, which are different than maps of mines in the US and maps of this region in the colonial period, which I saw in an archive in Spain. I learned that nearly every mine is named after a saint and that nearly every town is also named after a saint. These things seem somewhat self-evident so I am not sure what I will do with this information. I also consulted some books and theses at the Universidad Autónoma de San Luis.

On my last day in San Luis Potosí I took a tour to Real de Catorce, a former mining town turned pilgrimage site. But that will be part of a future post.