The Lincoln Journal Star recently published a travel article by Randy Moody detailing his recent trip to San Miguel de Allende to celebrate Dia de Los Muertos. Moody describes face painting for the night parade, visiting Biblioteca Publica, and the “Sistine Chapel of the Americas” which is about seven miles outside the town. 

In San Miguel de Allende: Mexicans, Foreigners, and the Making of a World Heritage Site (Nebraska, 2017), Lisa Pinley Covert examines how this once small, quiet town became a UNESCO World Heritage Site and home to one of Mexico’s largest foreign-born populations.

By exploring economic development and national identity in San Miguel, she reveals how towns and cities in Mexico grappled with change over the course of the twentieth century. Covert similarly identifies the historical context shaping the promise and perils of a shift from an agricultural to a service-based economy. In the process, she demonstrates how San Miguel could be both typically Mexican and palpably foreign and how the histories behind each process were inextricably intertwined.

Jason Ruiz, author of Americans in the Treasure House: Travel to Porfirian Mexico and the Cultural Politics of Empire said the book is “…a richly detailed work that blends history with cultural politics.”

San Miguel de Allende is available in hardcover and paperback—and now fifty percent off in the winter sale!