Cervantino is a three week international performing arts festival held in the month of October. Each year it is hosted by a different country, this year, 2013, it is Uruguay, and the beautiful city of Puebla, which is south east of Mexico City.
The festival has something for everyone, from classical ballet, to electronic music and light shows held in the tunnels below the city. Spend a week here and you could see a jazz show one night, listen to an orchestra in the beautiful Templo de la Compania another night, and take in a play yet another night. Mix in all of the street performances that start up around noon in the many plazas and you have a week of entertainment gluttony.
I arrived in Guanajuato October 22nd and the festival was in it’s last week; this year it went from Oct, 9 to Oct, 27th. My friends home is just three hundred feet from the Explanada de la Alhondiga which is one of the most historical buildings in Guanajuato and serves as an out door venue for many of the music shows. Air fare down here, and a new laptop to start this blog with meant that I was looking for the free shows, and the Alhondiga is just the place. I saw Tony Allen, an afro music band from Nigeria and France, who I really liked, on Thursday night for free. Then Saturday night I caught Zap Mama who has the strongest, most playful, and sexy voice that I have heard, also for free. But what stuck me the most was the sense of place. Here I was rockin out to a woman from the Republic of Congo, with a Mexican audience, on the steps of a building that was built between 1797, and 1809. It’s a wonderful feeling, a blend of old world, youth, and internationalism, it is a feeling of being in the world rather then from a country.
A little fare warning. During Cervantino, Guanajuato fills to the rim with visitors, so get a room before you arrive, and once you get here go buy tickets for the shows you want to see, popular shows sell out fast. Also, Guanajuato is normally noisy, but during Cervantino this place just roars, so if your looking for quiet, sedate, I’m going on vacation to relax, well this isn’t it. But if your into city wide parties with thousands of new friends then come on down. Besides Cervantino, Guanajuato also hosts an international film festival, and from what I can find it is scheduled for July 25 to August 3rd of 2014.
As I write this the city, just out side my window, is getting ready for Dia de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead...more later, Mexico is calling.
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