Mexico's Mineral de Pozos: A ghost town comes alive as an artist colony

I arrived in eerie, old Mineral de Pozos in the middle of a half-sunny afternoon, with cotton-candy cloud shadows creeping all over the adobe rubble, the reclaimed ruins, the cactus thickets and the little-trod cobblestone streets. ¶Never heard of the place, a hotel clerk had said in Spanish as I prepared to make the 50-mile trip here from Querétaro. ¶ Another clerk piped up, I have. It's small. ¶Very small, said a taxi driver. ¶ Now I was here, paying the cabbie, waving goodbye, turning to face a scene as dusty and forsaken as the one Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid found upon their cinematic arrival in Bolivia. ¶ Bleached skulls hung atop old poles. The hands on the clock that towered over the main plaza were frozen. At an abandoned chapel that now serves as a goat pen, 4-foot cactuses rose from the eaves. I could have fired a cannon in that main plaza and hit nobody, although it might have disturbed a sleeping dog or two.

By Christopher Reynolds

November 16, 2008