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Title:
San Miguel de Allende : Mexicans, foreigners, and the making of a world heritage site / Lisa Pinley Covert.
Author:
Covert, Lisa Pinley, author.
Publication Information:
Lincoln : University of Nebraska Press, [2017]
Call Number:
F1391.S2 C68 2017
Abstract:
"Struggling to free itself from a century of economic decline and stagnation, the town of San Miguel de Allende, nestled in the hills of central Mexico, discovered that its "timeless" quality could provide a way forward. While other Mexican towns pursued policies of industrialization, San Miguel--on the economic, political, and cultural margins of revolutionary Mexico--worked to demonstrate that it preserved an authentic quality, earning designation as a "typical Mexican town" by the Guanajuato state legislature in 1939. With the town's historic status guaranteed, a coalition of local elites and transnational figures turned to an international solution--tourism--to revive San Miguel's economy and to reinforce its Mexican identity. 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 the intersections of economic development and national identity formation 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."-- Provided by publisher.

"An exploration of the intersections of economic development and national identity formation in San Miguel de Allende during the twentieth century which analyzes both the Mexican and the foreign population within national, international, and transnational contexts"-- Provided by publisher.
ISBN:
9781496200389

9781496200600
Series:
The Mexican experience

Mexican experience.
Physical Description:
xxix, 289 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm.
Contents:
Making a Typical Mexican Town -- Good Neighbors, Good Catholics, and Competing Visions -- Bringing the Mexican Miracle to San Miguel -- Containing Threats to Patriarchal Order and the Nation -- San Miguel's Two Service Economies.
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