Mines in Guanajuato Mexico Where My Ancestors Toiled

Article I found online as resource for this blog entry, the pictures are from the article.


Mines



Guanajuato had its beginnings in the discovery of prodigious silver mines, which at the end of the eighteenth century converted the city into the largest silver producer ever known up to that time. The first discoveries are shrouded in legend, making it difficult to distinguish reality from fiction. However, there seems to be no doubt that it was in the year 1558 that work began on the first mine shafts of the Rayas and Mellado mines, and it was in that same year that the famous mother lode of Guanajuato was discovered from those very mine shafts. This generous vein runs through the hills that border the city to the north and northeast, and it has left on the surface a constellation of mines and mine shafts channeling downward to catch the vein in its sinuous trajectory.

On the tops of these hills, there are quite a few impressive ruins which signal the presence of mining work. Sure enough, nestled in the spaces between these hills one finds the mines of Calderones, El Cedro, and El Cubo, at the south end of the city; and in the hills at the north end, Peregrina, Villalpando, Peñafiel, San Nicolás, Sirena, La Garrapata, Rayas-Mellado, La Cata, Tepeyac, Valenciana, Santa Ana, La Luz, and many more.

Bolded pueblecitos where my Grandfather knew and Great Grandmother, Maria Elena Eduiges Ulloa, was born in La Luz, aka as a "mineral" or mining city. Buelito actually showed me and my sister Linda, where these cities were located. The children that were born into the family were born along the mine routes. Some born in those places where their father mined for his livelihood.

I know that my great-grandfathers worked in these mines too for several generations before my own grandfather, Ricardo did. He worked in them as a child of twelve years old until he left Mexico in his late twenties when he and my grandmother traveled by train to the United States in 1916. Working in the mines was not healthy then either. They did not live to old age like my grandfather did. He was 95 when he died.