The Guadalajara Reporter

Memoirs of life at El Amparo Mine, Etzatlán, Jalisco; tranquility, tragedy and always plenty of music

El Amparo is located 65 kilometers due west of Guadalajara and for many years its silver mines were the richest in Jalisco. Engineer Salvador Landeros grew up at the mines and eventually became General Manager of all the operations.)

I was born in what was then called the Villa of Etzatlán in the state of Jalisco on December 31, 1905. At the age of three months, I went to live in a remote place called Amparo where my mother had been hired to wet-nurse Fany, the newly born daughter of Mr. Santiago Howard, Manager of the Amparo Mining Company. And that’s where I grew up.

One of the people from my childhood I could never forget was a man with only one leg whom everybody called No Ambition (Poca Lucha). This man couldn’t work, but he had a special talent: he knew by heart all the stories of the Thousand and One Nights. We children all loved to get together with him at night to listen to his stories. Sometimes the grown-ups would come join us kids and everyone would give ten or fifteen centavos to our fascinating story-teller. And that’s how I passed my time before I reached school age, listening to those stories and playing. It was a peaceful time.

I fell in love with music at a tender age. Every time I heard music playing near the main office, I would go listen. The waltzes from that period were so exquisite I felt I was in heaven and when a string quintet would play them at sunrise, why, even the dogs stopped barking and perked up their ears to listen attentively.

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