Several of Mexico’s richest gold and silver mines were located near the town of Etzatlán, which lies 70 kilometers west of Guadalajara.
They were operated by a U.S. concern, the Amparo Mining Company. Over the years I’ve collected stories about the extraordinary prosperity which the mines brought not only to the foreign managers, but to the miners as well, all of whom appeared to have formed one big, happy family.
The only fly in the ointment was the fact that most of those miners went on strike in 1926, which eventually resulted in the closing of all the mines in the hills above Etzatlán. The miners had high salaries, free housing, free education, two supermarkets offering the finest food and clothing in the whole country, a first-class hospital, baseball, several orchestras, soccer, basketball, volleyball, electricity (before any town in the area) and even their own theater where they could watch silent movies, talkies, operas and concerts by the greatest artists of the day.
So why did they march off in protest to Mexico City behind leftist organizer (and famous muralist) David Alfaro Siqueiros?
At long last I found some answers to my questions in a newly published book by Etzatlán’s historian Carlos Enrique Parra Ron. The title is “Don Faustino ... del Amparo al Desamparo,” which might roughly be translated as “Don Faustino ... Amparo from Bonanza to Bust.”
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