Mexico Weekly and Mexico Today

Mexico City was a magnet in the 1950s for some of U.S.' greatest Beat Generation writers − Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg among them.

Many of their old haunts in Mexico’s capital have faded. But fans can still find traces of their sojourns here − in cafes and cantinas, along boulevards and even at the site of an infamous killing, the Associated Press reported.

They came to Mexico City seeking a refuge from mainstream America in what they saw as a magical and alien land south of the border. They were searching for enlightenment, and sometimes fleeing criminal cases.

Their stomping ground was the Roma neighborhood, once-wealthy that was in decline by the time Kerouac and Burroughs lived there. In recent years, Roma has enjoyed a mild rebirth and is filled with pretty parks, hidden cafes, galleries and upscale restaurants. But, it still has a bohemian, down-at-the-heels side with working-class eateries, cheap hotels and repair shops. Most of the Beat landmarks are in Roma, within walking distance of one another.

The first stop would be an anonymous building at Monterrey 122 on the busy corner of Chihuahua Street. It’s a dingy apartment block, with cheap taco and enchilada restaurants on the ground floor, but it has a notorious past. During a night of drinking in 1951, Burroughs, the Beat Generation’s godfather, shot his wife dead in an upstairs flat in a game of William Tell gone awry.

Burroughs, the author of “Naked Lunch,” “Junky” and “Queer,” had placed a glass on Joan Vollmer’s head and fired his pistol, and hit her head. He was imprisoned for 13 days and granted bail. He eventually was convicted of negligent homicide and given a two-year suspended sentence. He later wrote that without Vollmer’s death, he would never have become a writer.

The apartment where Burroughs shot Vollmer was above the legendary Bounty Bar, where expatriate writers drank till dawn. The bar now is an unassuming cantina called Krika’s, where locals eat cheap meals largely unaware of what happened above their heads more than a half-century ago.

“Every now and then, I see tourists standing outside looking at the building, wondering if it could really be the place where it all happened,” said Huberto Suárez, owner of Krika’s. “There are no statues or plaques, so I tell them that this is it.”

Even more anonymous is José Alvarado 37, a rundown white building on a tiny side street across from the Plaza Insurgentes shopping mall and a Sears outlet. Its black metal door is uninviting and the neighboring building bears a large yellow sign that reads: “Housing yes! Evictions no!”

This was Burroughs’ first address in Mexico City − named Cerrada de Medellín 37 at the time − after fleeing a drug possession case in the United States. He was there when Kerouac and his buddy, Neal Cassady, showed up in 1950 on their famous road trip to Mexico. Cassady was characterized as Dean Moriarity in Kerouac’s classic, “On the Road.” Kerouac later penned the poem, “Cerrada de Medellín Blues,” according to AP.

While Kerouac was inspired by Mexico’s indigenous culture and spiritual Mayan roots, Burroughs’ reasons for living in Mexico City from 1949 to 1952 were more practical, at least at first: It was a place to avoid the law, live cheaply and satisfy his vices.

“I liked Mexico City from the first day of my first visit there,” Burroughs wrote in the introduction to “Queer.”
“In 1949, it was a cheap place to live, with a large foreign colony, fabulous whorehouses and restaurants, cockfights and bullfights, and every conceivable diversion. A single man could live well there for two dollars a day.”

A 10-minute walk from Cerrada de Medellín is the former site of the Beats’ informal Mexico City headquarters, Orizaba 210. The original building was demolished and replaced by a red-brick apartment block. Occasionally, a lone guide shows up with a handful of tourists, staring at it forlornly before pointing to the neighboring building, which he says used to be its twin.

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