by Jeffrey R. Sipe

The first time I set foot in La Adelita, when it was still on Calle Umaran, the bartender immediately began speaking Spanish with me. I was new to San Miguel and spoke rudimentary Spanish laced with Portuguese, a combination that did not dissuade the bartender nor the other young patron at the bar from engaging in coherent if somewhat broken conversation with me.

I stayed for just one beer but when I passed by later in the evening, La Adelita was packed. It was a different crowd from that frequenting Berlin, the generally genial expat hangout located across the street. In those days, La Adelita served as a viable counterpoint to Berlin. The somewhat scruffy, cantina-like vibe was a welcome reminder that we really were in Mexico.

In 2023, after 13 years at the Umaran location, French-Canadian proprietor, Jean Francois Leblanc, generally known as "Francois," found himself jerry rigging repairs to a sagging ceiling that eventually the local building authorities deemed past the point of a quick fix. Forced to relocate, Francois found a new home for La Adelita at Calle Zacateros 48, a very short walk north of Calle Codo. Most of La Adelita's regulars made the move from Umaran to Zacateros.

"It's not very far but it's a different situation," Francois commented recently. "Here, it's walk-by traffic and on Umaran, you've got the whole centro crowds, the hotels, the tourists. But my customers are basically the same as before. My clientele is mainly coming later at night from their own bar and restaurant jobs."

Now, located just down the street from live-music venues, Raindog Lounge and Tupinamba, La Adelita also hosts a loyal coterie of local and foreign musicians late at night who come in for post-show drinks.

For Francois, it's been a winding road from semi-pro hockey in Los Angeles to film school at USC to production assistant on some major Hollywood blockbusters to venue manager in Canada before eventually finding a new calling as bar owner in San Miguel.

"Those were good times," he said of his years in LA. He tried film school at USC before eventually wrangling PA jobs on film sets and hanging out with the stars. His first film gig was on the TV series, "Love Boat," and he eventually worked on big budget productions including "Popeye" and "The World According to Garp."

"But everything changed when Belushi died," he recalled. "Even though everybody saw it coming, it had a huge influence on people's behavior. And then there was AIDS."

After returning to Canada where he managed nightclubs and other public venues for 20 years, he found himself at a wedding in San Miguel, which would soon become his home. He opened a French Mexican fusion restaurant inside La Canti, at the corner of Zacateros and Pila Seca, before opening La Adelita on Calle Umaran.

"It was the first restaurant named La Adelita to open in Mexico," he said. "I researched it and the only other place with the name La Adelita at the time was a titty bar in Tijuana…Now, there are a ton of places named La Adelita."

La Adelita was the nom de guerre of Adela Velarde who at the age of 15 in 1915 defied her wealthy parents and joined the revolutionary forces originally as a nurse. But like many of the Revolution's female forces, she physically supported the revolutionaries, going so far as to carry arms into battle herself. She was far from alone.

Adela Velarde
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Female members of the revolutionary forces, including nurses, cooks and others, often dressed as men to engage combat since women were legally barred from the front lines.

The female forces came to be known collectively as Las Adelitas, and they ultimately became ingrained in the collective consciousness with the popularization of the song, La Adelita, the lyrics of which were penned by, depending on your source, Adela's lover or, maybe, would-be lover. Then, the story goes, he read the lyrics to her as he lay in her arms dying.

Francois
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While the move to the new digs were unavoidable, the move also coincided with a general downturn in business not only in San Miguel but worldwide.

"I even saw it in Paris last year," Francois said, "but our clientele came with us. We have a strong base but 2024 was tough for everybody."

With people fleeing the US in reaction to Trump's assault on decency and the impending arrival of spring, the streets of San Miguel are experiencing a visible increase in visitors. Bars and restaurants are coming back to life.

"I got boycotted when I first opened on Umaran because I catered to my clientele," Francois recalled. "Of course, that was back when all the gringos were in their sixties, not their eighties, and it riled up some people. I played national soccer matches on my TVs, not American basketball games, and I lost all my American clients. There was a whole thing on 'Civil List' about it. But I'm going to cater to my clientele. I'm in Mexico and my clientele is Mexican."

Even though the clientele is largely Mexican, it is also as diverse as any bar you may enter in San Miguel. Everyone is welcomed with open arms, be they brown, black, white, gay, straight, old, young, Mexican, Icelandic, Chinese, Zimbabwean or just plain ol' people. It is, in its own unassuming way, a microcosm of San Miguel de Allende.

La Adelita is located at Zacateros 48 and is open 7 days a week from 4pm to 2am. No food is served but Bahji Curry House is on the building's second floor.

La Adelita, Zacateros 48

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Jeffrey R. Sipe is a writer/journalist, who, no matter how hard he writes, having grown up in Speedway, Indiana, still can’t get the sounds of race cars rounding Turn 4 out of his head. He has written about the film industry for Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, Sight and Sound, The Financial Times and other publications. He also once worked as the “boom guy” on a film that nobody saw, but he challenges everyone to see just how long they can hold a metal tube with a microphone attached over their heads.

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