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September 14, 2025
by Catherine Marenghi
This article is part of an ongoing series on poets and poetry with roots in San Miguel.
Of all the poets who have set foot in San Miguel, perhaps the most famous is Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997), one of the boldest voices in American poetry and one of the original Beat Poets. In the late 1940s and 1950s, the Beats were part of a new generation of postwar writers who, in response to the atrocities of war – the Holocaust, the atom bomb – rebelled against the emerging Cold War and the stifling conventions of mainstream American life.
Beat poets chose to write in an authentic, spontaneous style. "First thought, best thought" was how Ginsberg described their writing method, which was often fueled by hallucinogenic drugs, sexual freedom, and Eastern religion. The Beats also took inspiration and vocal rhythms from jazz music.
The Beat Poets were initially clustered in New York City, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. By the 1950s, poets at the heart of the movement had settled in the Bay Area, especially in neighborhoods near Beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti's famous bookstore, City Lights. They also traveled extensively across Mexico, especially in the 1950s and 1960s.
Whether their travels intersected with San Miguel de Allende is a matter of some debate. There are those who have sworn they remember seeing Ginsberg hanging out at San Miguel's infamous Cucaracha Bar together with his longtime lover, Beat poet Neal Cassady. These raconteurs include long-time San Miguel resident and former journalist Lou Christine, a familiar presence in the local bar scene until his passing in September 2024. In a preface to the first volume of Solamente en San Miguel, an anthology of writings inspired by San Miguel, Christine shared tales of Sanmiguelenses rubbing elbows with Cassady and other Beat poets at local drinking holes.
There are others who swear that Ginsberg and Cassady were never in San Miguel at the same time. Some say Ginsberg never made it to San Miguel at all, and that tales to the contrary are nothing more than urban legend. More on that later.
One thing for certain is that the stories of Ginsberg and Cassady are deeply intertwined, both in their intimate lives and in Ginsburg's poetry. The two shared an on-again-off-again love affair spanning twenty years.
Neal Cassady, photo by Allen Ginsberg
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Cassady's Influence on the Beats
Cassady was a prominent and surprisingly influential member of the Beat Generation of the 1950s and 1960s, even though he published only two short fragments of prose in his lifetime. His letters, poems, and an unfinished autobiographical novel have been published after his death.
Born in Salt Lake City in 1926 and raised in Denver, Cassady spent much of his teen years involved in petty crime and was in and out of jail. In October 1945, after being released from prison, Cassady married 16-year-old Lu Anne Henderson. In 1946, the couple traveled to New York City to visit a friend who happened to attend Columbia University. There Cassady met Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, who also attended Columbia.
Although Cassady did not attend Columbia, he soon became friends with Kerouac, Ginsberg and their Columbia acquaintances, who later established themselves as pivotal figures in the Beat Movement. While in New York, Cassady persuaded Kerouac to teach him to write fiction.
Cassady's second wife, Carolyn, later stated, "Neal, having been raised in the slums of Denver amongst the world's lost men, determined to make more of himself, to become somebody, to be worthy and respected. His genius mind absorbed every book he could find, whether literature, philosophy, or science. Jack [Kerouac] had a formal education, which Neal envied, but intellectually he was more than a match for Jack, and they enjoyed long discussions on every subject."
Cassady is notable for exerting considerable intellectual influence over Kerouac, whom he convinced to abandon his flowery prose and to adopt a raw, stream-of-consciousness style based on his real-life experience. Truman Capote would later quip, "That's not writing; it's typing." Capote felt great writing required deep thought, crafting of words, and meticulous revision, not the voluminous spontaneous outpourings of the Beat writers.
Ginsberg, Big Sur 1965, photo by Peter Orlovsky
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Ginsberg, born in 1926 and raised in Paterson, N.J., was a resident of Hartley Hall at Columbia, where other Beat Generation poets such as Kerouac and Herbert Gold also lived. One can only imagine the late-night conversations at that dormitory! Ginsberg had already published his first poems in the Paterson Morning Call while in high school. Ginsberg became interested in the works of Walt Whitman, inspired by a high school teacher's passionate reading.
In 1943, Ginsberg enrolled at Columbia on a scholarship from the Young Men's Hebrew Association of Paterson. Ginsberg intended to study law, but later changed his major to literature. While at Columbia, Ginsberg was already an active writer and poet. He contributed to the Columbia Review literary journal and the Jester humor magazine, won the Woodberry Poetry Prize, served as president of the Philolexian Society a (literary and debate group), and joined Boar's Head Society (a poetry society). In 1948, he graduated from Columbia with a B.A in English and American Literature.
According to The Poetry Foundation, Ginsberg spent several months in a mental institution after he pleaded insanity during a hearing. He was being prosecuted for allegedly harboring stolen goods in his dorm room. He claimed the stolen property was not his, but belonged to an acquaintance. Perhaps he was protecting Cassady, who was already his lover, and who had a criminal history of petty theft? In these years Ginsberg also took part in public readings at the Episcopal St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery, which would later hold a memorial service for him after his death.
Ginsberg, Kerouac and Cassady were also members of the infamous "Merry Pranksters," a counter-culture group that formed around American author Ken Kesey in 1964 and promoted the use of psychedelic drugs. Their early escapades, including traversing the U.S. in a psychedelically painted school bus, were chronicled by Tom Wolfe in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Cassady was the principal bus driver in 1964.
Cassady was a major part of Kerouac's life and literary experience. He was the model for most of Kerouac's heroes, especially Dean Moriarty in On the Road. Remarkably, in the years to come Cassady was to serve as a model for characters in half a dozen other novels and movies, and everyone from Tom Wolfe to Hunter S. Thompson to Ken Kesey wrote about him.
With little formal education, Cassady had managed to fascinate and inspire some of the most interesting and creative minds of two generations. Cassady's influence extended to the rock lyricists of the 1960s and 1970s. The Grateful Dead, The Doobie Brothers, and Tom Waits all mention him in songs. A meandering soul, Cassady traveled cross-country with both Kerouac and Ginsberg on multiple occasions, including the trips documented in Kerouac's On the Road. He also wandered all over Mexico with the Merry Pranksters, ultimately finding his way to San Miguel de Allende in the late 1960s.
Allen Ginsberg and Neal Cassady, San Francisco 1955
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Love Letters
Based on their letters, many of which have been preserved, Ginsberg and Cassady began their love affair during the Columbia University years in the mid-1940s.
In a March 1947 letter to Ginsberg written from Denver, Colorado, Cassady writes, "Let us then find true awareness by realizing that each of us is depending on the other for fulfillment. In that realization lies, I believe, the germ that may grow to the great heights of complete oneness . . . .
"I really don't know how much I can be satisfied to love you, I mean bodily, you know I, somehow, dislike pricks & men & before you, had consciously forced myself to be homosexual, now, I'm not sure whether with you I was not just forcing myself unconsciously, that is to say, any falsity on my part was all physical, in fact, any disturbance in our affair was because of this. You meant so much to me, I now feel I was forcing a desire for you bodily as a compensation to you for all you were giving me. This is a sad state and upsets me for I want to become nearer to you than any one & still I don't want to be unconsciously insincere by passing over my non-queerness to please you. Allen, this is straight, what I truly want is to live with you from Sept. to June."
Soon afterward, in another letter, Cassady wrote further of his bisexuality and sexual ambivalence toward Ginsberg: "I can't promise a darn thing, I know I'm bisexual, but prefer women, there's a slimmer line than you think between my attitude toward love and yours, don't be so concerned, it'll fall into line. Beyond that – who knows? Let's try it & see, huh?"
Many of Ginsberg's love letters to Cassady were destroyed, possibly to conceal the affair from Cassady's wives and other female companions, but one letter from Ginsberg to Cassady, written in fall 1947, survives and is excepted here:
"Is not my state so wretched that you who once loved me cannot think of me without guilt? Or if it is guilt that will call you, then guilt, I am not so strong that I can afford to choose my weapons. Didn't you first come to me, seduce me – don't you remember how you made me stop trembling in shame and drew me to you? Do you know what I felt then, as if you were a saint, inhuman, to have touched me so, and comforted me, even deceived me a moment in my naivete to think I was loved. I remember that night, and it is so sad now in my mind, to think that it did happen, if once, that I think of death and only death afterwards. Do you think I am lying again? I don't mean Death as suicide, I mean the unknown, the unforeseen, the horrible."
Ginsburg further writes, "I would go on and on but in my eye I am afraid that all my emotions will only bore you and that you will turn from me with every pleading phrase, I am afraid that you could and this leaves me now as I end, speaking to you, sitting here, waiting in silence, speaking to you no more o god, Neal, please. Come back don't be harsh on me I can't help this I can only apologize and beg and beg and beg."
Mug shot Neal Cassady, Denver 1944
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Cassady's Final Years
Cassady drove to Mexico with George Walker, one of the Merry Pranksters, in 1966 to join Ken Kesey and others. They kept on the move, performing their Acid Tests in Manzanillo, Guadalajara, and Mexico City before returning to San Francisco that October.
Cassady and Walker drove to Puerto Vallarta in early January 1967. They rented a house and stayed for two months. There they met the Van Leeuwen sisters, who invited Cassady and Walker to stay with them in San Miguel if they ever visited. Cassady and Walker left Puerto Vallarta in April 1967 and headed to Oaxaca to join friends. Early in the drive, however, they experienced car trouble. Since San Miguel was reasonably close, they decided to come to San Miguel and have the car fixed. Cassady and Walker stayed with the Van Leeuwens in the Palomar Building on San Francisco. This was the first time Cassady had been in San Miguel.
Between May 1967 and early 1968, Cassady traveled back and forth between the U.S. and Mexico, including Puerto Vallarta and San Miguel. Cassady's final visit to San Miguel was in early 1968, residing at Beneficencia 6-A.
On February 3, 1968, Cassady attended a wedding party in San Miguel. By one account, he was an uninvited guest who had accidentally stumbled into the party. He was warmly welcomed, even though he was already intoxicated. As he was leaving the party, pumped up with Seconal and pulque, Cassady reportedly announced he would walk the railroad tracks from San Miguel to Celaya, about 15 miles, for the express purpose of counting the railroad ties. Clad only in jeans and a T-shirt on a cold and rainy night, he later collapsed on the railroad tracks and was discovered the next morning in a coma. Legend has it that his final utterance was "64,928" – the number of railroad ties he had counted.
Anton Black, later a professor at El Paso Community College, claims to have discovered Cassady and carried him over his shoulders to the local post office building. Cassady was then transported to the closest hospital, where he died a few hours later on February 4. He was 41 years old.
The exact cause of Cassady's death remains uncertain. The physician who performed the autopsy wrote simply, "general congestion in all systems." When interviewed later, the physician stated that he was unable to give an accurate report because Cassady was a foreigner and there were drugs involved. "Exposure" is commonly cited as his cause of death, although his widow believes he may have died of kidney failure.
Ginsberg, Lake Patzcuaro, Michoacan, 1954
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Brief Encounters and Urban Legends
Cassady and Ginsberg have both been repeatedly linked with the storied Cucaracha Bar, a late-night drinking hole founded in 1947 and still operating in the town's historic Centro. The Cucaracha was clearly a magnet for famous writers and artists, including the Beats. Among those who were frequently spotted drinking there were Kerouac, William Burroughs, Ginsberg and Cassady.
But were they ever there together?
Cassady's visits to San Miguel and his death are well documented, although Ginsberg's presence in the town is less clear. Award-winning author Wayne Greenhaw, author of Fighting the Devil in Dixie and 21 other books, spent many years dividing this time between San Miguel and his native Alabama. In an interview that appeared in a 2010 article "Searching for Neal Cassady in San Miguel de Allende" by novelist Peter Ferry, Greenhaw told Ferry, "Oh hell yes, I knew Neal Cassady. Used to drink with him in the old Cucaracha Bar. Cassady was intense and introspective and liked to talk philosophy.
"Fact, one time I was in there and here comes Cassady and Kerouac and another fella circling the Jardín [the town's central plaza] in an old green Mercedes with a naked girl in the back seat, naked girl named Sunshine," he said. The year, according to Greenhaw, was 1960 or 1961, and the other "fella" was Allen Ginsburg.
But he added, "Might have been Corso." Beat poet Gregory Corso was known to pass himself off as Allen Ginsberg from time to time.
Such is the fallibility of human memory. Was it Ginsberg or Corso? Was Kerouac there, too? Was it 1960? 1961?
Ginsberg, Calcutta, 1962
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Author and filmmaker Harry Burrus, another long-time San Miguel resident, sought to set the record straight with a detailed timeline. Knowing that Beat writers Kerouac, Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, and, to a lesser extent, Cassady maintained detailed journals and were voluminous letter writers, sharing the most personal details of their daily lives, Burrus pored over this substantial paper trail. He was able to track the movement of the Beats in the 1950s and 1960s and wrote a detailed 2010 piece entitled "The Beats in San Miguel: Setting the Record Straight" – a direct response to Peter Ferry's article.
As Burrus reported, Cassady was not in San Miguel until 1967. He was incarcerated in California in the spring of 1958 and released on June 3, 1960. A condition of his three-year parole was he could not leave the county, much less the country. From the spring of 1958 to 1963, Neal Cassady was in California and certainly not in San Miguel de Allende.
Greenhaw had insisted that "Cassady was in and out of San Miguel all through the '60s. A dozen times or more."
Apparently not.
Burrus was able to document the following:
Jack Kerouac was never in San Miguel.
Ginsberg and Cassady were never in San Miguel at the same time. Ginsberg visited in May 1954, staying at the Sautto Hotel (misspelled as "Salto" in his letter) after visiting Guanajuato, and Neal Cassady was here for portions of 1967 and early 1968.
William Burroughs was never in San Miguel. He arrived in Mexico in 1949, staying primarily in Mexico City, and left in 1952.
Another report comes from Jaime Fernandez, a former mayor of San Miguel and member of a prominent family that still owns and once resided at the Instituto Allende for years. He recalls that he used to see Ginsberg as a teacher at the Instituto. He remembers Ginsberg walking to class with a suit and a bowtie, totally unlike the disheveled picture we might be accustomed to seeing. "A total gentleman, a professor! And he'd carry his books under his arm." The dates of these encounters are unclear, but they are consistent with Burrus's timeline.
According to Burrus, San Miguel was never the main attraction for any of these writers: "For the Beats, Mexico City was the bull's-eye. It offered a cornucopia of delights—cheap rent and eats, whores, boys, and drugs. Local citizens generally lacked curiosity about what other people were doing and had a high tolerance for unusual behavior."
Ginsberg Masterpieces
Ginsberg is forever connected to San Miguel through his connection to Neil Cassady. Here are excerpts from a lengthy poem Ginsberg wrote on February 10, 1968, 5:00-5:30 AM, on hearing the news of Cassady's death:
