Culture Stop: Muelle de San Blas in Nayarit, Mexico

One of the biggest hits from globally recognized Mexican music group, Mana, is about a love story that takes place in El Muelle de San Blas (San Blas Wharf), once a prominent wharf in Nayarit.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow originally from Portland, Maine, wrote a poem about it called 'The Bells of San Blas', recalling the end of an era of Spanish colonization and the promise of the Nayarit region. There is a plaque on the nearby church with one of the verses:

They are a voice of the Past,
Of an age that is fading fast,
Of a power austere and grand;
When the flag of Spain unfurled
Its folds o’er this western world,
And the Priest was lord of the land.

The chapel that once looked down
On the little seaport town
Has crumbled into the dust;
And on oaken beams below
The bells swing to and fro,
And are green with mould and rust.

O Bells of San Blas, in vain
Ye call back the Past again!
The Past is deaf to your prayer;
Out of the shadows of night
The world rolls into light;
It is daybreak everywhere...


What other pieces of film, literature or music do you know that San Blas Wharf or the region of Nayarit have influenced?