Diplomat and poet Francisco Izábal Iriarte found peace at Lake Chapala

Orator, poet, jeweler and diplomat Francisco Izábal Iriarte was born in the port city of Mazatlán, Sinaloa, in 1871, but lived much of his adult life in Guadalajara. Claims on social media that he (and two sisters) settled in Guadalajara after 1910 are contradicted by contemporaneous newspaper accounts which show that Izábal was definitely a resident of Guadalajara by the 1890s, perhaps even earlier.

Izábal, who never married, was exceptionally well connected and a member of numerous civic and political committees and groups. He was a prominent leader of the Sinaloan community in Guadalajara, and led fund-raising efforts whenever his native state suffered from storms, disease or earthquakes. In 1897, he was one of the small group accompanying General Cañedo, then Governor of Sinaloa, on a business trip to Mexico City.

Izábal was a member of the Guadalajara city council, and worked with numerous other prominent individuals, including Manuel Cuesta Gallardo, Eduardo Collignon, Andrés Arroyo de Anda, Enrique Álvarez del Castillo, etc. Among other things, Izábal was actively involved in plans to rename city streets.

Despite being a prominent supporter of President Porfirio Díaz, Izábal and his family emerged relatively unscathed, with most of their extensive landholdings, including the Hacienda de Peñuelas in the state of Aguascalientes, still intact, after the ravages and retributions of the Mexican Revolution.

Izábal published several poems in the 1890s in a relatively short-lived journal called Flor de Lis; these included one in memory of the illustrious Lake Chapala-connected poet Esther Tapia de Castellanos. In 1902, Izábal wrote at least two poems relating to the lake which were published in the national periodical El Mundo Ilustrado.

Here is one of them, with a loose translation into English:

Al Lago de Chapala  / To Lake Chapala

Francisco Izábal Iriarte. 1902. “Al Lago de Chapala  / To Lake Chapala”

In 1906, Izábal accompanied his two sisters, Aurelia (two years older) and Alejandra (two years younger) when they left Guadalajara by train en route to Chapala. (It is unclear if they alighted at Atequiza to take the stagecoach, or continued as far as Ocotlán in order to catch the steamer back to Chapala).

Their brother, Dr Conrado Izábal Iriarte (1875-1936), was a medical specialist. After studying in Mexico City and Paris, Conrado held a high-ranking position at the Hospital General de México from 1907 to 1911, and moved to join his siblings in Guadalajara in 1916, where, seven years later, he co-founded the Unión Médica de Guadalajara.

Chalet Izabál Iriarte (Calle Libertad), ca. 1908. Photo: Smarth. Postcard published by Alba y Fernández.

The family home in Guadalajara, known as Chalet Izábal Iriarte, with its distinctive tower, was located at Libertad 1139 (now renumbered as Libertad 1705), and was apparently designed by Guillermo de Alba. In recent years, the elegant building, eclectic in style, has been occupied by a “La Casa del Waffle” restaurant. While several blog posts claim the building dates from around 1915, it must have been completed several years earlier, given the fact that it appears on this postcard, which is one in a series published by Alba y Fernández prior to 1909. The photograph colorized for the postcard was taken by Librado Garcia “Smarth.”

During the early years of the Revolution, Izábal’s connections gave him the chance to serve his country in foreign office posts, including spells as the Mexican consul in Galveston, Texas, and in Douglas, Arizona.

A large portion of the family hacienda of Peñuelas was appropriated for redistribution to ejidos in 1940. The hacienda is located on the Camino Real de Tierra Adentro, formally designated by UNESCO in 2010 as a World Heritage Site.

Francisco Izábal Iriarte died in Guadalajara, from complications of diabetes, at the age of 76 on 31 December 1947.

Sources

• El Tiempo: 22 Jan 1903, 1.
• El Informador: 22 April 1916; 19 Mar 1936, 5; 1 Feb 1945; 17 May 1970, 12-D.
• El Mundo Ilustrado, 28 Sep 1902; 21 Dec 1902.
• Flor de Lis: 15 Jun 1896, 3; 15 Nov 1896; 15 Jan 1897.
• La Gaceta de Guadalajara: 20 May 1906, 2.

Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via the comments feature or email.

Tony Burton

Tony Burton’s books include “Lake Chapala: A Postcard History” (2022), “Foreign Footprints in Ajijic” (2022), “If Walls Could Talk: Chapala’s historic buildings and their former occupants” (2020), (available in translation as “Si Las Paredes Hablaran”), “Mexican Kaleidoscope” (2016), and “Lake Chapala Through the Ages” (2008).

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