28/02/2026
IMPORTANT PLACES FOR LOWRY FANS IN
1.- The Hotel Bajo el Volcán.
It’s first mentioned in chapter 7 p. 202 It says that then there were two towers and it was the Laruelle’s zacualli. It’s also important because it’s here where Yvonne, the Consul’s wife, betrays him with M. Jacques Laruelle. All of this happened in the author’s literary imagination. Later on, this cute place was the house where Malcolm Lowry lived the second time he visited Cuernavaca in early 1946. It was called Quinta Dolores and it contained a series of apartments with a pool in the center. They rented one in the front where the tower is nowadays. (See Dark as the Grave wherein my Friend is Laid, Penguin Modern Classic Edition, p. 124.) There he wrote his famous letter where he defended his book and previously, he tried to commit su***de because it had been rejected the editors. In the back of the hotel there is a ravine, a very deep one in which Lowry fell down once he got home very drunk. It is also the motive in Under the Volcano for the abyss next to the Volcano. A way to get to hell. The house also appears in La Mordida.
2.- Diego Rivera Murals inside the Cortes Palace, now called Museo Regional de Cuernavaca. The place is mentioned in Under the Volcano, p. 11 and, most importantly on page 220 of the Perennial Classics Edition. Diego Rivera was one of the most important painters of the XX Century in Mexico and one of the most visible geniuses of the so called Mexican Cultural Renaissance in times of Lazaro Cárdenas, 1934-1940. When Lowry was in Mexico because he arrived in late 1936 and left in 1938, the first time.
3.- Cantina La Universal, mentioned in Dark as the Grave, p. 102. It’s important because he mentions that the Cantina El Farolito in the Volcano is truly a mixture of El Bosque in Oaxaca and La Universal in Cuernavaca. He wrote part of chapter 12 of the Volcano in there. Nowadays it’s not exactly a Cantina but a restaurant for tourists.
4.- Bar del Hotel Bella Vista. Today, it’s a building of offices and businesses. It’s mentioned in the Volcano, in the beginning of the second chapter because it is where the Dance in Benefit of the Red Cross. It’s also a place where Yvonne dates his lover or one of them, it’s unclear.
5.- The Borda Gardens. A very beautiful place mentioned on page 318. It’s important because Lowry was there with Jan in his first visit and later when he came back to Mexico with his second wife, Margerie, he didn’t want her to see the carved heart he had made on a tree with his name and Jan’s.
6.- Bustamante’s Cinema. Right in front of the famous Borda Gardens, it is mentioned on the same page as above mentioned. There happens very important things. It’s where Laruelle in the first chapter reads and burns the letter the Consul had sent to Yvonne, but haven’t sent. The letter was hidden in a book of Elizabethan Plays. It’s also where there are showing The hands of Orlac, the artist with murderer hands.
7.- Panteón La Leona. It’s important because it appears in Dark as the Grave. It was found by a friend of the Malcolm Lowry Foundation because his own father was buried next to it and when he saw the tomb he immediately noticed it was the same that is mentioned there. p. 255.
