Allá, a Spanish-language bookstore in Santa Fe, N.Mex., has reached the age of 35 despite owner Jim Dunlap's refusal to advertise or even create a website for the store, the Santa Fe New Mexican reported. Dunlap, who is 77, opened Allá ("over there" in Spanish) in 1980 with some 1,000 books he had gathered while living in and traveling across Latin America. Over the years, Allá has expanded, with its inventory now encompassing some 65,000 titles as well as Latin American CDs, games, photographs and other assorted items. The store has also offered Spanish-language lessons, movie screenings and book signings.
Dunlap moved to Mexico City in 1963 after dropping out of George Washington University in Washington, D.C.. He became fluent in Spanish while living in Mexico and studied anthropology at the Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia. During that time, Dunlap told the Santa Fe New Mexican, he fell in love with Spanish-language literature and Latin American culture. In 1975, he left Mexico City and moved to Santa Fe.
When Dunlap opened Allá in 1980, he assumed that most of his customers would be local residents. But as it turned out, many of his best customers over the years have been college professors from out-of-state who teach courses in Latin American history or literature. In 1987, Dunlap began attending the Guadalajara International Book Fair. He's bought so many titles there over the years, in fact, that recently the organizers of the fair have even paid for his travel and hotel fare. At the moment, Dunlap has no immediate plans to put up a website for the store or give it a presence on social media, though his wife, Barbara Sommer, a professor of Latin American history at Gettysburg College in Gettysburg, Pa., is considering it.
"I just wanted to read a book in Spanish," Dunlap told the New Mexican, when asked why he decided to open Allá in the first place.
