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000644 Visit since October 2, 2005
| TRIUMPHS and TRAGEDY... A history of the Mexican people (part 42nd). |
| By Prof. German Estrada - October 2005 |
Bartolomé de las Casas, author of the famous Breve relación de la destrucción de las Indias, also devoted his life to defending the Indian. With forty other Dominicans, he had come as bishop of Chiapas to Christianize and save. An enemy of the encomienda, he fought tooth and nail to get it abolished, having known its ills first hand for, on the island of Hispaniola. Las Casas, before taking his vows, had been an encomendero. Legend has it that he became a friar shocked by Spanish exploitation of the Indian. His tireless demands for social justice earned him the sobriquet Apostle of the Indians.
First and foremost, the friars came to convert, to make Christians out of pagans. God had willed it, else why had he entrusted to Spaniards the discovery and subjugation of a New World? It was, they believed, by divine intervention. Until de New World fell into the Spanish lap, the Christian world was but a tiny fraction of the whole; with the addition of the converts, Christianity could become the universal religion. Indeed, the catholic faith did profit, if the claims from missionaries are believable. Motolinia, for one, wrote that nine million Indians were baptized by 1537. If only half correct, that number added millions to Catholic rolls.
To convert heathens, the good friars, majestically intolerant of conflicting beliefs, initially employed love and persuasion. The inveigled the Indians into embracing Christianity, but, not infrequently, charm yielded poor results. Convinced that the ends justified the means, the friars reverted to force. Zumárraga, one of the most fanatical of them, believed that they must be discipline Indian heretics. As apostolic inquisitor, he brought before him some nineteen Indian "sinners," one being Don Carlos Chichimecatecuhtli, whose notorious trial in Texcoco in 1539 ended with his burning at the stake. In Michoacán, an Augustinian zealot had four Indian heretics tied to a pole in the town plaza, laid quantities of wood at their feet, and then lit a fire, which the wind supposedly blew out of control. Whatever the friar's intent, two of the Indians were burned alive and the others scarred for life. Another friar in Michoacán had an Indian tortured in order to compel him to confess his sins. On the next day, when the jailer came to his cell, he found that he had hanged himself to escape further torture. Similar accounts besmirched the reputation of the Franciscans in Yucatán, where they kept a tight rein for over two centuries. Beatings were common, as well as reliance on church jails to woo the unconvinced. At church masses, the absent were noted and, when caught, whipped.
Asked to justify their behavior, the Franciscans not infrequently insisted that the Indian "wanted to be punished." The whippings, they pointed out, were, more often than not, administered by Indian caciques, not the Spaniards. Until 1571, furthermore, Indians were subject to the jurisdiction of the apostolic inquisitors, who investigated idolatry, superstition, and like sins.
Unknown Indians, ironically, spurred the conversion to Catholicism. In 1531, according to one history, the Virgin appeared miraculously atop Tepeyac, a hill just north of Mexico City, the old site of the temple of Tonantzin, the Aztec mother of gods. An Indian named Marcos, historians say, later painted her image, dark skin and of native features. Almost overnight the cult of the Virgen de Guadalupe, as she was titled, blossomed. Identified with Tonantzin, the Virgin won disciples quickly among the Indians.
The worship of the Virgen de Guadalupe sank deep roots into the soil of Anahuac. By the middle of the next century, altars in her name were everywhere. In the beginning, the wholly friars looked skeptically at the Virgin, labeling idolatrous a cult that claimed as a miracle an image painted by an Indian. However, Spanish colonial society eventually came to terms with it, accepting it as part of the faith. Yet the worship of the Virgen de Guadalupe, part and parcel of the most salient religious ceremonies in the New Spain, remained essentially Indian, though it came to challenge the supremacy of the Virgen de los Remedios, the patron of the Spaniards.
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Virgen de Guadalupe de Juan Castellanos, painted in 1570
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In the next issue we'll continue with Chapter III of this fascinating book: A NEW SPAIN
Prof. Germán Estrada
estradanav@yahoo.com
Source: : From the book Triumphs and Tragedy, a History of the Mexican People by his author Ramon Eduardo Ruiz, and with his authorization. (W.W. Norton & Company. New York-London).
Prof. Germán Estrada is the author of the best selling book, México Mágico: Everything You Wanted To Know About... But Nobody Told You..." available in Puerto Vallarta at The Net House, Mail Boxes, Etc., Books, Books as well as directly from his website.
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