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MEXICO MAGICO
TRIUMPHS and TRAGEDY... A history of the Mexican people |
CHAPTER IV, The Forefathers - The Baroque Years (69th part continues...)
By Prof. German Estrada - December 2006 |
To feed the habit, a pulque industry developed and flourished. Entire regions, Puebla principally, were known for their maguey fields. Because of his poverty, the Indian never took to distilled liquor, the beverage of Spaniards; he was faithful to his pulque, the drink of his ancestors. Hacendados of central Mexico planted more of the maguey, the mother of the pulque. Formerly set aside for corn, village milpas even grew the maguey. The plant came to occupy some of the most fertile lands of the Valley of Mexico. Like their menfolk, women had a hand in the pulque traffic, carrying on burros the family‘s output to market, where they sold it from stalls. In the villages women usually sold the pulque from the doorways of their adobe huts.
Nor did the Indian stop being defiant. He knew what most Spaniards said of him and, in retaliation, he thought of them in like manner. “The monkey even dressed in silk,” declared a Spanish neighbor of an Indian village “is still a monkey. Whoever speaks of Indians speaks of shit because Indian is like the monkey.” In reply, the Indian tagged the Spaniards “dog” and “pig”. Occasionally, he refused to work for them, preferring to be labeled “lazy” and thus avoid the harsh labor in mines and obrajes. At the same time, the Indian belying the claim of his stupidity, turned Spanish law against the Spaniard. His legal battles in defense of village property against hacendados and their ilk dragged on for centuries. Nor, contrary to what is believed, did the Indian always lose these legal squabbles.
The Indian was hardly docile or apathetic; the dead of Pre-Hispanic society did not end Indian resistance. During the dark days of population decline, the Indian, holding Spaniards responsible for the death of his companions, attempted, more than once, to contaminate their food and water supply. He threw rotting bodies into their wells and mixed the dough of their bread with the blood of the dying. Reports exist of Indians who compelled Spanish prisoners “to bear pagan services.” Indians, it was said, forced Spanish women to marry them—in native ceremonies presided over by native priests. Supposedly docile Indians in Oaxaca killed hacienda mayordomos, while others made corregidores and priests bow before Indian elders.
Beyond that, riots broke out time and again. During the seventeenth century, two erupted in Mexico City, one I 1624. The high price of corn stoked the fury. During the uprising of 1692, as Spaniards labeled it, mobs of Indians burned the viceregal palace, the office of the ayuntamiento, and the jail, while making a shambles of the Zócalo, the public square. The viceroy barely escaped with his life. In Sonora, the “rim of Christendom,” Apaches, Janos, and Jacomes, Father Eusebio Kino wrote, “robbed, damage property and killed” Spaniards; 1696 was a terrible year for Kino and his brethren.
VI
Religious beliefs, mortality, and the values of the Catholic church were the glue that bound together the polyglot peoples of Baroque New Spain. Catholicism wrought a miracle, uniting Spaniards, criollos, Indians, mestizos, and Africans under one roof. The secular and the religious were cut from the same cloth, all the more so in the cities. Political as well as religious shrines, the cities sheltered the offices of the bishop, the convents, most of the monasteries, the best Catholic schools, and the universities, where medieval scholasticism and traditional church teachings reigned. The church set the tone for the art, music, theater, poetry, and, most assuredly, architecture, the essence of the Baroque Age. Given this bewildering ubiquity, the church, to the glee of believers, thrived, becoming powerful and wealthy. Theoretically subservient, the church, in reality, challenged state authority. Fat and content, the clergy, more and more, identified with cities and urban culture and cooled its moral ardor.
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Izmal, Convent of the XVI Century (Yucatán)
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Traditional Colonial Church
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In the next issue we’ll continue with Chapter V of this fascinating book, The Baroque Years.
Prof. Germán Estrada
E-mail: 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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