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MEXICO MAGICO
TRIUMPHS and TRAGEDY... A history of the Mexican people |
CHAPTER IV, The Forefathers - The Baroque Years (73th part continues...)
By Prof. German Estrada - February 2007 |
6 FINAL DAYS
The contours of the eighteenth century, the pinnacle of colonial rule, were striking. But, as Miguel de Cervantes once said, “It seldom happens that any felicity comes so pure as not to be tempered and allayed by some mixture of sorrow.” And so it was in New Spain, where opulence and learning existed side by side with poverty and ignorance. New Spain had clasped to its boson the Enlightenment (Ilustración), the most recent wave of European thought., but it was a cautious embrace. Spaniards, both at home and abroad Catholic and traditionalist, exhibited no wish to discard old ideas simply because the French and English believed them outdated. A few did, nevertheless, and by doing so revamped ideas, mostly against the wishes of prelates and, at times, the crown, neither being eager to abdicate its cherished birth in the hierarchy.
II
The Age of Reason upset hallowed concepts of scholastic thought. Colonial savants, clerics among them, read Voltaire, Descartes, and Leibniz, pondered the lessons of Galileo, Bacon and Newton and debated the relative merits of Malebranche and Gassendi. Here and there, the scientific method of the sciences, what western Europe was embracing, slowly shunted aside syllogistic reasoning. Experimentation and the laboratory, the principal actors in this unfolding scientific drama, challenged the universality of traditional doctrine. The emergent philosophy, exemplified by Elementos de la filosofía moderna, of Juan Benítez de Gamarra, a book published in 1774, drew the sword against scholasticism. Voicing the spirit of the Illustration, Benítez de Gamarra questioned the role of church, crown, and, heartwarming to the criollos, peninsulares.
Marching alongside Benítez de Gamarra, scores of scientific thinkers surfaced, scholars as Velázquez, Gama, and Alzate, as well as the literary critics Uribe, Cerrato, and Bravo. Of them, José Antonio Alzate stood out. A clergyman like most intellectuals, Alzate edited two leading journals of Mexico City, Gaceta de Literatura and Diario de México, and was committed to the ideas of the Ilustración, an advocate of science who worshiped reason, believing it to be a tool for the transformation of man and society. What he saw or read set astir his mind; nothing was intellectually too remote. A Renaissance man, he studied nature, drew plan to protect the lakes around Mexico City, explored the pre-Hispanic ruins at Tajín and Xochicalco, and read deeply into the nature of syphilis and yellow fever. Miguel Constanzo, Juan Crespi, and Junipero Serra, a Franciscan friar, explored by land and sea the Californias, winding their way north to San Francisco. The coast line from Acapulco to Alaska lured expeditions such as that of Alejandro Malaspina, who kept records of the flora, fauna, and geography along his journey.
Reflecting the shift to the scientific, professors at the Colegio de Minería taught physics, mathematics, chemistry, and mineralogy. Built in the Neo-classical style, the design of the School of Mines sealed the doom of Baroque architecture, a trade mark of the scholastic era. Earlier, in 1768, the Real Escuela de Cirugía, a college of medicine, enrolled its first students; independent of the university, which was still under the tutelage of the church, it specialized in practical medicine and medical science.
The intellectual upheaval went beyond the simply scientific. Literature, too, enjoyed an awakening, although it spawned no giants of the stature of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz or Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora. Yet Alzate and his cohorts, scholars and journalists, published a wealth of fine writing. They also turned their backs on the old themes; poetic heavens, the Hades of Greek mythology, nymphs, Homeric heroes, and epic sagas supplanted religious tracts. Newspapers appeared for the first time; the Diario de México, Alzate’s brainchild, feature news of European events. The mouthpiece of enlightened criollos, it also covered national life and politic. Carlos María de Bustamante, Francisco de Verdad, and Jacobo Villarrutia, luminaries of the coming struggle for Independence, wrote for it. The Mercurio Volante, edited by José Ignacio Bartolache, was the initial medical journal in the Western Hemisphere.
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José Antonio Alzate y Ramírez [1738 – 1799
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Mexico City Cathedral
(Left, towers Cathedral and Sagrario in Churrigueresque)
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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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