Guanajuato, GTO

 Guanajuato. GTO

Guanajuato, ciudad cervantina de América, is a colonial city five hours north of Mexico City. The citycenter is a beautiful, picturesque city with a pleasant climate and cobbled stoned streets that wind up the hill. I find the guanjuatenses pleasant and helpful. As a city of 80,000 inhabitants, it is much more tranquil and manageable than the capitol.

It is famous for its international Festival Cervantina (in honor of Miguel de Cervantes of Don Quixote fame), where the city becomes a stage for the performance groups from all over the world. Guanajuato is also known for its estudiantinas, where groups of young students/troubadours rove the streets at night singing and drinking.

 

January 27, 2009

• Breakfast
• Downtown Guanajuato
• Alhondiga
• Basilica de N. S. de Guanajuato
• Templo de San Diego de Alcala
• Templo de San Francisco
• Templo de la Compañia
• Universidad de Guanajuato
• Callejón del Beso
• Pípila
• Dinner

 

I stayed with my great aunt Carmen who lives her daughter, my aunt Veronica and tio Roberto, who work as lawyers. They have two daughters. They were very warm and hospitable. My tia Carmen is straight-shooter with a humorous disposition. It can be a bit uncomfortable to stay with relatives but they made my stay pleasant and relaxing.

 

Museo del Purgatorio

While waiting outside a Temple San Caeytano de Valenciana, I stumble upon the Museo del Purgatorio in Guanajuato. I found it revelatory, macabre and disturbing. It was basically about the implements of torture used my the Spanish Inquisition during the colonial period in Mexico. It is one thing to know that the Spanish Inquisition tortured people, it is another to actually see the tools it used to maintain orthodoxy in belief and behavior.

Some of the tortures described (WARNING: it is not pleasant reading):

• Prostitutes were laid on a table and a funnel was placed in their mouth. Boiling water was poured into the funnel to “purify her intensions”
• Adulteresses met a more sinister fate. They were also place on a table and their chest was exposed. A small cut was made at their sternum until a small pool of blood formed. Pig lard was applied around the cut and metal cylinder was place over the entire area. Then a hungry rat was placed into the cylinder. The starving rat ate at the cut until it came into the entrails.
• For unfaithful men, they were placed naked over several rolling logs with pointed nails. Their legs and arms were tied so that their bodies could be rolled back and forth against the nails until their flesh and bones tore.
• For homosexuals, their rectum and buttocks were struck with a stick with nails until he bled. He was then sat on a metal chair, which has lard on it. A fire was lit below the chair and his bottom fried.
• For students who read banned books, they were boiled in fat.
• For daughters who were found pregnant without being married. Their own families tied them to chains in their home basements until they died.

 

What is so difficult to believe is the mentality of a people and community that would have allowed this to happen. The guide explained the role of the Church in the Spanish Inquisition to keep people in line and maintain adherence to Catholicism. The mendicant orders, the Franciscans and Dominicans, helped implement this. As a Catholic, it is really disturbing how the Church could have allowed this. It is so removed from what it means to be Christian. Many would maintain that the Church presently holds positions that are antiquated, unenlightened or oppressive. Questions: What failed in an institution that espouses the teachings of Jesus? What positions does the Church hold that in time will be considered barbaric and draconian? And who are the agents of torture now? And what am I doing to stop and stem the use of torture?

 

Odes to Death

Si es jade, se hace astillas.

Si es oro, se destruye.

Si es plumajede quetzal, se rasga.

No para siempre en la Tierra

Sólo un momento aquí.

—Poesía nahuatl.

 

Sólo venimos a dormir

Sólo venimos a soñar.

No es verdad, no es verdad

Que venimos a vivir en la Tierra.

—Poesía indigéna

 

Adios a los jesuitas

“Os revisto de toda mi autoridad, y de todo me real poder, para que inmediatamente os dirijaís a mano armada a las casa de los jesuitas. Or apoderareís de todas pesonas, y los remitireís como prisioneros en el termino de veinticuatro horas al Puerto de Veracruz…. En el momento mismo de la ejecutación hareís se sellen archivos se las casas y los papeles de individuos, sin permitir a ninguno de ellos llevar consigo otra cosa que sus libros de rezo y la ropa absolutamente indispensable para la travesía….”

—Yo, el Rey, Carlos III de Borbón

 

January 28, 2009

• Breakfast with Tia Verónica
• Templo San Caeyetano de Valenciana
• Museo del Purgatorio
• Centro Museo de las Momias
• Museo del Pueblo
• Museo Iconográfico
• Tio Rafael &  Tio Francisco
• Tia Socorro & Tia Angélica
• Julietta

 

January 29, 2009

• Breakfaast
• Nacho & Manuel
• Cubilete & Cristo Rey
• Silao
• Mina de Rayas
• Tía Berta
• Comision Federal de Electricidad
• Gimnásio

 

January 30, 2009

• Juan Luis (primo) & Tio Fransico
• Downtown Guanajuato
• Internet &  Gorditas
• Sketch
• Lunch
• To Panindícuaro, Michoacan
• Dinner

 

January 31, 2009

• Leave Panindícuaro, Michoacan
• Birria for breakfast
• Arrive Guanajuato
• Angélica’s Pary
• Purepéchas for breakfast

 

February 1, 2009

• Breakfast
• Mass
• Leave Guanajuato
• Arrive Mexico City
• Arrive Internado