La Purísima

This is the chapter of San Miguel’s history that I have found the most enchanting and intriguing. Let me tell you just the beginning to see if I can entice you into reading Rebellious Nuns: The Troubled History of a Mexican Convent by Margaret Chowning. The cast of characters is fascinating. Let’s begin with Manuel Tomas de la Canal who came to San Miguel from Mexico City in about 1730. He was the son of a wealthy Spanish merchant and became an even wealthier sheep rancher and wool merchant. Manuel de la Canal and his wife Maria Josepha Hervas’ first child was born in 1736 and they named her Maria Josepha Lina de la Canal y Hervas for her mother, as is traditional. Over the next dozen years they had nine children. Manuel spent lavishly on both private and civic buildings, including the family’s summer palace which is the Instituto Allende today.

Within days of each other Manuel de la Canal and Maria Josepha Hervas both died. The eldest of their nine orphans was Maria Josepha Lina who was twelve. She immediately let it be known that she intended to found a convent. This was no sudden whim or romantic notion. She had been preparing all her life. She was well educated and independent. In her parent’s house she had insisted upon living apart as in a cell. She tried to work like the servants and when she could, pretended to drop something on the floor so she could surreptitiously kiss their feet. By the time she was fifteen, with the help of her confessor, her plans were well under way.

Enter another colorful character: Father Luis Phelipe Neri de Alfaro, Maria Josepha Lina’s confessor. He was a trusted friend of the family, a mystic who devoted 25 years to building Atotonilco at the behest of Christ himself. He wore severe hair shirts on Fridays and slept in a coffin to keep his mortality in mind, although he wore out three coffins over his lifetime. Alfaro had experience in founding religious establishments, and had direct or indirect connections to seven religious institutions in or near San Miguel.

A convent in the city would be a crowning glory. A convent was an appealing alternative to marriage for upper class young ladies. It also brought advantages to the city by spurring growth, creating a lending institution for the moderate from the endowment built by dowries, and adding a certain air of culture or refinement to its reputation.

Maria Josepha Lina had quite definite ideas about how her convent should be run; and there’s where all the problems begin. She wanted to institute the rule of vida común or shared life. Her hand is obvious in the “constitution” that stipulated the exact structure and practices of the convent: the number and status of each nun, the amount of their dowries, what racial background they must have, and that there were to be no servants. This would prove to be the undoing of the convent over and over.

Most convents that required a dowry followed the rule of the vida particular or private life. The result was often a kind of private city where nuns had personal servants, habits made of fine cloth, jewels, pets, and singing, dancing and theatrics were all part of life behind the grille of the cloister. Every indication was that La Purísima should be the same.

When Maria Josepha Lina was twenty, in 1756, the convent was inaugurated. There were eight days of masses, fireworks, theatrical comedies, bullfights, and parades. And then all hell broke loose. Three times. I won’t give away any more of the story but I recommend it heartily.

The convent today houses the art institute, Bella Artes, where foreigners come to paint.
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Rebellious Nuns: The Troubled History of a Mexican Convent, 1752-1863. By Margaret Chowning. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.)

Do you have ten minutes?

El corazon de Mexico - The heart of Mexico - is the name of a great video made by the Departamento de Turismo de San Miguel de Allende that I just found with the sights of SMA set to music. I think we may be disappointed with the real thing after the wondrous sights so beautifully portrayed here. I must warn you that it lasts about ten minutes, mas o menos, so make sure you've got time to see it because you probably won't want to tear yourselves away. In fact, maybe you should pour a glass of wine and enjoy...

http://www.terrazassanmiguel.com/heart_of_mexico.html

Silver Slaves

I thought it was interesting to learn that African slaves were brought to be used in the sliver mines near San Miguel de Allende. According to a report on March 2, 1768, an inspection that had been ordered to investigate charges of mistreatment of slaves was conducted in the area and fourteen slave families were investigated. There is also mention of six other male slaves without families in that specific report. Proctor states that while it is impossible to determine what percentage of the labor force was made up of slaves at that time, he concludes that it would have been significant. The slaves imported from Africa, like the indigenous slaves, formed part of the encomiendo system that bound them and their descendants to a particular plantation or hacienda and they were not usually subsequently bought and sold. Interestingly enough, although the Constitution of 1824 freed the slaves, some slavery was still practiced as late as 1829.
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Afro-Mexican Slave Labor in the Obrajes de Paños of New Spain, Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries Author(s): Frank T. Proctor III Source: The Americas, Vol. 60, No. 1 (Jul., 2003), pp. 33-58 Published by: Academy of American Franciscan History Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3654753

Plata y Presidios

San Miguel (later 'de Allende') was founded because of the Chichimecas and the silver. Chichimeca was the name that the Spanish gave to the indigenous peoples from the north. While the southern tribes, like the Aztecs, were sedentary; the northerners had guerilla tactics that made their subjugation more difficult. When the Spanish attempted to haul their new-found treasure to their ships, the Chichimecas were so skilled with bows and arrows that they were able to practically nullify the horses, swords and guns of the Spanish. They were fearless and elusive in the terrain they knew so well. They liked to capture and cruelly torture, enslaving native women and children, martyring Spanish friars, and leaving ghost towns in their wake. They had a very large territory and little hierarchical social structure. The Spanish sent at least two special detachments to impose order. They were not successful. They attempted to transport their spoils in large wagon trains, but the Chichimecas were still irrepressible.
So the Spanish solution was to found a series of presidios (prisons) and defensive towns. San Miguel was the first founded. It had been a native settlement with a small group of Spaniards that had, in fact, been abandoned about four years earlier following a Chichimeca raid. It was a superb site strategically, and on December 15th, 1555 Viceroy Velasco (pictured here) issued orders that made it the first in a chain of settlements meant to keep the barbarian Chichimeca at bay. About 50 Spaniards were given lands and commissioned with establishing houses, orchards, farms and ranches. The nearby natives were not to be disturbed by the new settlement, but would contribute to it by adding to its size.

In the end there were more than 30 presidios and frontier towns that made a safe network for getting the silver from the mines to the ports.

The Forty-Niners of Sixteenth-Century Mexico Author(s): Philip Wayne Powell Source: The Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 19, No. 3 (Aug., 1950), pp. 235-249 Published by: University of California Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3635589

Presidios and Towns on the Silver Frontier of New Spain, 1550-1580 Author(s): Philip Wayne Powell Source: The Hispanic American Historical Review, Vol. 24, No. 2 (May, 1944), pp. 179-200 Published by: Duke University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2507832

Don't waste your time

In my opinion this book is almost a total waste of time. From the start the author misrepresents SMA (“a smattering of ex-pats”? Every other source I've seen says that it is known for having a large and significant ex-pat community). I find his style smarmy and disgusting (The hotel manager’s daughter and later one of his own renters are described in lecherous and demeaning terms, as if they're ‘asking for it’.)

Most abysmally his knowledge of Spanish is so substandard that he continuously misunderstands and misrepresents what transpires. (Rematar is not "to kill twice"; rematar is to “finish off or to put out of one's misery”.) His self-serving, all knowing, superiority about Mexican language and culture, and indeed all language and culture, make me shudder to think that someone might read this and believe that it represents mainstream truth.

It’s hard to believe that something so sloppy could be published, yet the author’s back page bio seems credible. It would be interesting to see if this is representative of his normal quality or just a knock off for a special audience.

San Miguel de Allende

This website tells us that San Miguel de Allende is one of the most beautiful in the province of Guanajuato, full of history and tradition. It was founded out of a necessity to protect travelers between Zacatecas and the capital of what was then the kingdom of New Spain and the route to transport minerals, mostly silver. In about 1542 from a humble chapel and villa called Itzcuinapan, or “the place of the dogs”, a friar named Juan de San Miguel started a place for the local population and dedicated it to the archangel St. Michael. There were severe problems with water supply and that hardship coupled with an attack in 1551 caused the village to be abandoned after 15 inhabitants were killed.
Subsequently a Franciscan Friar named Bernardo Cossin and a local indigenous leader, Fernando de Tapia, rebuilt the location as a mission half way up the hills between the local springs. This is the modern location of the church of the Santa Escuela, which was established in the 18th century.
Later developments included the military prison built on the road to Zacatecas, and it was this privileged location that caused its rapid growth of beautiful houses and palaces as well as religious buildings, many of which can still be visited in what became San Miguel el Viejo, and then the neighborhood of the Santa Cruz Vieja. Throughout this evolution there was an effort made to respect the chessboard layout which helped the area grow in a measured and harmonious style and conserved the original style.
These include the Palacio Municipal (now regional museum) from 1736; the Casa del Mayorazgo de la Canal, late 18th C; the Casa del Inquisidor, 1780, headquarters of the Spanish Inquisition in New Spain; and many more which you can read about (in Spanish) at the following website.

San Miguel de Allende

Religious Architecture

The religious architecture of San Miguel de Allende is also of utmost importance. The Convent of St Vincent, 1737, and the Convent of the Loyal Conception are two examples.
The chapel of the Holy Cross of the Spring and the Temple of the Third Order, two of the oldest, are both from the beginning of the 17th C. The beautiful buildings that compose the church and prayer site of St. Phillip Neri, from the beginning of the 18th C. has a exuberant Baroque portal that displays a strong indigenous influence. It houses the splendid chapel of the Holy House of St. Loreto, the antechamber of the holy mother, and the temple of Our Lady of Health.
The church of St. Francis, also 18th C., is really a symbol of the city itself. It was actually built over an earlier 17th C. temple keeping the original interior and dimensions.

Nearby is the Sanctuary of Atotonilco, which actually dates from the 16thC, and contains valuable paintings from that era.It is known as the Sistine Chapel of the Americas and was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site this July



San Miguel de Allende