The Civic Plaza
looking east: Religion on the left, commerce on the
right, and a whole lot of concrete in between.
Northeast of the town's central square stands
an older gathering place which sports greater variety of
activity than that found among the quiet laurel trees of the
Jardin. Today it's called the Civic Plaza.
Unlike the verdant Jardin, the Civic Plaza is heavily
concrete, edged at its north by domed churches and other
church buildings (past and present). We found tented
merchants selling poinsettias in this early week of the
Advent season.
The college chapel
Before concrete, this was all church land (confiscated
by the federal government during the 1860s). Above we
see the Church of Our Lady of Health,
La Salud. The church was
built as the chapel for the earth-toned building at right
which was the College of San Francisco
de Sales. Named after the Reformation
Doctor of the Church, this colegio was an important center of
learning in Mexico, one of a few viable centers of higher
education after the Spanish king expelled the Jesuits in
1767. For years it was home to Father Juan Benito Diaz
de Gamarra, the leading Mexican philosopher of his day (18th
century).
[34]
The picture at left shows the facade
of La Salud. The bottom story holds statues of St. John
the Evangelist and the Sacred Heart. The middle story
shows life-size statues of the predecessor to the Holy
Family. The virgin is at center, her father, St.
Joachim at left, and her mother St. Ann on the right -- all
separated by rather prosaic wooden doors
[219] An eye set in a yellow
triangle was once positioned in the middle of the shell
structure on the third floor. This led many to believe
the church could help with eye diseases.
[31]
Musicians come here to play on the late
November feast of Saint Cecilia, the blind patroness of
music. The shell is, of course, the symbol of Saint
James (Santiago), the patron of Spain. That apostle
used a shell to baptize the newly faithful. Supposedly the
Franciscan friar who founded San Miguel also carried a shell
in his waistband in case he met any indigenous people along
the way. Be prepared! You never know when you
might run into a heathen.
La Salud is here because of another priest, the young Father
Luis Felipe Neri Alfaro. Alfaro shelled out his private
fortune to build this chapel when he found the college had
none. We'll read much more about the mystical ascetic Father
Neri (and his whips and hair shirts) when we discuss his folk
art masterpiece: The Shrine of Atotonilco, about 9 miles
north of town.
Click here if you can't wait (you should
be ashamed of yourself!)
The Civic Plaza
La Salud and its college line the northern edge of the Civic
Plaza. Here are two more views: Above looking
east and below taken from the southern edge.
Above we see the equestrian statue of the town's namesake:
Ignacio Allende.
Caste: your fate
The
bird-embellished statue at left shows that the rider
did not die in battle (otherwise both of the horse's front
feet would be raised up, or so goes the urban
myth.)
The rider is San Miguel's most famous son, General Ignacio
Maria Allende y Unzaga, born here in 1769. He spent his
youth gambling, attending the earth-toned Colegio de San
Francisco de Sales depicted on this page, and siring an
illegitimate child at age 23. (That child was to die as a
soldier under Ignacio's command.) A decade later he
married, but his wife died within six months of the
wedding.
[109]
In Allende's day, Mexican society was highly
stratified ala Aldous
Huxley: at top were the
Peninsulares (born on the Iberian peninsula, of
course) who ruled the place. Allende was a member of
the second tier, the
Criollos (sometimes translated as
Creoles -- but Creole is a much
more widely used term and would cause confusion here).
The word
Criollo
means "pure blood" and in the Spanish Colonial caste system
(
castas) signified
that both maternal and paternal ancestors were born in Spain,
but they themselves were
born in the colonies. (Actually the rule was
Criollos could be no more than 1/8th Indian. In those
pre-DNA days, records could be altered for a price.)
The justification for discriminating
against Criollos was the belief that the climate
lessened intelligence and character.
[5]
(Should Spain have been ruled by Emperor Penguins?)
It got worse, of course, in this brave new world.
Below the still-aristocratic Criollos were the mixed
blooded Mestizos who made up the majority of the population.
At bottom were the indigenous people and mulattoes. These
underclasses had their great revolutionary hero from the
nearby town of Dolores (which we'll
visit later). He was their parish
priest, Miguel
Hidalgo y Costilla, now known as the
father of Mexican Independence. As a priest he needed
a military leader and that was the disgruntled Criollo
Ignacio Allende.
While it was Hidalgo's intent to get a better economic deal
for the peasants, Allende was all about removing
discrimination for his already favored Criollo class.
With Napoleon causing havoc back in Old Spain, many in
the new world thought they could get away with a little
rebellion. In September 1810, Hidalgo's peasants
started such a revolution. The mob grew as it moved
through the arid countryside from Dolores to San Miguel and
finally to the regional capital at
Guanajuato where the uprising killed a
whole lot of Allende's fellow Criollos who were holed up in
the town granary.
Soon the mob fell apart and both Allende and Hidalgo were
captured. Within a year they were shot and decapitated.
Their severed heads hung in public display for a decade at
that same granary in Guanajuato until the revolution ended
(successfully). Today their home towns carry their
names: Dolores Hidalgo and San Miguel de
Allende.
Not in his backyard
Above is a final shot of the college rising above a row of
merchant tents and another wave of Mexican Laurel trees that
line the square. It was here at his former school that
Ignacio Allende saved the local Spanish families who were
against the revolution by imprisoning them in the college
that September night in 1810 when the rabble swarmed into
"defenseless" San Miguel. (Allende had already
persuaded the local regiment, the Dragoons of the Queen under
the command of one of the prominent Canal family members, to
stay out of the fight.
[31]) Riding his steed
between the mob and the college, Allende eventually
got the mob to disperse. None of his friends and
neighbors upon whom he had unleashed this monster were to die
that night; they left their makeshift prison once the throng
continued towards the bloodbath at
Guanajuato.
[34]
