El Corazon de Mexico
Life is made of accidents and coincidences ... and that's probably how Creation occurred! Creation, God, the Big Bang, whatever you call it, was probably an improbable coincidence.
I never had much interest for Mexico, a country of machos, and, coincidently, some circumstances created in me some negative feelings about it and about a certain type of Mexicans. Coincidently again, someone else just made my feelings turn from negative to positive!
I am back from my trip to San Miguel De Allende where I went to meet with Francesca Fisher, my wonderful host and now special friend with the best memories. I had no idea that I was also going to be in a special place at a special time, in el Corazon De Mexico (the heart of Mexico), and for its unforgettable Bicentennial Festivities: Fiestas del Bicentenario en San Miguel; para no olvidar! Francesca is a founder and the General Director of Los Senderos, a comprehensive project of real estate based on sustainability and respect for the environment combined with great taste in artistic expression. And I enjoyed being with her as well as the quiet time with the music of a fountain and tasty Margaritas at its Bistro overlooking the naturally beautiful environment, also the lunch at the Bistro with her friends.
During my very short stay I met many of Francesca’s friends and of those working for her and with her at Los Senderos, Richard and Gail, George and Lauda, Kathy, Ron who is also running the show, local journalist Susanne Ludekens, Cynthia co-owner of the restaurant I had food the first night of my arrival at The Restaurant, Mandinga, Francesca’s assistant Marisol, Vanessa who is taking over the bistro and Gaby (Gabriella), Chema who is running the stables, Eduardo who drove me all the way from San Miguel to Mexico City; and meeting with Jay who started talking some words to me in Persian and who is from Wisconsin was a special surprise, and I didn’t see his mother but I heard about her; and Rita - we went to her art studio and then to Aurora for a snack where there are all these art studios; not to forget the very friendly and likeable Alejandro Guerra Quirogam, sub-director de Desarrollo Urbano and his wife, Françoise, with whom we talked in French, and their daughter, son-in-law and grand-children; and the chance of talking with Damián Alcázar, one of the best and most famous actor of the new Mexican cinema, probably best known to an English-speaking audience as Lord Sopespian in the 2008 film The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. (Prince Caspian? Sounds like myself or one of my Persian Iranian ancestors!) The filming of Prince Caspian began in 2007 in New Zealand. (New Zealand? Hmmm, that would be Francesca’s land!) We both went the next evening to see Alcázar’s last film, newly released, Infierno! Infierno? Hmmm, that sounds like the Islamic Republic of Iran (!), the concept of Infierno also originating in the old Iranian religion of Zoroastrianism and Mithraism before entering in Judaism (the term in Persian, Arabic and Hebrew is something like Jehenam) and Christianity! it was a hell of shooting and killing and torturing and bribing in the world of the Mexican drug mafia, an extremely violent movie à la Hollywood. Although all in Spanish without subtitle, I was able to follow the story with some little help from Francesca. Talking about the wonderful people I met, all introduced to me by Francesca, I also should mention Bobby Caplan, a great New-Yorker jazz musician and singer we met and talked with before his performance at the restaurant Tio Lucas.
San Miguel De Allende is known as the Heart of Mexico, El Corazón de México, and I found myself being there at the time of festivities for Mexico's Bicentennial Day of Independence. It started in September and was continuing with fireworks when I was there, culminating with a Light show followed by a Firework, both fantastic, on the 10/10/10, another special Day! Such light show I have never seen anything comparable in virtuosity in my life... And it was the work of a French artist, let me add.
Before this trip, I had only heard and was thinking Cinco de Mayo. That's all I heared in the United States and Canada as for Mexico’s national holiday. Well, probably because Cinco de Mayo is more of an Anglo-American celebration for Mexico! Why? Now I understand: the Anglo-Americans were happy that some few French were beaten on that specific day somewhere in Mexico!
But Mexico's Independence Day is September 16th, not the Fifth of May. And it all started with two heroes: Miguel Hidalgo and Ignacio Allende, the latter a son of the city who would give his name to it, a city where I found myself...
And, if you think deep about it, you realize that Mexicans somehow owe their independence to the French! I will tell you why later.
One hundred years ago, on September 16, 1810, at 2 a.m., Miguel Hidalgo, a village priest (but not quite a conventional one!), supported by Captain (later called General) Ignacio Allende and other members of their secret society, launched a rebellion that would become the Revolution marking the Independence of Mexico from Spain. According to Boyé Lafayette De Mente (in his book: There's a Word for It in Mexico. The Complete Guide to Mexican Thought and Culture, a gift to me by Francesca):
«Around 2 a.m. on the morning of September 16, 1810, Hidalgo, Allende and their small band first captured the local prison and released all of the prisoners. Returning to the church with the released prisoners and others picked up along the way, Hidalgo preached an impassioned sermon that has been immortalized in Mexican history. In his speech, Hidalgo coined the phrase that was to become the slogan of the revolution: El Grito de Dolores, Mexicanos, Viva Mexico! («The Cry of Dolores, Mexicans, Long Live Mexico!»)
If not mistaken (I am not a historian and certainly not of Mexico) until then the land was known as New Spain (Virreinato de Nueva España), and it was Hidalgo supported by Allende who was coining the concept of Mexico as a nation.
Like most other revolutions, this one also turned ugly, to violence and atrocities, «the rebellion turning into an orgy of burning, killing and looting» by the indigenous and the Métis population, the Mestizos, who soon adopted the slogan: Mueran los Gachupines! - Death to the Spaniards! Of course, the violence was already there and the violent actions of the oppressed were an understandable reaction to the atrocities committed for centuries by the Spaniard ruling class, the colonialists - the conquistadors.
Ignacio Allende one of San Miguel's native sons, being a leading player in the war against Spain for independence (he was eventually captured and beheaded), is a national hero, and the town, founded in 1542 by the Franciscan monk Fray Juan de San Miguel, featured prominently in the Mexican War of Independence, renamed itself "San Miguel De Allende" (in 1826) in honor of the heroic actions of Ignacio Allende.
Now, violence never stopped and the history of Mexico is just a sad story of violence and brutalities, like in many other places. From the day the Spaniard Cortés and his gang of fortune hunters landed in the place in 1519, it has been a history of killing men and impregnating women!
The population of the indigenous people at the time Cortés reached the land was estimated around 25 million (Spain at that time had 8 million only). Spaniards slaughtered large numbers of Aztecs and other local population. They destroyed the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan (now Mexico City), libraries, documents, civilizations; and they enslaved and subjugated those who survived the slaughtering. Also, from the beginning, the Spaniards made a valiant effort to impregnate as many indigenous people as possible, a policy that created the social and racial fabric of Mexico, today.
By the early 1800s the long rape of Mexico had just about run its course. The mixed-bloods had blended into a new race which outnumbered the Spaniards as well as later the Indigenous. Records published in 1808, two years before the revolution for independence, show that Mexico had approximately 80,000 residents who had been born in Spain (so-called peninsulars), one million pure-blooded Spanish residents who had been born in Mexico, and 1.5 million mixed-bloods. The Mestizos (Spanish-Indigenous mixed blood) were going to reverse the structure of power and to compose the main population of the land, to form the core of the Mexicans. For the ruling peninsulars, they were a population of bastards, of inferior people (note that infierno has its root in inferior!), to be ruled over. Meanwhile, diseases brought into Mexico by Europeans had swept across the country several times, altogether killing some 80 percent of the indigenous population.
Today, the trend of carelessly embarrassing females is not over, but has taken an unexpected turn: Méxicanos joyfully impregnating caucasian females from Estados Unidos! They proudly seduce liberated American girls and women, open minded, spoiled, bored desperate housewives. The gringa enjoys the libido and the machismo of the Mexicano who enjoys the sex party!
The concept of Love, Amor, is not the same everywhere. In different cultures, in different social classes, it is different. Below, I copied some extracts from the chapter of the above mentioned book on Love, Mexican Style, and it can be better understood if the reader keeps in mind the context of Mexican history:
Mexicans point out that love is not a natural thing as far as mankind is concerned. It is manmade and subject to being subverted and perverted at any time by any number of factors.
Mexicans have traditionally treated romantic love as a falsehood and as the betrayal of one’s inner self to another, which leads both men and women but especially men, to exaggerate their passion to an extraordinary degree.
For Mexicans, the most important form of love is always «family love».(…) For most of the history of Mexico, the lives of ordinary people were in constant danger from government troops, the police, rural bandits, city criminals, violence-prone drunks and machismo-obsessed men. Their only choice was to take refuge in their families.
The attitudes and behavior of both fathers and sons toward female members of their families had a strong Arab flavor with a harem mentality. Generally speaking, men demonstrated unselfish, romantic love toward women only in the courting stage. Once the relationship was sexually consummated, with or without marriage, men reverted to their potentate mentality, treating women more like property objects than love partners.
The only Mexican women who continued to have romance and passionate sexual encounters in their lives were those who had the courage and opportunity to engage in affairs with other men, something that put them in mortal danger.
The violence and killing in Mexico have continued all the way, after the revolution and the independence. It is probably only in our times that things are changing for better... calming down... if it wasn't for the drug dealers, for poverty, and the related situation...
Now, what about Cinco de Mayo? Well, it was simply a single isolated battle in which a French troop was defeated by a Mexican troop in Puebla. It didn’t stop the French presence that expanded for many years more in Mexico until the end of the American civil war. It’s a day that should and in fact is more celebrated by Americans than by Mexicans! Americans badly wanted the French to be stopped and ousted from the New Continent while the French wanted to help Mexico become an industrial power to contain the US. The Monroe doctrine to prevent any European country (perhaps with the exception of England) to further colonize or govern any country in the New Continent was in fact to help the US dominate the continent.
From 1821 when an American pioneer obtained a concession from the Mexican general in Texas until 1846 when the US declared war to Mexico, «the US had captured and occupied a wide swath of northern Mexico comprising what is now Arizona, Nevada, part of Utah and California as well as Mexico City itself. A Peace treaty gave all of northern Mexico to the US who had taken over more than half of the Mexican national territory». So, the enemy wasn't the French but the US greedy merchant colonialists.
Cinco de Mayo
Cinco de Mayo is a celebration to make French the scapegoat of American imperialism.
Between 1822 and 1855, Mexico had 25 presidents! In 1858, Mexico was to have Benito Juarez as president, a Zatopec indigenous. He was a reformer who proposed the separation of Church and State, to abolish special privileges enjoyed by the military and the clergy and to introduce education for the masses. It didn't please those ruling classes who's privilege where threatened. They asked the Archduke Maximilian of Austria to become Emperor of Mexico. In late 1861 a consortium of English, Spanish and French troops landed in Vera Cruz (soon the English and Spanish left and the French remained). In 1864 Maximilian (of Austria) reluctantly accepted the throne of Mexico with the goal to make the country an industrial country comparable to its northern neighbor. His liberal views and his approval of Juárez's reforms were opposed not only to the forces backing Juárez but also by those who had brought him to Mexico. When the Civil War in the US ended, American began pressuring France to withdraw his forces from Mexico and supplied arms to Mexican rebels. In 1867 it was obvious to France that it could not hold into Mexico, and its troops were withdrawing.
Although the French intervention was slowed by their loss at Puebla (May 5, 1862), the invasion continued. In September 1862 an additional 30,000 French troops arrived in Mexico. The following year, the French captured Puebla (May 17) and the capital of Mexico City (June 7), forcing Juárez's government into exile in northern Mexico, and the Austrian Archduke Maximilian became ruler of the short-lived Second Mexican Empire.
Below, an extract from Wikipedia about Cinco de Mayo:
«On September 16, 1862, President Juárez declared that the anniversary of the Battle of Puebla would be a national holiday, regarded as "Battle of Puebla Day" or "Battle of Cinco de Mayo". Although today it is recognized in some countries as a day of Mexican heritage celebration, it is not a federal holiday in Mexico. A common misconception in the United States is that Cinco de Mayo is Mexico's Independence Day, the most important national patriotic holiday in Mexico. Grito de Dolores (Mexico's Independence Day) falls on September 16 (dieciséis de septiembre in Spanish) ».
In fact, the Mexican Independence Revolution of 1810 was inspired by the French revolution and by the ideas it brought and spread. It was the French (also American) ideals of personal freedom, justice, equality, human rights and democracy that began to penetrate the thinking of a growing group of criollos (Mexican born Spaniards) and a few Mestizos (mixed blood).
But perhaps most importantly, in practical terms, it was Napoleon Bonaparte who provided the first spark for the fire that was to set Mexico free from its Spanish overlords when he invaded Spain, forcing the King of Spain to abdicate and imprisoning his son. It happened in 1808, just 2 years before the Mexican independence movement began. The defeat of the Spanish regime by Napoleon obviously gave Mexicans the idea that if the Roy (King) can be defeated in Spain and was not anymore ruling, so can his representative the Viceroy in Spain’s colonies. In fact, following the defeat of Spain by Napoleonic France, not only Mexico, but also Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Peru and Venezuela had all declared independence from Spain by 1824.
That was the history of Mexico the way I intiendo, and the way I interpreted it to share with you. I obviously became particularly interested about Mexican history during my delightful short journey in México, in San Miguel De Allende, thanks to mi amoriga (a Spanish neologism created by Francesca and I, not yet in dictionaries!) and thanks to my computer laptop not working, giving me the time to read Francesca’s book gift and other literature related to México.
Bienvenido a San Miguel!
The future of México is to be built by Mexican men and women, not by looking backward but forward: Viva la revolución de Ideas!
The Los Senderos project and the inaugural TEDx San Miguel De Allende Conference that the city is hosting, are examples of its futuristic outlook; and there is a whole dynamic of many projects of the sort being put in place: educational, environmental, touristic, and artistic.
San Miguel de Allende, el Corazon de Mexico, the birthplace of the nation’s proud independence, is now a place of art, culture and fiesta, a place of gathering, a place of real estate growing value, a place to learn something new, to heal your body and spirit, a place to retreat from the world!
San Miguel is a place where people can have a sense of well-being due to the year round spring-like climate of the Sierra Madre Mountains (San Miguel De Allende, su clima, su suelo y sus jardines!), a place «where magic is more than an illusion», a place to escape into nature and rediscover it, meet farmers and vendors selling delectable organic produce and artisanal food, a place to delight your palate and enjoy live music (the 16th Festival internacional de Jazz & Blues will be held on 10-14 November), a place to find a wonderful selection of artists’ studios and galleries, antiques, bookstores, restaurants, steak house, cafés and bars, a place to find stores with fine treasures for the home, beautiful architectures, jewelry, sombreros and interiors, lady’s and men’s fashion clothing, and hotels for all kinds of budget. It is a magic town where everybody feels welcome, and «a place to create something from nothing»! Halla tu camino! Find your way!
Vivan los mexicanos que trabajan por un mejor pais!
Viva San Miguel de Allende!
Viva México!
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Shodja Eddin Ziaian
October 2010
