San Miguel Allende -- Pictures of la Salud and the Civic Plaza

Guanajuato, Mexico

Visited December 2007


View of Allende Plaza looking east
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

2007_12_09_San_Miguel_de_Allende -19_civic_plaza_la_salud 12-8-2007 11-36-28 PM.JPG

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]

La SaludThe 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

2007_12_05_Mexico_San_Miguel_de_Allende-66_civic_square 12-5-2007 7-36-16 PM.JPG

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.  
Civic Plaza

Above we see the equestrian statue of the town's namesake: Ignacio Allende.

Caste: your fate

Ignacio Allende Equestrian StatueThe 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

old college

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]     

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