Centro's Four Indigenous Quarters | Santa María Cuepopan, Part II: San Hipólito, Church at the Crossroads of History

Church at the Crossroads of History

In our prior post, Santa María Cuepopan; Part I - Battleground and Sacred Ground, we began our exploration of the northwest quarter of ancient Tenochtitlan, called Cuepopan, where, after the Conquest, the Franciscans built a church to St. Mary, and added her name to that of the barrio. We visited the 16th century church built by the first Franciscan to come to Nueva España, Brother Pedro de Gante, Peter of Ghent.

There is another significant church in the quarter, which is now the southern half of the Colonia Guerrero. It is the Church of San Hipólito, St. Hippolytus. The church is a huge Baroque stucture, marking it as built in the 18th century. It sits mear the western limit of what was Cuepopan, on the northwest corner of a major intersection, where Avenida Hidalgo crosses Avenida Balderas, which marks the original western boundary of both the Mexica Cuepopan and the original Spanish Mexico City. The diagonal Paseo de la Reforma, extended north in the 20th century, also crosses here, creating a major intersection.

We first passed the church six years ago during our initial visit to Mexico City to explore whether it was a place where we would want to live. We happened to stay at a modest hotel on the south side of Avenida Hidalgo, whose name changes to Puente de Alvarado, Alvarado's Bridge, west of the intersection. At the time, we wondered both about the history of the huge church and the curious name Puente de Alvarado. As the church building dates from the mid-eighteenth century, it didn't appear to have any connection with the era of the Conquest. Baroque architecture not being one of our favorite styles (see our subsequent post, México Barroco | Baroque Art: Representing Divine Ecstasy, Evoking Awe), we didn't investigate further. 

San Hipólito sits at the northern end of Avenida Balderas,
where it intersects with Avenida Hidalgo and Paseo de la Reforma

San Hipólito.
The church is difficult to see from the street 
because it is surrounded by puestos, vendor stalls, 
and—due to the sinking of the former lake bed—it sits ten or more feet below street level.

Legend of the Indian Farmer

However, one day, a little over two years ago, when we were just starting this blog, Mexico City Ambles, we were exploring the area of West Centro Around Balderas, trying to get the lay of the land. As we passed by, our eye was captured by a striking bas-relief scupture on the wall enclosing the atrio (atrium) in front of San Hipólito.

We were struck by the raw power of the image, a virtually nude, evidently indigenous man somehow entangled with an eagle—his face expressing terror or anguish or both. We didn't understand these very Mexican symbols. Our focus was just on trying to orient ourselves, so we took the photo and moved on. Later, we filed the photo away in our Internet archives.

Now, returning to the neighborhood of Cuepopan with the goal of trying to decode its clues to the transition from Mexica Tenochtitlan to Spanish Mexico City, we remembered the sculpture and its haunting image. Once again, we go to Wikipedia en español, where we find:

"In the atrium of the chapel of San Hipólito is a monument sculpted by architect José Damián Ortiz de Castro (Mexican architect, 1750-93) consisting of an eagle lifting an Indian in his talons; below is an inscription that reads:

'Such was the carnage that the Aztecs did at this place to the Spaniards on the night of July 1, 1520, thereafter called the Sad Night (or Night of Sorrows), that after entering this city in triumph the following year, the conquistadores decided to build here a chapel that they called Chapel of the Martyrs and dedicated it to St. Hippolytus, as the taking of the city occurred on August 13, which is the day this saint is celebrated. The chapel was put in charge of the city council which agreed to build a larger church, which was started in 1599 and exists today.'"

The sculpture portrays the Legend of the Indian Farmer who is carried away by a huge eagle to a cave on a mountain top where he encounters the Emperor Moctezuma. The legend was recorded in the latter half of the 16th century by the Domincan friar, Fray Diego Durán in his Historia de las Indias de Nueva España, History of the Indians of New Spain.  

Durán (1537-88) arrived as a child with his family from Spain to Nueva España in the mid-1540s. In 1556, at the age of nineteen, he joined the Dominican order. He became fluent in Nahuatl and dedicated himself to collecting native stories and customs in order to instruct other friars regarding the culture of the people they were seeking to convert.

Legend of the Indian Farmer

"[...] An Indian farmer was tilling his corn fields, with all the peace of the world, when down from aloft came a most powerful eagle and seizing him with its talons, carried him aloft by his hair, while those who saw him go lost sight of him.

"Carrying him to a high mountain, the eagle put him into a very dark cave and there [...] he was given some roses and some smoking tinder which they blow on to light a fire, and a voice said to him:

'Take these and rest, and look at that miserable Motecuhzoma who is without feeling, intoxicated with pride and conceit, who having everything, has nothing.... And if you want to see how out of himself he is because of his pride, strike him in his thigh with the burning tinder, and see how he does not feel it.'

"[...] the Indian touched him with the burning tinder and Motecuhzoma pretended not to react or feel the fire of the tinder.

"The voice that spoke said: 

'See how he does not feel and how callous he is and how inebriated? Well, know that you were brought here by my command for this purpose.

'Go out, go, return to where you were brought from and tell Motecuhzoma what you have seen and what I have commanded you to do. And so that he understands that what you say is the truth, tell him to show you his thigh and show him where you hit him with the tinder and he will find there the mark from the fire.

'And tell him he has angered the god of whom he is a servant and that he himself has sought the evil that shall come upon him and that his command and pride are finished. May he enjoy what little that is left and be patient, because he himself has sought the evil.'

"And saying these words, he commanded the eagle that had brought him to leave and return him to his place."

Wikipedia en español: Templo de San Hipólito.

This tale poignantly conveys the pathos of the defeat of the Mexica by the Spanish under Cortés and their indigenous allies. Durán is regarded as a trustworthy relator of the tales told him; hence, it would appear that by fifty years after the Conquest, the indigenous people had created explanations for themselves and/or their new rulers that justified and rationalized the overthrow of their prior rulers and culture. 

The Church of San Hipólito sits at the physical and historical crossroads of that revolution.

Night of Sorrows

On November 8, 1519, the Mexica huey tlatoani (head speaker) Moctezuma Xocoyotzin (Moctezuma the Younger) allowed Hernán Cortés, his Spanish soldiers and indigenous allies to enter Tenochtitlan.

Moctezuma Xocoyotzin (the Younger) meets Hernán Cortés
on the causeway from Iztapalapa, Nov. 8, 1519

Tile mural on wall of Jesús Nazareno Church, on Pino Suárez Ave., in Centro Histórico,
reproduced from a 17th or 18th century oil painting.

After a time of mutually acting as good host and guests, a confontation occurred between one of Cortés indigenous allies back on the Gulf Coast (now Veracruz) and Mexica tribute collectors. In the fight, a Spanish captain was killed. When Cortés learned of this, he retaliated by taking Moctezuma prisoner in his own palace.

Subsequently, the Spanish governor of Cuba sent an expedition to arrest Cortés for going beyond his orders, which were simply to explore the west coast of the Gulf, not invade the land. So, in May of 1520, Cortés returned to Veracruz to confront the expedition and, in fact, convince its members to join him in the Conquest of Mexico. While he was away from Tenochtitlan, he left a lieutenant, Pedro de Alvarado, in charge.

Alvarado, fearing, or using as pretext the fear that, with Cortés away, the Mexicas would rise up against the Spanish and their allies, took the occasion of the Mexica religious Festival of Toxcatl, on May 20, honoring the god Tezcatlipoca, god of the night, in the main square in front of the Templo Mayor to surround, attack and massacre many priests, nobles and others in attendance. It is known as the Templo Mayor Massacre.

Massacre at the Main Temple
by John Charlot, French painter,
The first mural executed in the Antiguo Colegio San Ildefonso,
at the time, the National Preparatory School
October 2, 1922, to January 31, 1923.

Mexica drawing of their siege of the Spanish in the main Palace 
after the Temple Massacre

Cortés somehow managed to sneak back into Tenochtitlan and reenter the palace where the Spaniards were holed-up. On June 26 or 27, he ordered Moctezuma to go out on the roof of the palace and try to calm his people. The ruler was killed, according to Spanish accounts, by a stone launched by a slingshot, a common weapon among the indigenous, that struck him in the head. Indigenous accounts charge that the Spanish murdered him.

Night of Sorrows
José Clemente Orozco

In any case, on the night of June 30-July 1, 1520, Cortés and his men attempted to sneak out of the city via the causeway to Tacuba, carrying as much as possible of the gold Moctezuma had given them in an effort to appease them. At the moveable bridge over one of the many canals surrounding and permeating Tenochtitlan, they were overtaken by Mexica soldiers and a battle ensued. Hundreds of Spanish soldiers were killed, together with thousands of their indigenous allies. With the help of Tlaxcalan military leaders, Cortés escaped and made it to the shore in Tacuba. It is said he wept under an ahuehuete tree, a species now called the Montezuma cypress.

It was thought that Alvarado was lost, but he also managed to escape. Hence, the avenue west of San Hipólito is now Alvarado's Bridge. The canal is now Balderas Avenue. San Hipólito stands next to the bridge's location.

Church as Memorial and Monument to Spanish Victory

After Cortés recouped his forces with his indigenous allies in Tlaxcala, over the mountains east of the Valley of Mexico, he returned to the Valley of Mexico in the spring of 1521, prepared to put Tenochtitlan under siege. He launched a complex campaign of seizing the towns that controlled access to the causeways and aqueducts leading to the capital, and of building and launching a fleet of brigadines, small, two-masted ships, to control Lake Texcoco. He then had his troops fight their way up each causeway toward the city. Finally, on August 13, 1521, the last Mexica forces, surrounded in Tlatelolco, surrendered and their empire came under control of the Spanish.

As told above, at the site of the battle of The Night of Sorrows, Cortés ordered the construction of the Chapel of the Martyrs and dedicated it to St. Hippolytus, as the taking of the city occurred on August 13, which is the day this saint is celebrated. In the 18th century, it was enlarged to its present Baroque form. During the Colonial period, up until Independence, it was the focus of a holiday,  known as the Paseo del Pendón, the Parade of the Royal Banner, held every August 13, San Hipólito's day, commemorating Spanish rule of Mexico. Headed by the Viceroy, the bishops and civil and military authorities, the parade went from the National Palace, which had been the site of Moctezuma's Palace, to San Hipólito Church. It followed Tacuba Street, the route of the former road to the causeway and of Cortés's escape.

From San Hipólito to San Judas Tadeo, Saint for Hopeless Causes

When Cortés and his soldiers and indigenous allies were trapped and thousands killed during the Noche Triste, Night of Sorrows, they likely felt their cause, the Conquest of the Mexica, was hopeless. It is said that Cortés cried. However, whatever despair he felt he quickly overcame, for he almost immediately began to systematically plan a siege of Tenochtitlan.

Little more than a year later, that siege brought the fall of Tenochtitlan. Hopelessness then came to the surviving Mexica. It is voiced by a Mexica poet of the time:

On the roads lie broken spears
We have torn our hair in grief.
The houses are roofless,
Their walls are red with blood.
Maggots swarm in the streets and squares.

The walls are stained with brains.
The waters are red as if they were dyed,
And if we drink the waters, they taste of brine.

In our distress, we beat the adobe walls,
And our inheritance is a network of holes.
The shields were our shelter,
But shields do not stop desolation.

We ate salty grass,
Pieces of adobe, lizards, mice
And earth turned to dust, even the worms."

Anonymous Tlatelolco poet, translated from nahuatl into Spanish by Angel Garibay, (quoted by S. Ramirez in his Collected Works). See in English Broken Spears, the Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico.

See also Mexico Ambles post: Templo Mayor: The Buried Heart of Mexico

So San Hipólito symbolized both a Spanish loss and their subsequent victory and the end of the indigenous world.

It is, therefore, most interesting that in recent years San Hipólito has been transformed in a de facto manner by worshipers into a temple devoted to San Judas Tadeo, St. Judas or Jude Thaddaeus, one of the Twelve Apostles, who has become, in the 20th century, the saint for hopeless causes. We do not think this transformation of the identity of San Hipólito is coincidental. It is quintessentially Mexican.

San Hipólito has had a shrine to San Judas Tadeo—thought to be the only one in Mexico City—for at least three hundred years. Perhaps it was there because of the dire events leading to the construction of the church. In any case, in the latter half of the 20th century, worship at the shrine so increased that, in 1982, the statue of the saint was moved to the main altar. On October 28, St. Jude's Day, crowds of up to 100,000 people attend an hourly series of fifteen masses. Also, on the 28th of every month, masses attended by large crowds are held for the saint.

For a number of years, we have wanted to witness this obviously significant event in Mexico City's popular culture, but have been put off by the reported size of the crowds and the reputation that many participants are from the margins of Mexico City society, especially poor youth, often involved in the world of drugs and petty crime. But this year we decided to challenge our anxieties and go to San Hipólito on October 28. As frequently happens in our Ambles into lugares populares (places of the people, i.e., working class and poorer neighborhoods) of the City, we were happily surprised to find the event's negative reputation was not what we experienced.

While there were a number of young men and women in the crowd, they gave no sign of being "fringe", and the majority of participants were working class and middle-class Mexican families: grandparents, parents and children, even babies.

Crowd outside San Hipólito,
waiting their turn to get into one of the masses honoring San Judas Tadeo, St. Jude, on October 28

One devotee of San Judas

Many people were carrying statues of the saint in various sizes,
from small...

... to life-sized,
carried on his head by a young man.

One of the sequence of hourly masses held in San Hipóloto on October 28 
to honor San Judas Tadeo.
There are no pews, which makes more room for standing worshipers.

San Judas stands below the Virgin Mary, in the center of the retablo (reredos).

Worshipers,
a very respectful, friendly crowd.

Turning the Tables on Los de Arriba, Those Above

It seems to us that the informal but definitive transformation of San Hipólito into the Templo de San Judas Tadeo is a manifestation of the power of los de abajo, those from below, that is, everyday Mexicans, also self-identified as "el pueblo", "the people", to overturn the official reality of los de arriba, those above.  Los de abajo, el pueblo, the working class and poor, are the heirs of the Spanish racial prejudice against, and exclusion of, los indios, an economic, social, and cultural split that has pervaded Mexican society since the Spanish Conquest up to the present day.

The Spiritual Conquest, whose still-present manifestations we have been exploring, was aimed at converting los indios into ladinos, adopters of Spanish Catholicism and culture. The transformation of the Church of San Hipólito into the Church of San Judas Tadeo once again tells us that the strategy only partly succeeded. Los indios adopted the religion. Most adopted the language and other customs of Spanish European "Western" culture. They even interbred with the Spanish, producing what is now the majority population of mestizos (mixed blood). But insofar as they bear the consequences of Spanish discrimination, the present-day descendants of los indios continue to demand not just recognition by los de arriba but a respected place within Mexican society.

Their popular toma, takeover, of San Hipólito is also another expression of how everyday Mexicans, el pueblo, have transformed Spanish Catholicism into the distinct faith of the Mexican people. San Judas Tadeo may be understood as something of a male version of the Virgin of Guadalupe, the making of a Spanish Catholic saint into a Mexican one. El pueblo, the people, have made what was originally a monument to "justly fallen" Spanish soldiers into their own temple of hope. Their successful takeover is their victory in what is the last battle of Cuepopan.

San Judas as a Mexica/Azteca warrior
(carrying a smaller version of the Spanish original)

See: Santa María Cuepopan; Part I - Battleground and Sacred Ground