A Bull Fighting Bishop In the Mountains

 

Final Notice This will be the last item on my blog before 31 July when Google will stop sending you automatic notifications that something has been posted. If you have not yet done so, you can send me an email headed “blog notification” and I will email you when a new item is added. I have been posting less frequently lately because I am busy revising my book for publication, but will continue to post from time to time.

 

8 January 1611 was a big day in San Luis de los Yopes, a town situated on the lower slopes of the Sierra Madre del Sur as the mountains descend to the Pacific coast of Mexico, for the town had an important visitor. The visiting dignitary was the Dominican friar, Alonso de la Mota y Escobar, bishop of Tlaxcala, although rather confusingly his cathedral and residence was in the city of Puebla de los Ángeles, not Tlaxcala itself. Don Alonso was on a tour of parts of his diocese, which from 22 December 1610 to 6 February 1611 took him to 25 towns in 36 days in the rugged, dusty, hot mountains of the Costa Chica and Montaña of Guerrero. By the end of his visit, he had confirmed more than 5,750 adult faithful Indians. The largest number (902) in a single day was achieved in Olinalá, a town close to a silver mining district, which may have accounted for the large numbers, since the mines were worked by Indian labourers.

 

The bishop reported that the Indigenous people of San Luis grew cotton and cacao, were well-behaved and schooled in the faith. They also enjoyed a good party, as, it seems, did don Alonso, for they honoured him with a fiesta, at the climax of which the bishop struck the blow which killed a bull. Thus, in addition to reporting the number of Confirmations he was able to carry out, the bishop’s report provides snapshots of the state of evangelization, aspects of daily life in individual parishes, and the rather variable character of the priests. In Huamuxtitlán, for example, the parish priest obliged the Indians to supply his meals, which was not allowed, and did not speak Nahuatl, the lingua franca considered essential for successful ministry. The Indians rejoiced when the bishop told them they need not feed their priest. He replaced the incumbent with a Nahuatl speaker. In Mochitlán Fray Alonso confirmed 371 members of the faithful, but the Indians complained about their priest and asked for the return of a father Carreño. In Apango he confirmed 594 natives and admonished the priest for his relationship with “a certain woman concerning whom he has a bad reputation”. In Tixtla the priest was accused of overcharging. The bishop ordered the priest to repay the excess charges and gave the Indians the scale of fees. Such behaviour was by no means uncommon in other parts of Guerrero and of New Spain. While most priests seem to have been responsible and benevolent, others levied excessive charges, demanded payments or services to which they were not entitled or mistreated Indians. Such behaviour scandalized Indians, especially the nobility, since they expected priests to match the standards of personal propriety that had generally characterized the precontact priesthood. 

 

Things were better in Ayutla close to the hot tropical coast, where the priest set a good example and treated the Indians well. Here the bishop preached to Spaniards, mestizos and mulattos, as well as Indians, a sign of the demographic shift that resulted from the mass deaths of Indians on the coast, and, he recorded, “I confirmed 570 children of God [criaturas], of all colours”. In Olinalá, was another good priest. The Indians were “very admirable people and well dressed”. They produced a quantity of cochineal and jícaras (cups for drinking chocolate made from gourds) painted in many colours. Olinalá is still famed today for its lacquer work, a tradition dating back to well before the 16^th century.

 

San Luis Acatlán (270 confirmed) was governed by a well-respected cacique (the Spanish term for an indigenous ruler) who spoke Spanish, don Domingo de los Ángeles. Don Domingo may have adopted some Spanish manners, but he also observed some of the courtesies and social rituals of his prehispanic heritage. He treated the bishop very attentively “in the manner of the caciques of old”. With great modesty, he beseeched Fray Alonso not to offend him by refusing a humble gift of a cotton bed canopy sewn by his daughters and worth 15 pesos (a tidy sum) and a little ground cacao. The bishop reciprocated with a gift of a fine shirt, some conserves and five precious stones (cornelians). Don Domingo had welcomed with elaborate formality and modestly beseeched the friar to receive his gifts, much as his Postclassic predecessors might have welcomed a visiting dignitary or a group of migrants seeking a new home. The bishop encountered an equally courteous, but impoverished, cacique two days later in Sochitonala. This cacique was not to be outdone. He offered another bed canopy and a substantial quantity of cacao. The bishop thanked him, but explained that it would be cruel to accept such a generous gift from such poor people.

 

Not every visit went smoothly. In Zapotitlán de Tablas don Alonso confirmed not a single person. The Indians flatly refused to cooperate, even when told they need not bring candles, a significant concession since candles were expensive items. Similar blandishments – Confirmation without charge and candles – also failed dismally in Tlacoapa. In Tlapa don Alonso reported that the Indians were badly schooled in the faith and were notorious for idolatry. Worse still, the bishop received reports that the friar responsible for Tlapa, Fray Domingo de Tovar, procured young girls for an idolatrous, drunken Indian who spent the tribute (tax) he collected from his subjects on himself, rather than for the benefit of the community. The bishop also criticized the friars of Alcozauca and Totomixtlahuaca. In Chilapa, the site of a large monastery, the conduct of the prior was decidedly un-clerical, so much so that don Alonso refused to go there. However, the Augustinian friar of Quechultenango was so poor that the bishop declined to stay there to spare the father the expense of providing a meal.

 

Don Alonso’s account of his visit to eastern Guerrero is discussed in the book I am contracted to write for the University of New Mexico Press. One of the reviewers of my text questioned whether the bishop was baptizing people, but the term used in the report is confirmé (I confirmed) not bautizé (I baptized). This caused me to investigate, with the help of some Catholic friends[1], the sacrament of Confirmation. In the early church three sacraments, Baptism, Confirmation and the Eucharist, were celebrated by adults annually at Easter. “The catechumens [those joining the Church community] descended into a pool where they were baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. They ascended, were clothed with a white robe, and the bishop laid hands on them and anointed them with oil. They then proceeded to a place of honor among the community where they participated in the Eucharist for the first time. Initiation thus consisted of one event with several moments. The climax was the celebration of the Eucharist.”[2]

 

As the numbers of the faithful grew, there were too many faithful for the bishops of the Western Church to deal with all three sacraments. The bishops therefore delegated baptism to the priests, but continued to be responsible for Confirmation. The essentials of Confirmation consist of a number of elements. The sacrament begins with the presentation of the candidates by a priest, followed by a homily given by the bishop. The bishop then asks the catechumens a number of questions to renew the baptismal vows made on their behalf by their godparents. The bishop and the priest then extend their hands over them. The bishop says or sings a prayer and anoints each catechumen by making the sign of the Cross on the forehead with a specially consecrated olive oil (known as chrism). This is usually followed by Mass and the Eucharist.

 

Whether, in practice, Confirmation in New Spain was modified to take account of local conditions, I have not yet managed to find out. A helpful professor, Atria Larson at St Louis University (a Catholic institution responsible to the Vatican), who specializes in Medieval canon law, told me that canon law routinely recognized extenuating circumstances, provided the essentials of the sacrament (anointing with chrism and the bishop pronouncing the required words) were observed. Another scholar, Tom Izbicki, emeritus professor of Rutgers University, passed on a story about Hugh of Lincoln, a 12^th-century French monk and bishop of Lincoln, who refused to administer Confirmation from horseback.

 

Tom also mentioned that a late Medieval handbook for curates states that the Pope had to delegate authority for priests, rather than bishops, to confirm catechumens. The authority of bishops to administer Confirmation was clearly well-established in Mexico by 1610, as a heated debate in the Third Mexican Provincial Council of 1585 demonstrated. The first clergy to evangelize in New Spain were the friars of the religious orders, the Franciscans first of all, followed by the Augustinians and Dominicans, and later the Jesuits. The orders jealously guarded their independence. In the 1585 council the Franciscan Jerónimo de Mendieta argued that the religious orders had made a much better job of converting the Indians than the secular clergy (as ordinary priests were termed). Therefore, he declared, the bishops should have no authority over the friars unless they were very badly behaved, and should limit their activities in parishes for which the orders were responsible to Confirmation. The Franciscans claimed the authority of the King himself for this position. However, despite claiming royal backing the Franciscans did not dare trespass on the prerogative of bishops to carry out Confirmation.

 

Don Alonso was 64 years old, and had usually ridden on horse or mule back some 40km or so (occasionally more) in no great comfort. He described one journey over “seven deadly leagues of very bad road”, and recorded that in Sochitonala there were “infinite mosquitos”.  He must have been a determined and robust man. He was surely assisted by the local priest, perhaps a priest or two who travelled with him, and indigenous church assistants. We know from the reports of parish priests, who ministered to large parishes, that without their indigenous church officials they could not have performed their duties. Many, but by no means all, clerics spoke Nahuatl, and even a century after the defeat of the Aztecs only a minority of native Mexicans spoke Spanish. There were a good many Nahuatl speakers in the Costa Chica and the Montaña, but also many whose language was Mixtec, Tlapanec or Mixtec, so the clergy must have depended on bilingual assistants to muster and organize hundreds of Indians. And since some aspects of the sacrament had to be carried out by a bishop, don Alonso must have spent many hours confirming the local faithful, and then would be off the next day on another mountain track to his next destination.

 

I assume that he performed the sacrament in the robes of a bishop. We know that expensive silk vestments made in China were imported through Acapulco, but whether don Alonso risked his best outfit in the heat and dust of Guerrero’s mountains we do not know.

 

 

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[1] Cecilia Bainton, Chris Contillo and Roger Woodham, to whom many thanks.

[2] https://www.loyolapress.com/catholic-resources/sacraments/confirmation/history-and-development-of-sacrament-of-confirmation/

Scenes of everyday life and politics in Mexico past and present

 

Another reminder: to continue to receive automatic notifications of blog posts On 31 July Google will no longer automatically send you emails to tell you there is something new to read on my blog. If you would like to continue to be alerted to new posts by email please send me a message headed “Notifications of blog” to: ianjacobsipswich@gmail.com

 

Our son Chris, who lives in a small town, San Vicente, Nayarit, just inland from the tourist beaches of the Pacific, remarked recently that he had been suffering from an unpleasant itch. A Neighbour suggested that he needed to have his tinaco cleaned. If you stand on the invariably flat roof of a house in any Mexican town, you cannot miss the hundreds of usually black plastic water tanks (tinacos) on every rooftop. The liquid pumped up from water mains, even in the wealthier districts of the principal cities, is not potable. Mexicans buy purified water in large plastic bottles called garrafones, delivered to their door. When we lived in Zamora, Michoacán, our apartment was on the third floor, so we paid the young man who delivered our garrafones a modest tip (20 pesos, about one US dollar) to carry the heavy bottles upstairs.

A delivery of garrafones

The man who arrived to clean Chris’ tinaco brought along his eleven-year-old son, who climbed inside the hot tank with a stiff bush and scrubbed it clean. Child labour is not legal, but nor is it uncommon in Mexico. In Zamora, for example, we would hang small plastic shopping bags of trash on a nail in a wooden telephone pole for daily collection. Young boys, of perhaps thirteen years, clinging to the back of a battered truck, would collect the bags, which would eventually end up on a gigantic pile of trash beside the road that leads to the Indigenous villages of the Tarascan meseta, high above the valley in which Zamora sits. A friend in Mexico City explained that in the capital the garbage trucks are the property of small-time entrepreneurs who make part of their profit by sifting the rubbish for anything that can be repurposed or recycled to earn a few pesos. As in Zamora, their workers are young men, often illiterate because they collect rubbish rather than going to school.

A tinaco on a roof

Our bus from Zamora to Mexico City would head north to La Piedad (‘Pity” or “Mercy”) a town, that in the 12^th century was known as Zula, or “quail territory”. In 1380 the Tarascans conquered the place and renamed it Aramutaro, or “place with caves”. An invading Spaniard, Antonio de Villarroel, renamed it San Sebastián de Aramutarillo (“Saint Sebastian of the little place with caves”). The town’s name changed yet again in 1692 in response to a miraculous phenomenon. A branch of a local tree bore a striking resemblance to the image of Christ on the cross, which led to the construction of the Templo del Señor de la Piedad (the “Church of our Lord of Mercy”), reputed to have the largest dome in all Mexico.

 

Templo del Señor de la Piedad, La Piedad, Michoacán, aerial view

Nowadays, as the bus makes its way from La Piedad across the great plain of the Bajío region, the traveller is not likely to see any quails, but rather large trucks packed full of hot, smelly pigs destined for the markets of the Valleys of Mexico and Toluca. This is possibly, the least picturesque road in all Mexico. Viewed from the bus, each town along the highway seems to consist of nothing but factories and great numbers of identical small cube-shaped houses.

Cube-shaped houses of the type seen on the road across the Bajío

Mexico was once famous for its innovative housing for working-class families. In Mexico City in the 1960s the architect Mario Pani designed the Conjunto Urbano Nonoalco Tlatelolco, a huge complex of 102 apartment buildings, schools, hospitals, shops and so on. In the 1970s two friends lived in a Tlatelolco apartment, which provided well-designed modern housing. The standardize cubes of the Bajío display not a trace of such innovative design.

The Conjunto Urbano Nonoalco Tlateloloco from the roof of the Chihuahua building

I had not understood why the good design standards of Pani had given way to standardized white cubes, constructed en masse, often with no community facilities, until Chris suggested the answer. A week or so ago he and his colleagues were summoned to a meeting at their workplace. The gathering was about the Fondo Nacional de la Vivienda para los Trabajadores (National Housing Fund for Workers) or INFONAVIT, established in 1972 to implement the right to housing granted to workers by Mexico’s 1917 constitution. In the second half of the 20^th century Mexico’s population increased rapidly and at the same time large numbers of people moved from rural towns and villages to cities. Many settled in Mexico City, which soon became the megalopolis that dominates the country’s economy and politics. Infonavit was an attempt to answer the question, how to provide decent housing for a rapidly increasing low-income population with no access to credit?

 

The meeting that Chris attended was addressed, not by an official from Infonavit, but by a representative of a construction company. He explained to Chris and his colleagues that all employers in Mexico must deduct 5% of staff salaries, which is paid into an INFONAVIT fund for each worker. The fund can be used as part payment of an INFONAVIT house. Workers who buy a house pay an annual interest rate of 12% on the loan, and a further 13% for insurance. At these rates, many workers pay for their home two or three times over, but can never pay off the debt, which is eventually written off by INFONAVIT after 35 years. If the fund is not used to buy a home, INFONAVIT deducts 60% before converting it to a pension. You do not need to be a financial genius to work out that workers’ housing in Mexico is a big business. In 2019 Infonavit issued 351,461 mortgages for new and existing homes and 170,500 for improvements. The value of these loans was 157,046 million pesos (roughly £5,235 millions or US$7,330 millions). That’s why Chris’ meeting was addressed not by an INFONAVIT official or a financial adviser, but by a man from a construction company. Several constructoras have become very large enterprises by building enormous numbers of small, identical, frequently poorly constructed homes. I commented to Chris that in this respect the INFONAVIT scheme is not unlike our Conservative government’s programmes of subsidies for the purchase of first-time buyers’ new homes. Large amounts of government subsidies were directed to large construction firms whose profits soared. The management was paid bonuses for simply accepting government cash. Plus ça change, no cambia nada, one might say.

 

INFONAVIT homes were not always identical white boxes. In 1973 work began on the Itzacalco housing development to the east of Mexico City. The plan was to combine urban housing, recreational areas and shops with the natural environment of a lake which was home to ducks and fish. Eventually, 5,200 homes were built for 22,000 residents. Photographs suggest that the design and environmental objectives of the Itzacalco complex were achieved. However, in 1979 an earthquake cracked the lake bed and drained it in less than 24 hours. The dry lake was converted into a park. Lack of maintenance, mostly caused by corrupt diversions of public funds, has given the park a rather dilapidated appearance, but it still provides a space for play, parties, aerobics classes and the like.

The Itzacalco lake and apartment buildings

Chris rents an Infonavit white cube house in a development in San Vicente, Nayarit. His landlady, a member of a family of landowners, owns a number of houses, which suggests that not all the government-funded homes are owned by low-income workers. Facilities are basic, but adequate for a single person or young family: the ground floor is a large room, with a small kitchen area, toilet and wash basin, which the plumber forgot to connect to the water supply. The upper floor has two bedrooms and a shower/toilet room. There is a small concreted yard at the back with a washing machine, water heater, and a washing line. We had seen an almost identical house when we attended the wedding of one of Chris’ friends in Atlacomulco, Mexico State, several years ago. The newlyweds proudly showed us their brand-new home. Viewing the bedrooms required strong nerves, since the concrete staircase was narrow and lacked any banister to prevent an unsteady visitor, or parent carrying an unruly child, tumbling on to the concrete floor below.

 

Chris' street in San Vicente. His house is second right

Nevertheless, an INFONAVIT home can be a route to modest prosperity. Chris’ Chilean neighbour has added a third bedroom and a garage to his house and is selling it for the equivalent of £58,000/$81,000. That’s more than seven times the salary of a middle manager. Not a lot for a wealthy Mexican, but a considerable sum for a middle-class person. So, an INFONAVIT house can be the basis of a modest fortune.

 

This kind of state-sponsored programme to benefit the less well-off sectors of Mexican society (while, not entirely coincidentally, creating business opportunities for the wealthy) was a feature of the rule of the one-party governments of Mexico’s “managed democracy” from 1920 to 2000. Essentially, the regime maintained itself in office by distributing at least some benefits to various sectors. Officeholders, from humble town mayors to the President himself, were subject to little or no scrutiny by a compliant media. A period in office was an opportunity to make money. The presidente municipal (municipal president, or mayor) of Atlacomulco, in the State of Mexico, where Chris taught English to trainee school teachers, earns his rewards from the town’s gravel quarry. Higher up the pyramid, rewards were incomparably greater. Miguel Alemán Valdés, President from 1946-1952, selected Acapulco to be developed as a major tourist destination. He just happened to have acquired beforehand large tracts of land where hotels would be built. And so did many of his friends. Trade union leaders were expected to prevent their members causing the government any serious trouble, and were richly rewarded in return. They were known as charro leaders (a charro is a horse rider, dressed in an elaborately elegant suit and large sombrero, for the Mexican equivalent of rodeo). The most notorious charro was Fidel Velázquez Sánchez, leader from 1941 until his death in 1997 of the Confederación de Trabajadores Mexicanos (Confederation of Mexican workers) or CTM. Fidel, who died a wealthy man, was reputedly consulted by presidents about the best choice to be the next man to wear the sash of office. Furthermore, businessmen could benefit from good relations with politicians and union bosses like Fidel (at a price, which represented a cost of doing business in Mexico) – or they could find their businesses adversely affected if they did not cosy up to those who held political power in government or unions.

 

Fidel Velázquez (in dark glasses) with President Adolfo López Mateos (1958-1964, speaking)

For all this corruption, the government took care, to varying degrees according to the ideology or whims of the President of the day, to make sure that some benefits reached the workers and rural small farmers for whom the Revoultion was fought, according to the official version of history. When I was a student in Mexico City in the 1970s, I would often walk past stores with the red logo of the Compañía Nacional de Subsistencias Populares (National Company of Popular Subsistence Foods), or CONASUPO. Founded in 1962, CONASUPO’s mission was to sell basic foodstuffs, especially maize, the staple of the Mexican diet at regulated prices. In fact, the range of goods was pretty much what one would find in any supermarket, including clothing. CONASUPO was closed in 1999, towards the end of the presidential term of the last President of the managed democracy era, the splendidly named Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de León.

A rural CONASUPO shop

CONASUPO advertising in the 1970s or 1980s. The goods advertised are chicken, cabbage, green pepper, chile poblano, apples, and children's clothing. Below, shopping for sardines in tomato sauce probably in the 1970s

 

A similar social programme, the Lechería Nacional, S. A. de C. V. (National Dairy Company plc) or LICONSA was founded in 1945. LICONSA, whose logo reads “abasto social de leche” (social supply of milk), sells milk fortified with iron, zinc, folic acid, vitamins A, C, D, Riboflavin and Cobalamin, at subsidized prices. The elements added to the milk are designed to combat the nutritional deficiencies most commonly suffered by the more deprived sectors of Mexican society, especially children and the elderly. Studies carried out by the Instituto Nacional de Salud Pública (National Institute of Public Health) report that children who consume LICONSA’s fortified milk present lower levels of anaemia, malnourishment in general, are taller and develop more muscle mass than children who do not consume the milk. The children’s cognitive functions are also improved.

 

LICONSA's logo: the slogan reads "social supply of milk"

A happy LICONSA customer (from a government web site)

In the 1970s government ministries ran subsidized shops for government employees. My landlord Alfonso, an economist, worked for the Secretaría de Obras Públicas (SOP, Ministry of Public Works). He explained to me that at the end of the fifth year of a presidential term he hoped that his boss would be politically acute enough to back the candidate who would be chosen to be the next President. If his boss chose wisely, Alfonso had a job for another six years, perhaps even a promotion, but the wrong choice meant unemployment. The process of consultation and manoeuvring that resulted in the selection (in the terminology of the time, el dedazo, the pointing of the incumbent’s finger towards the chosen one, followed by el destape, the unveiling of the anointed one) was opaque and, for someone at Alfonso’s level, unpredictable. A job for another six years, Alfonso explained, brought with it the benefit of two salaries, one en la nómina (on the payroll), another fuera de la nómina (off the payroll), and subsidized shopping at the SOP shop. Together, these funded most of the cost of a pleasant home in a good neighbourhood (Colonia Condesa) of leafy streets, a car, and the expenses of a family of two children. The balance was paid for by taking in two lodgers.

Alfonso and his wife took me to the ministry shop only once. My landlady had explained to me, very shamefaced, that somebody had stolen my British underpants (which presumably were highly desirable in Mexico City) from the washing line. She would pay for replacements. I also needed to buy a joint of beef because I was to cook a British Sunday roast at the weekend. Once I had selected my new underpants, Alfonso told me to be sure to notice el carnicero bizco (the cross-eyed butcher). He was hard to miss, as he held a large piece of beef, raised his right holding a great cleaver and seemed certain to amputate his left hand.

 

Sometimes, Presidents simply handed out money and favours. The man in office when I lived in Mexico was Luis Echeverría Álvarez (1970-1976). Echeverría, a rather dull grey man, excessively fond of his own rhetoric, was notorious for doling out unbudgeted favours, large and small. He was said always to travel with a suitcase full of cash. An anecdote I was told seemed to confirm this. Towards the end of his term, Echeverría commissioned a history of the Mexican Revolution from the country’s leading historians of the Colegio de México. During his ceremonial visit to launch the project the President asked each professor if there was anything they needed. The Mexican academics replied, “no, Mr. President, we have all we need”, but a French professor spoke up. The college’s film club, he explained, had to borrow a projector and screen. Echeverría turned to a splendidly uniformed general carrying a large briefcase stuffed with cash. “Take the professor to the Palacio de Hierro (the Harrods of Mexico City) and buy him anything he wants".

 

In 2000 the era of governments of the PRI (Partido de la Revolución Institucional, Party of the Institutional Revolution) whose origins lay (however remotely) in the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1920, came to an end. Two successive presidents representing the Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) had other priorities. When the old ruling party returned to power in 2012, the newly elected president was the young and glamorous, but profoundly corrupt, Enrique Peña Nieto, from Atlacomulco, the town with the gravel pit. EPN, as he was known, cared little for the poor. He focused on projecting Mexico on the international scene as a future economic superpower. He changed laws to encourage international investment. He decided that the President of Mexico deserved a jet, much like Airforce One to the north. At an embassy reception, his ambassador in London proudly announced that the national airline, Aeroméxico, would replace its entire fleet with the latest Boeing jets. EPN was set to launch Mexico into a new league on the international scene, and to secure enough wealth for a playboy retirement.

EPN (left) aboard the presidential jet, giving the President of Uruguay, José Mujica, a lift to Montevideo. Uruguay presumably could not afford a jet

EPN’s term was a car crash of hubris and untrammelled corruption. His successor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), obliterated the PRI and all other opposition in the 2018 elections. AMLO promised to end the corrupt rule of the conservative neoliberals and to govern for ordinary Mexicans.

 

This month has been mid-term election season. AMLO is half-way through his six-year single term, so he was not on the ballot paper. The big question has been whether his party would sustain its huge majorities in the national legislature and its control of many states. Chris’ workplace is located off a short multi-lane highway that was not completed before a state governor ended his term, so it comes to an end among fields of melons and vegetables, never, it seems, to go any further. Since the only traffic is employees of Pasitos de Luz, Chris’ charity, and the odd melon farmer, the highway is an ideal event space. As he drove home one day, Chris came across a dance on the empty highway organized by one of the parties running a candidate for state Governor, Levántate Nayarit (Stand up Nayarit). He commented that there was no evidence of political speeches, and no information about what the party stands for, just bands and plenty of people dancing and having a good time. It would be an exaggeration to state that Mexican politics lacks ideological content, but personality and personal contacts play a significant part in elections. Events such as the San Vicente dance, giveaways such as baseball caps, or perhaps a card to buy something in a supermarket, and other goodies are an indispensable part of a campaign. Walls are painted with logos and slogans; billboards are filled with smiling photos of candidates.

The candidate for governor of Levántate Nayarit

There were seven candidates to be Governor of Nayarit, four female, three male. Opinion polls predicted that MORENA and its three affiliated parties were the clear favourites to win the governorship. A distant second was the candidate of three parties that were once bitter rivals, the PRI, PAN and the Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD). The PAN was for decades the perpetually defeated Catholic conservative opposition to the PRI. The PRI won every presidential election from the 1920s to 2000, but allowed the PAN occasionally to win an inconsequential election for the sake of appearances. The PRD was founded by Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, son of one of the most revered PRI presidents, Lázaro Cárdenas (1934-1940). Cuauhtémoc won the popular vote to become President in 1988, but the PRI was not yet ready to accept defeat and rigged the results. AMLO, as it happens, has been a member of the PRI and the PRD before founding his current party, the Movimiento de Renovación Nacional (MORENA). The opinion polls in Nayarit were accurate: MORENA won with 49.69% of the vote. PAN/PRI/PRD came a distant third with 16.82%. Levántate Nayarit was fourth with 4.61%. The dance events seem not to have worked too well.

 

The candidates for governor of Nayarit in the mid-term elections and the predicted results

Whether AMLO will succeed in improving the lives of poorer Mexicans is hard to judge. He has certainly done some things to benefit the most disadvantaged. He obliged employers of domestic servants to enrol them in the social security system so that they have access to state medical care (but did not increase the funding of an already under-funded system). He increased the state pension. He has instituted a. programme to provide work experience for unemployed young people (an effort to keep them from the clutches of organized crime). These are programmes that a PRI predecessor like Luis Echeverría might have sponsored. Reports of the results are mixed.

AMLO can also take positions that seem to contradict his commitment to help the underprivileged. For example, despite its corruption and hubris, EPN’s administration retained traces of the PRI’s instinct to at least do something to alleviate poverty. When we were in Michoacán in 2018, we noticed, as we were driven through Indigenous towns of the Meseta Tarasca, buildings on which signs read comedor comunitario (community dining room). These had been established as part of a programme to alleviate food poverty in 2013 by the Secretaría de Desarrollo Social (SEDESOL, Ministry of Social Development). SEDESOL equipped the rooms and supplied non-perishable foodstuffs. Diners paid a fee of between three and ten pesos (£0.10-£0.33/US$0.14-$0.46) with which volunteer cooks bought perishable foodstuffs. Alas, in 2019 the federal government eliminated the comedores from SEDESOL’s budget, so there are no more inexpensive meals in those Tarascan towns. This runs counter to efforts to assist the less fortunate, but is consistent with AMLO’s detestation of anything connected with EPN.

Serving lunch in a comedor comunitario in 2014. Below, diners in a comedor

Furthermore, like presidents of the PRI, where after all his political roots lie, AMLO has invested in pet projects. He cancelled the construction of a new airport for Mexico City initiated under his predecessor, and ordered the army to build a new one on another site. He has also put the army in charge of building the Tren Maya, a tourist railway in Yucatán. He has declared a policy of energy independence by ordering the national petroleum company PEMEX to build a new oil refinery. He shows no interest in renewable energy. He does not control the press as his PRI predecessors did for decades, but is dismissive of questions from media other than those who view him favourably.

 

AMLO may succeed in some of his aims, but power in Mexico does not grow from the vote of the poor and deprived. Mexico is a society in which wealth, personal contacts and economic and political power feed one another so that the privileged become ever more privileged. If the poor are lucky, they get subsidized milk or an INFONAVIT house.

A Samurai Visits the Pope

 

In 1565 a Spanish ship discovered the return route from the Philippines to Acapulco in Mexico. Thus began 250 years of Spanish trade and contact with Manila, and from there with the rest of Asia. Not long after, the King in Madrid began to receive reports of a nation of fiercesome warriors – the Japanese.

 

On 29 May 1592 the Governor of the Philippines, Gómez Pérez Dasmariñas, heard that a Japanese ship carrying ambassadors from the “King of Japon” had anchored in Manila’s harbour. On 31 May the ambassadors delivered to him a “letter from that king, enclosed in a box of wood one and one-half varas in length and painted white. Inside this was another box of the same proportions, excellently painted, varnished, and polished in black, with some medium-sized gilded iron rings and some large cords of red silk. Within this box was another one painted in various colors—yellow and gold—with its large iron rings and cords of white and violet silk, both covered with damask. In this third box, wrapped in a stout, wide paper, painted and gilded, was the letter, written with Chinese characters in the Japanese language, on stout paper, illumined and gilded with great neatness. The letter is even larger than the sealed bulls from Rroma, on parchment, and is sealed with two painted seals stamped in red.” The letter coolly informed Dasmariñas that Japan planned to invade Great China, and the Japanese king had been minded to attack Manila on his fleet’s way to China. Instead, the monarch invited Dasmariñas to send an ambassador in sign of friendship, otherwise “I shall unfurl my banner and send an army against that country to conquer it with a multitude of men”.

 

Eleven years later, a group of captive Spanish mariners were directing the construction of a ship at Tsukinoura, a little more than 400km north of modern Tokyo. The Japanese had the shipbuilding knowhow to sail the seas as far south as the Philippines, but they did not know how to build a vessel that could withstand the rigours of a journey across the Pacific, still less did they have the navigational expertise successfully to reach Spanish territory in Acapulco. As the price of their freedom the Spaniards in Tsukinoura had been ordered to build a ship and to sail for Acapulco. Aboard would be an embassy from the shōgun Tokugawa Ieyasu. One of the ambassadors was a samurai, Hasekura Rokuemon (1571-1622), a member of the gun corps of Lord Date Masamune. Hasekura would be absent from Japan for seven years, during which time he and his companions were the first Japanese to cross the Pacific to Acapulco, where he arrived on 28 January 1614, to visit Mexico, to sail from Veracruz to Seville, to secure an audience with the Spanish King in Madrid and to meet the Pope in Rome. Given the technologies of the day and the perils of such a journey, Hasekura would be counted one of the most extraordinary travellers in history, were it not for the fact that remarkably little is reliably known about his embassy and its consequences.

 

Replica of the San Juan Bautista, in which Hasekura crossed the Pacific, Ishinomaki, Japan

The air of mystery that surrounds the story of Hasekura attracted the Japanese novelist Shusaku Endō (1923-1956) to write his brilliant novel, The Samurai. Working with the scant historical facts, and a visit to Mexico in 1974 when he travelled from the Pacific coast to the Atlantic, Endō imagines how Hasekura and his three fellow samurai ambassadors must have felt and acted in response to unimaginable events, peoples and places. Since I finished the novel a few weeks ago, I have been thinking about the similarities and differences between the work of the historian and a historical novelist. All historians work with sources that are, to a greater or lesser extent, incomplete and apply their imagination to reconstruct a credible view of the past, but a historian who stretches imagination too far will be criticized. The skill of the novelist is to stretch imagination much further, but nevertheless to convincingly construct characters of the period that have a ring of truth and events that transport the reader to unfamiliar places. In this respect Endō’s novel succeeds briliantly.

 

On the journey across the Pacific the ship is enveloped for days in a thick fog that renders the instruments by which sailors navigated useless, and wracked by violent storms of the kind that not infrequently sank Spanish galleons. One of Hasekura’s faithful servants is crushed to death by falling cargo when seawater floods the hold. In the close confines of a crowded wooden ship the Japanese are repelled by the foul stink of the Spaniards. It was common knowledge in Spain that the despised Jews and Muslims bathed frequently. It was therefore an expression of Christian faith not to bathe. To stink was to be holy. The samurai gaze in wonder at a school of whales. Hasekura “watched motionlessly until at length the whales disappeared on the horizon. Rays of sunlight seeped through the clouds like sheaves of arrows, markedly tinging the edge of the now-deserted ocean with silver. It had never occurred to the samurai that there were so many new and different things to experience. He had not realized the world was so vast. His Lordship’s domain had been the only world of which he could conceive. But now a subtle transformation was taking place in his heart, and with it came a vague uneasiness and a formless fear.”

 

Hasekura in Rome 1615, attributed to Claude Deruet

For those who know something of the times and places that Endō depicts there are some minor missteps. When the “battered ship … now scarcely more than a hulk” finally reaches Acapulco it anchors in the inlet – in fact, ships anchored in Acapulco’s capacious bay. And the hills are covered in strange olive trees – in fact, the Pacific coast would have been covered in tropical forest; there was not an olive tree for thousands of miles. On the journey to Mexico City the samurai ambassadors and the scheming, ambitious Franciscan friar who accompanies them as an interpreter, spend the night in the village of Iguala (a real place) but avoid Taxco (another real place) when they notice in the mountains along the way smoke signals sent up by Indians still hostile to the Spaniards. This is very fanciful stuff imported from American westerns. In Endō’s imagination, the samurai enter Mexico City through the gate of a walled city. Although it is true that Spanish cities in the New World were modelled on the European cities from which they came, they had no walls and gates. Indeed, at this time Mexico City was located on an island in a great lake and connected to the mainland by long causeways that were easily defended. So walls and gates were not needed.

 

Endō’s challenge was to imagine very different societies - feudal Japan, colonial New Spain (as Mexico was known at the time), Spain and Italy. The opening chapters are set in a Japan ruled by daimyōs (feudal lords) to whom a samurai like Hosegawa owed allegiance and military service in return for the Lord’s favour and access to land. When summoned by his Lord he hurries to comply and humbles himself in the presence of his superior. Even a lowly samurai like Hosegawa in turn had servants and families who depended on his protection and land. Endō interprets the foundational institution of Spanish colonial rule, the encomienda as the equivalent of the daimyo system, describing the encomenderos of New Spain as feudal landed lords. In fact, they had rights to Indian labour and tribute, but no access to their encomienda’s land, and the Indians' obligations to their encomendero were limited by law, not feudal ties of loyalty.

 

In New Spain Hosegawa and his companions encounter a strange culture which they struggle to interpret, especially since their only interpreter is the scheming Spanish friar Velasco who tells the Japanese only what suits his own ends. Velasco tells the Japanese merchants who travelled to New Spain in search of profit that they will be allowed to do business there only if they become Christians. One of the Japanese tells Velasco that it makes no difference to most Japanese whether there is a God or not. “If the merchants on this ship are able to make money in Nueva España, they will probably become Christians. But if they find there is no profit in it, they will abandon your religion in an instant.” Nevertheless, Velasco arranges for the merchants to be baptized by the Archbishop of Mexico in a grand ceremony in the city’s cathedral. Hosegawa cannot understand how Spaniards could worship a miserable, emaciated man tortured on a cross. No man could owe allegiance to such a powerless figure. Moreover, the samurai felt bound by his duty to his lord Date Masamune to refuse offers of conversion.

 

The Japanese envoys are taken to meet the Spanish Viceroy who offers them his hand. But the Japanese are so busy bowing low that they do not notice the Viceroy’s gesture. Endō writes: “The contrast between this Japanese style of greeting and the Viceroy’s bombastic welcoming speech, done in typical Spanish fashion, made an amusing spectacle. Although essentially these two nationalities are utterly dissimilar, they are alike in their respect for formality and in their exaggerated mannerisms.” When I was in Japan on publishing business, it had often occurred to me that my student life in Mexico, with its respect for titles and hierarchy and formal methods of greeting, was a good training for the complex formalities of Japanese business and social life. Endō evidently formed a similar impression of Mexican society.

 

Diego Fernández de Córdoba, Viceroy of New Spain when Hasekura was there

Hosekawa and his fellow ambassadors journey on to Spain. In Madrid they meet the King who is suspicious of the motives of the Japanese. He has heard of the persecution of Christians in Japan and shows no interest in a commercial treaty. Desperate to save his mission, Velasco persuades the Japanese ambassadors that their mission will succeed only if they become Christians. Reluctantly, Hosekawa and his companions agree. Velasco then takes the Japanese to Rome where, on 3 November 1615 they have an inconsequential meeting with the Pope, who has also been informed of Japan’s persecution of Christians. His mission a wretched failure, Hosekawa undertakes the long journey back to Japan. He reached Manila in 1618 only to receive orders that he was to remain there until further notice. He finally received permission to return to his home in 1620.

 

Felipe III by Andrés López Polanco, c.1617

In Endō’s novel, Hosekawa’s reward for loyalty to his lord and seven years away from home, is execution for the crime of conversion to Christianity. In fact, his fate is not certain. Some traditions record that he renounced his new faith, others that he clung to it and was ordered to die. A letter of 1640 claims that Hasekura’s son Gonshirō furtively observed Christian rites, a crime for which Hasekura's eldest son Kanzaburō, guilty of tolerance, was ordered to disembowel himself. Endō’s novel is a superb exercise in historical imagination. Hosekawa’s adventure is a tragic tale of loyalty betrayed by scheming feudal lords and an ambitious cleric.

 

Pope Paul V, who met Hasekura in Rome

Note: I am grateful to Professor Van C. Gessel for supplying information about Endō and Hasekura in the Postscript to his excellent translation of the novel and in an email. Quotes from the novel are from Professor Gessel’s translation (Penguin Classics 1980).