CHURCHES AND PYRAMIDS
Enrique is thoroughly up on his churches, and there are lots of them in Mexico as well as all South America. He said the Basilica of Guadelupe was the richest in the New World, and one of the oldest. It is in the old part of town. We arrived during Mass. Hundreds were attending that afternoon. The altar is a massive structure, and evidently of tremendous value. In back is a mural the Pope gave the church for its success in extending the faith. Enrique got hold of a boy who unlocked the doors of a big wall case and showed us the gold service of the church.
We had parked the car at the side. When we left, Enrique gave some money to a man, not exactly a policeman, but somehow connected. I asked what it was for. He shrugged and said, "Graft. If I had not given him money he would have spotted the car and the next time he would have damaged it in some way. These fellows are bad that way."
We drove next day to the pyramids—quite a distance from town. The temple or shrine to the snake gods is something to see. Made entirely of stone masonry, the outside is adorned with those famous protruding gargoyles, still in a reasonably good state of preservation. The masonry is excellent. On top was a sacrificial altar where Enrique told us thousands of human beings, mostly women, were beheaded from time to time to appease the snakes. Troughs led down and to each side, where two sizable wells at last stopped and held the flow of blood.
The high stone walls of the fort enclosed an area of a good many acres. The walls are more or less hollow because the priests lived inside and thought up new and more vicious ways and means of torturing a simple people.
No one seems to know who built the pyramids, or when. They were erected prior to the advent of the Aztecs, 1,500 to 3,000 years ago. The Pyramid of the Sun is 200 feet high and big around in proportion. Its building entailed millions of man hours. The Temple to the Moon is much lower and smaller, but at that was no after school hours chore.