LA PUEBLA DE LOS ANGELOS is the authorized version of the sacred city, but “Puebla” serves for all ordinary uses. This city is seventy-five miles southeast of the capital. It is not on account of its transcendent beauty or rare virtue that it is called the City of the Angels, but from its wonderful history, woven into mystic legends by the zealous priests. And for the story:
“Once upon a time,” as all good stories should begin, the Indians saw angels hovering over the place when it was an Indian village, before the Conquest, and hence its name. Another version is that one of the good bishops was looking for a site on which to build a town, and in his dream saw a vision of two angels measuring town lots on the border hills of a beautiful plain, and went right out and found the place where Puebla now stands to agree with his dream, and forthwith founded the city. Still a more recent explanation is given, that when they were building the church, angels built as much wall by night as the workmen built by day; and if you are disposed to doubt the statement, why, they show you the church itself, which ought to convince the most skeptical.
The cathedral is built of massive basalt, and is thought by many to be much finer than the cathedral of the capital. It fronts the Plaza Mayor, and is built upon a platform of porphyry with Doric and Ionic superstructure. The inside is bedizened with glitter and tawdry jimcracks as usual, entirely out of keeping with the beauty and magnificence of the building. The main altar is gilded with gold to the value of a hundred thousand dollars, and before Maximilian’s time there hung from the ceiling a famous chandelier of pure gold, also valued at a hundred thousand dollars. The church party was backing Maximilian, so the lamp was melted into coin to pay the army. In the towers are eighteen bells, the largest weighing ten tons. Why these churches have so many bells that are not rung, and have no chimes is another of the unanswered questions, and must remain so until the last call. The pulpit is of pure onyx, and the floor of glistening marble, and over the door-way is the insignia of the Golden Fleece. The two grand organs are encased and decorated with as fine work of sculpture as can be found anywhere, and the walls are lined with costly paintings. Of course here is shown a piece of the original crown of thorns.
In the church of San Francisco is a doll brought over by Cortez and carried by him through all his campaigns. It is an image of the Virgin, and the benighted natives venerate it as though it were a god, and this is but an index to the christianity of the country. The name of Christ is rarely heard, and the name of Jesus is so secular that you may go into a hotel corridor and say$1‘Jesus!’ and a half dozen men will answer and come to you. Go into any crowd and say the same word, and there will always be some one named Jesus, and possibly several. It is rather painful to your piety to have some bandit try to pass a pewter quarter on you or to keep the odd cents in a trade, and then to know the rascal is named Jesus Maria Magdalene. There is not a Christ Church to be found in all this land of churches, and as a means of saving grace, Christ is not counted. In the Mexican Catholic Church, the people pray to the powers in the order of their importance; first to the Mother of God, “Most Holy Mother,” second, to the saints, and lastly they mention the name of the Infant Jesus as being the son of Mary. In the prayers and in the sermons and in the paintings he is always figured as an infant in the arms of the Virgin, or the Man of Sorrows with his heart on the outside of his anatomy. After looking at a thousand such pictures one is tempted to believe that the X-ray is not such a modern innovation after all. In the case of the twelve stations on the march to Calvary, with the aid of red paint all the horrors and mental anguish that the human frame can endure are displayed in life-size as a scourge to the laggard believer.
I do not fancy the poetry of Burns, but these grewsome images of wax and papier mache with the real thorns on his head and the red paint gore dripping everywhere, always recall the lines:
“The fear o’ hell’s the hangman’s whip,
To haud the wretch in order.”
The impression it always makes on me is that the threat is always implied: “If you do not repent, you will be treated in the same manner,” and I honestly believe the Indians so interpret it. In the nave of these churches are hung the twelve apostles, in all stages of ancient martyrdom and modern dilapidation. Statues with broken or missing legs and streams of red paint gore pouring in congealed rivulets from Roman scourges and spear-points savor more of the bull-ring than of a sanctuary. On the altar is a copy of the Holy Bible containing the Old and New Testaments, translated out of the original tongues, and with the former translations diligently compared and revised; but out of its lids of solid silver bedecked with ribbons and symbols, they hear not a word of christian living, nor of the beautiful life of Christ, nor of their duty to their fellow man, but prostrate before these gory statues the worshipers go round and round, counting their beads and crossing themselves and gazing upon the ghastly anatomies before them, and this is their worship. If they are oppressed with the weight of earthly sins they are told to pray to the Holy Mother of God to intercede with St. Peter in behalf of the afflicted one, and in addition to burn candles upon the altar of Saint Francis or Saint Xavier, who have the contract to use their good offices in behalf of the sinner, said sinner guaranteeing to burn so many candles in acknowledgement, which candles can be had from the church commissary two doors to the rear on the right. And this is the substitute the Aztecs got by renouncing their idolatry. They asked bread and received a stone.
Puebla is called the City of the Angels, but it ought to be called the City of Churches. This was always the bulwark of the Church of Rome in the New World and was the last to succumb to the new order of things under Juarez. This is the city that backed Maximilian in his fight against the patriots and quartered the French army for seven years, and where the auto-de-fe of the Inquisition was pushed with all the zeal of Torquemada. When Juarez destroyed the church party, Pueblo had a dozen nunneries and as many monasteries, with all their concomitant cess-pools of vice, as Maria Monk so vividly describes in her Montreal experience. Under the liberal educational crusade of President Diaz, the people are becoming too enlightened to ever revert to the old regime.
Puebla is a city of a hundred thousand inhabitants and ranks as the fourth city in importance. It is the market for the beautiful onyx which is mined near the city. It is in a fertile valley, and for miles and miles to the rim of the mesa lies one of the most beautiful scenes within the Republic. Three volcanoes and three other snow-capped peaks overlook the city. From Mount Malinche the city I think gets its pure water brought by aqueducts. Puebla is the key to the country in time of war as it commands the approach to the sea. It was captured by Iturbide, Aug. 2, 1821; by Scott, May 25, 1847; occupied by the French, May 5, 1862; captured by the French, May 17, 1863; Recaptured by the Mexicans, Apr. 3, 1867. The old fort on the Hill of Guadalupe must be visited. Here the Mexicans under Porfirio Diaz defeated a veteran French army May 5, 1862, and earned their right to the national holiday of “Cinco de Mayo.”
Though the city is over seven thousand feet above the sea, the valley produces everything, wheat, rye, cochincal, maize, cotton, sugar, rice, tobacco, coal and iron, stone quarries, and lime and kaolin for porcelain, dye woods, and all kinds of tropical fruit in luxuriance, and the valleys of alfala feed the finest beef steers it has ever been my good fortune to see. The city was built in 1532 and is a model of neatness, and as no animal matter decomposes at this altitude the presence of disagreeable odors is unknown. Six railroads enter the town and the tramvias lead to many interesting suburbs. Twenty-five miles away is Popocatapetl, but with no forest or hill between the city and the volcanoes to proportionate the distance, it hardly appears five miles. If you wish to ascend the volcanoes, the Inter-Oceanic train stops at the small station of Amecameca at the foot, where guides and a two days’ supply of provisions are furnished.