Two methods were employed by him, or rather one only, in converting so untamed and rude a people. No one is ignorant, that in New Spain the worship of the Holy Cross has ever been general. Be the mountain beautiful or barren, lofty or low, the natives were accustomed to rear a cross upon it. Where roads forked they set it up, and also in the streets and plazas, that they might venerate it at every step and bow before it. With greater reason, therefore, believed Father Roa, ought the sacred emblem to be multiplied upon the rugged mountain trails, which, at first glance, had so much discouraged him.
But, not consenting to erect it in spots, where, before, the Indians had adored their idols, he taught them to honor it with great love and unheard-of penances. When he went forth from his convent, he had them throw about his neck a halter, dragged by two Indians; thus, with quick step, downcast eyes, in tears, with ardent groaning, he went, meditating on the passion of the Redeemer, until he reached the spot where stood a cross. Scarcely knelt before it, the Indians, who accompanied him and knew his orders, buffeted him, spat upon him, and cruelly beat him. This was repeated as many times as there were crosses on the way—and there were many.
When it is stated that this practice was constant and but the beginning of each day, one begins to have an idea of the examples, which he set to the new followers of Christ. One is stupefied to read that, arrived at the village he preached and administered the sacraments, then waited until night to make a general flagellation, which, finished, he sallied from the church, naked from the waist up and barefoot, with a halter around his neck, in order to walk around the churchyard, which was strewn with glowing brands. One can hardly believe that his strength allowed him to preach, on returning into the church, a sermon upon the torments of hell and, further, that after all this he endured the torture of boiling water, which his rough followers threw over his lacerated body.
Still the idea of the sufferings, which he added to those, today, as then, inseparable from a region so wild and remote, is not complete until we know that, in Lent, he was accustomed, thrice weekly, to bathe the Hermita of Molango with his blood. In his oratory he had painted the Prayer in the Garden; and there, after his long prayers, the Indians came to beat him, while they overwhelmed him with insults. They stripped him from the waist up and violently tore away the coarse and rasping cloth which was bound closely to his flesh; they threw a halter about his neck and, in this guise, dragged him to a second oratory where was painted a Magdalene anointing the Lord’s feet. Placing him there before an Indian who, seated in his tribunal, represented Divine Justice, they accused him of being a wicked man, an ingrate, proud, perverter, and false. He replied nothing on the matter to the questions of the judge, but, after a little time, confessed his sins, ingratitude, and faults, in a loud voice. He replied as little to a new accusation, made against him with false witnesses, of the truth of which the judge declared himself convinced, and ordered that they should beat him naked, which they did, thoroughly, until the blood ran down upon the ground from his raw and quivering body. Afterward they kindled splinters of fat pine, with the sizzling resin of which they scorched him from the shoulders to the soles of his feet, and lastly they laid upon him a heavy cross, which he bore in a procession around the enclosure over a bed of glowing coals.
JUAN F. MOLINA SOLIS.
Juan F. Molina Solis, representative of one of the oldest and most respected families of Yucatan, was born June 11, 1850, in the village of Hecelchacan. His father was Juan F. Molina Esquivel, his mother Cecilia Solis de Molina. In 1857, the family removed to Merida, where the boy’s education was carried on. He received the degree of Master of Arts from the Seminario conciliar de San Ildefonso, after which he studied law, graduating in 1874. He has ever occupied a prominent position in Merida as a successful lawyer, as teacher in the Seminario, as professor in the Law School, as journalist, and as author. In literature he has largely confined himself to history—especially the history of Yucatan. His Historia del Descubrimiento y Conquista de Yucatan con una reseña de la Historia antiqua de esta Peninsula (History of the Discovery and Conquest of Yucatan with a Summary of the Ancient History of this Peninsula) is a standard authority. It is admirably written and is marked by a sober criticism and constant reference to original sources. Besides this, the largest and most important work that he has written, we may mention a collection of polemical historical articles and of miscellaneous editorials presented under the general title El Primer Obispado de la Nacion Mejicana (The First Bishopric of the Mexican Nation) and an interesting historical sketch, El Conde de Peñalva (The Count of Peñalva). In his editorials Señor Molina often discusses matters of transcendant importance to the nation. While extremely conservative, and hence often in the opposition, his writings on such themes are thoughtful, candid, just, and patriotic. Among such articles are some treating of Representative Government, The Election of Deputies and Senators to the Federal Congress, The Commercial Treaty Between Mexico and the United States, etc. The passage presented here, in translation, is a chapter from El Conde de Peñalva.
THE HORRORS OF 1648 IN YUCATAN.
The Count could not arrive at a more unfortunate moment nor amid conditions sadder than those among which fate decreed his coming to these shores. The situation of the Peninsula could not be more sorrowful or calamitous. An epidemic disease, whether cholera, or yellow fever, or the black plague, is uncertain, was just ceasing to devastate the community, and the misfortunes and ruin which it caused had not yet ended. That pest began in the year 1648, year unlucky for Yucatan. After the season of northers in February of that year, a drought set in, so rigorous as to sterilize the soil and to produce intense heat, which was increased by burning over the fields in preparation for the year’s sowing. This drought, these heats, the Peninsula suffers ordinarily, but for a short time only, from the month of March until the rains fall in May—and, it even happens often that, before the rains, showers refresh the air and moisten and fertilize the earth. The year 1648 was not, however, such; the heats, initiated in the month of February, augmented, more and more, until they reached the extreme degree which human nature can endure; the inhabitants of the country anxiously begged for rain to diminish the heat, in which they were burning; but heaven, deaf to their clamors, refused to open its stores, and time passed without a single drop of rain coming to refresh the thirsty earth. Sometimes, the rains delay until the end of June, but what was seen in 1648 has never been since repeated; June passed, July passed, August began, and the land was as dry as a fleshless skeleton, exposed to the quivering rays of a dog-days’ sun. The dust, fine and penetrating, was constantly raised in clouds, from March on, at the blast of the southeast wind, and shut out from view the barren fields which, when visible offered to the eye nothing but leafless trees and ground overgrown with briars and brambles without greenness. Nor was the afternoon breeze any relief from the extraordinary heat and drought, because that little current of air, blowing so softly and agreeably on summer afternoons, at that time came impregnated with an odor strong and pestiferous as if the whole Peninsula had been encircled by filthy and stinking cesspools. And this was because that period of drought coincided with an extraordinary infection of the fishes of the sea, which died in infinite numbers, and their bodies, tossed up by the sea onto the shores, formed gigantic heaps of putrefaction, which poisoned the air. How great must have been the number of those dead fish, since it is stated that the vessels that were navigating near our coasts were checked in their courses and journeyed slowly, as if they were running in the belt of calms or through spaces filled with drifting ice! In vain our police force, then in embryo, sent out daily, from all the towns near the coast, files of Indians led by a Spaniard, for the purpose of burning the dead fish. The very stench of the burning came to be unbearable, so that finally the expedient was abandoned, as harmful.
Suffering under these tribulations, the people intensified their affliction, by dire forebodings, which existed more in their imagination than in reality. As always happens, in time of social calamity, aged persons spoke of similar times, in remote epochs, which had preceded horrible disasters. The air appearing thick and heavy, they imagined that the sun did not shine as it was accustomed to do, but was as if eclipsed; and, in fine, the inner sadness of minds was reflected in external things, conspiring to exalt the fancy with dread of vague misfortunes, of coming and fatal ills.