The appropriation of the Christ of Calvary. A transfer from the elites to the culture of the popular classes.
It is by making use of the field research method, and in the field of microhistory, that the great Italian historians have developed in such a fascinating way, taking the case of Levi, not to mention the famous author of Cheese and Worms. A miller from the 16th century, Carlo Ginzburg, we intend to spin this microscopic history that has its spatiality and temporality in the city of Lagos de Moreno, Jalisco.
In this piece of lump, famous inquisitorial cases have also taken place, to say one, that of the Moorish female or white mulatto, Beatriz de Padilla, tried by the Holy Office in the middle of the seventeenth century, as lover of the powerful landowner and inquisitorial commissioner, Don Diego Ortiz de Saavedra, accused of having caused the death of that old character through various concoctions, spells and witchcraft, in such a way that when Don Diego died, he previously suffered the detachment of the skin of the face, until he reached the gossip and gossip in the small town, then Santa María de los Lagos, as documented by Sollange Alberro, that said character was finally buried still alive.
The objective of this essay, however, pursues a very different theme. It is related to the great and ancient festivity full of popular religiosity, in honor of the image of "Our Father Jesus of Calvary." It is the “Bajada”, an annual that he carries out to visit and make a pilgrimage through all the corners of the city and some rural communities during a period of approximately fifty days to return to his abode on the Calvario hill, the “Ascent”, the last week of the month of July, and thus, give rise to the beginning of the great celebration in which the religious and the profane merge from the 25th and culminate in a big way on August 6, the day of the Transfiguration of the Lord.
It is not just any festival of the patron saint of the town or the neighborhood. We are going to tackle a history of a religious manifestation that has at least two and a half centuries of tradition; that traces its roots from the second half of the 18th century, in colonial times.
The image of this Christ of Calvary is baroque; It seems to be a Spanish polychrome carving, with too many similarities with other carvings of Jesus of Calvary or Christs of the Passion, which can be seen especially in the Cordoba region, in Spain.
In the "Bajada", of the image last Sunday, June 3, 2019, in Lagos de Moreno, it is possible to observe in the present a motley crowd of people of all social classes, but mostly of the so-called "people of the town", even coming from the numerous rancherías of the jurisdiction. But this huge mass demonstration did not start like this in ancient times. It was in a closed religious preserve or circle.
What is seen today as a manifestation of popular culture and popular religiosity, with transformations, changes and historical continuities, was actually in its beginnings a devotion of prominent Spaniards and Creoles, who, gradually, were making their own and their own. mestizos, the descendants of the Indians and the castes of the old Villa de Santa María de los Lagos, the current Lagos de Moreno.
We are going to deal, then, in this essay, with a celebration and a great festival that in the circular of time was being transferred from the social classes of the elite: from the religious culture of the dominant and prominent classes, to the popular classes. Perhaps it could be alluded to a transfer or a frank appropriation perpetrated by popular culture.
Image of Our Father Jesús del Calvario, in his traditional “Bajada”
We can recapitulate the timeline of the 1770s in which Francisco Xavier de Arriola, born in Havana, Cuba, takes office as Mayor of Lagos. Pronto is a faithful devotee of Jesús Nazareno, a processional image of Holy Week, belonging to the parish of the town. Around 1777, Arreola, in competition with the interim priest Juan José de Aguilera, the richest merchants and ranchers, more than a score, proposed to promote the cult of the image of the Nazarene, starting in 1777 the construction of his chapel in the hill of Calvario.
Very soon they will achieve their mission, beginning the celebration of the first novena in honor of Our Father Jesus del Calvary, with its small temple located on the north hill. They also continued culminating there, on that hill, the religious celebrations of Good Friday, the Way of the Cross, culminating in the death of the Redeemer.
The peninsular devotees in Lagos, bureaucrats and merchants; the rich creoles, landowners and merchants; Priests, in the pyramid of hierarchical society, annually continued to promote the cult of Jesus Nazareno, a carving that seems to have crossed the sea from Spain to Lagos, in the second half of the seventeenth century, to finally form the inventory with images donated to the parish temple.
We can see that, in a racial fence, not so rigid, the Indians, the mestizos, the blacks and the mulattoes, had their own chapels and brotherhoods. Of course, their own patron saints, whether in their neighborhoods or in their communities.
But in the figure of the Spanish Nazarene we can nevertheless notice features that, so to speak, powerfully attract the attention and devotion especially of the indigenous people. It is a polychrome carving, very fine workmanship, with a question that seems key to us: it is a Christ with a suffering face; he is a Christ of the Passion before being crucified. His open mouth, protruding tongue, and bleeding cheekbones are noted. There is anguish, there is much pain, the thorns are embedded in his head. We could allude that it is an ad hoc image for the dominated and marginalized people. Which is the kind of images of martyred, suffering Christs and saints, with whom they most identify, we do not know if those defeated in the Conquest, or the descendants of the possessors of the Stone of Sacrifices.
The image of the suffering and bleeding Christ, Jesus of Calvary.
In this temporary passage, the bond of imperial Spain, Independence and the declassification of races disarmed, the peninsular and Creole image becomes protector and patron of the poor, the humble; of an increasingly mestizo people, but with an indigenous ancestral majority, biologically also mixed with Afro-descendants. It seems that it is in this long interim of the 19th century that popular culture and religiosity fully appropriates the devotion to the Lord of Calvary and since the end of the century actively participates in the construction of the new and current temple.
In the portent of a parish with a baroque façade in the center of the city, there are the old original patron saints of the elite class of colonial Lagos: San Sebastián and Santa Catarina; the embalmed body of San Hermión Mártir, sacrificed in the Crusades and transferred in 1791 at the express request of priests of the Creole elite. But the mourning figure that drags the crowds on the "Bajada" and on the "Subida", or at the culmination of the great feast on Transfiguration Day, August 6, is here on the ancient north hill, and the people call him "The Boss", the Father of the people.
People applaud you when visiting neighborhoods
From generation to generation
Devotional transmission, and faith, takes place from generation to generation. Rivers of people, of all ages, are seen walking the streets to be forced to be in step with the image of Jesus Nazareno. Many parents carry their little ones on their shoulders, so that they can see it. Many applaud loudly in their wake.
Previously, they have laid flower rugs and ornaments along the main road through which the "Bajada" will take place. In a game and replay of symbols you can read the history of relationships and the formation of local society until the present that we observe this manifestation of popular culture and popular religiosity.
The dances and their representations of the indigenous past. Your acculturation
There is transformation in some characters. Here you can see in this dance a modern version of La Reynalda, the couple of the Loco de la Danza.
In this representation of the "Bajada", symbolically the races or the trunk of origin of the old society, especially the popular classes, their ancestors, are still in force: the inseparable character of Indian dances, the Loco de la Danza and his partner, a man in transvestite of a woman, symbolizes the old foreman, black or mulatto, –who used to punish them with the whip in the haciendas- and his wife, whom they satirize. The Indians, the components of the dance, were also victims of the foremen or mayorales as pigeonholed peons. They are modernized with other clothes and outfits; they follow the tradition, but do not know their origin and meanings. The important thing is that all these motley characters have not disappeared from religious and popular festivals.
The Madman of the Dance, symbolizes the old black or mulatto foreman who punished the peons of the haciendas by order of the master. More stylized, it no longer brings the black charro suit or the rag jumpsuits, which together with the Reynalda they brought on, hanging.
A new version of "Reynalda", a transvestite couple from Loco de la Danza.
The festival regains new momentum in the late 19th century, when the bishopric authorized the construction of a new temple in 1885 and the old chapel from the 18th century collapsed. Before, the strength of the popular festive demonstration was recognized by the Jalisco State Congress, which in 1872 granted Lagos the privilege of celebrating annual festivals from July 29 to August 8. (Hernández, Alfredo, 1992, snp). The Mexican Revolution is coming, Villistas and Carrancistas pose at the foot of the steps of the Cristo del Calvario temple, transcending its fame. The festival is remade until the forties, to acquire the verve and the multiple facets, changes and transformations, between religious devotion, and the pagan of its satirical and carnival dyes, fruits of popular culture, as we see it today.
Transvestite characters, between the prosaic and the profane
To conclude, we must observe the endurance of the collective manifestation of a people; adaptation, change and transformation, together with its continuity over a long time. Starting from a particular cult of a reduced elite of Spanish and Creole families that identify themselves with a representative figure of a Hispanic Christ, which they nestle in a sanctuary at the top of town, and the ways in which the marginal classes of hierarchical society do so. they make their own, they make it their own and they cover it with miracles of silver and gold; they touch and dance to him, in their own rhythms and sounds; recreating the clothes of their ancestors.
Such has been the cultural appropriation of this image of the Christ of Calvary, which gives identity to the town, especially from below, that it can easily be noticed that the old part of the Spanish town remains almost silent, without lights or ornaments, in the period celebration of the teacher to Christ. It is not a small thing, it is about the great parties, the main and annual, the synthesis of the sacred and the profane, of the city of Lagos de Moreno, Jalisco.
References
- HERNÁNDEZ, A. (1992), History of the August Festivities and the temple of Calvario in Lagos de Moreno, Jal. Ed. Provincia.GÓMEZ, J. (2003). The architects builders of the parish of the Asunción, ed. House of Culture-Municipal Historical Archive of Lagos de Moreno.GÓMEZ, M. (2017). Lagos de Moreno, Cultural Heritage of Humanity and Magic Town, ed. House of Culture-Patriotic Board, Lagos de Moreno City Council.
In Sollange Alberro: "Inquisición y Sociedad en México, 1571-1700" -, taken from:
