Puebla

In colonial times in Mexico, the Spanish built many cities on the site of indigenous towns or religious centers, so the blending of cultures started immediately. In fact, one of the first mestizos born here was the son of Hernan Cortes and La Malinche, his interpreter/lover. Diego Rivera painted this child as a blue-eyed baby carried on his mother's back in a mural on the stairwell of the Palacio Nacional in Mexico City.

The mural also depicts abuses by the conquerers such as forced labor, whippings, rape, killing. One of the twelve missionary friars Spain sent in the earliest days of colonization, Fray Toribio, in an effort to curb abuses, decided to found a new, totally Spanish town away from native populations. This is now the city of Puebla, whose historic center is classic Roman / Spanish urban planning: a large open square, now the park-like Zocalo
with cathedral on one side and municipal building on the other, and streets heading out from the square in an even grid.



This city, on the major route between Veracruz and Mexico City, has always been important in Mexican history. The first battle in the Revolution against Porfirio Diaz (1910) took place in the house of the Serdan family, where six people fought against 500. Notice the bullet holes still in the walls.
My route to school every day takes me along calle Aquiles Serdan; I'm happy to know now who he was. After the battle was clearly lost, he hid under the floor trying to live to fight another day. Unfortunately, a cough gave him away and he was killed, along with his brother and a friend; his wife, mother and sister Carmen were arrested. These were the six who fought against the 500. One room of the Serdan memorial is dedicated to Carmen; inside is a box containing soil collected by women from every state of Mexico to place here in her honor.


Every Mexican city has streets named for its heroes and important historic dates: Hidalgo, Morelos, Madero, Juarez, 5 de mayo, 18 de noviembre, 16 de septiembre. Of these dates, most Americans have heard of Cinco de Mayo. This date commemorates a battle against French invaders that took place in Puebla in 1862. Under the command of General Zaragoza, the Mexicans, mostly indigenous and poorly equiped, defeated the French, who later won the war. In his honor, the city was renamed Puebla Heroica de Zaragoza. This statue of General Zaragoza is near the hill where the Battle of Puebla took place.

I spent a weekend in Puebla with two other Fulbright teachers, Cece and Nancy.


We enjoyed staying in the centro historico, trolley tours of the Cerro de Guadalupe where the Cinco de Mayo battle took place and of nearby Cholula, site of an ancient pyramid larger in volume than Egypt's Cheops, but now looking more like a hill with a church on top.





Entrance to the archaeological site is through the ancient tunnels of the pyramid.


Here, in 1519 Cortes, warned about an Aztec ambush, struck first, killed thousands and vowed to build a church for every day of the year. There are 39 churches in this small town, many built atop former temples. We went to a very interesting one in nearby Tonantzintla, decorated in a style called indigenous baroque, synchretism at its most beautiful. Spanish culture and Catholic religion may have been imposed on the indigenous, but they did not abandon their native beliefs, symbols and motifs.