Mexico, still trying to pin down its dead heroes of the War of Independence, now is sifting through bones of infants and deer

In solemn and (presumed) circumstance, before an enthralled public and the politicians proud of the spectacle they were offering the citizenry, “the bones of the heroes who gave (Mexico) its fatherland,” passed through the streets of the city of Mexico September 30, 2010, in ostentatious parades commemorating the bicentennial of Independence, wrote a journalist from the Mexico City daily La Jornada.  Crowds applauded Morelos and Hidalgo, the most popular founders of an independent Mexico.

But not all.  Enough people harbored doubt to prompt La Jornada to note that: whoever was bold enough to question the authenticity of the illustrious skeletons was immediately silenced by official declarations:  “There is no doubt.”  Then came a brief history lesson for the untutored or the forgetful: “These are the remains of Juan Aldama, Ignacio Allende, Nicolas Bravo, Vicente Guerrero, Miguel Hidalgo, Mariano Jimenez, Mariano Matamoros, Francisco Javier Mina, Jose Maria Morelos, Andres Quintana Roo, Leona Vicario, Guadalupe Victoria, Pedro Moreno and Victor Rosales.  And nothing less.”

Now, La Jornada has patiently jacked-up the slow-moving and reluctant capacities of  Mexico’s still “new” Instituto Federal de Acceso a la Informacion y Proteccion de Datos to obtain this latest assessment by the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) of the urns said by the government in 2010 to contain the remains of the leaders of the War of Independence.  An uprising ignited by decisions made by Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costillo, Ignacio Allende and Juan Aldama the night of September 15, 1810 and the actions they took the morning of September 16 in the town of Dolores.  This report was dramatically different than the assessment INAH issued in September 2010, under the auspices of the presidency of Felipe Caldron, of the pro-church, pro-business National Action Party (PAN).  The PAN was created in 1939 in great part by a religious and wealthy elite displeased with the “irreligious,” less than conservative path Mexico was taking.  For this and a number of political and social reasons, many Mexicans did not believe the first report and believe the present re-assessment was withheld from the public until Calderon’s PAN administration left office.

Mexico’s governing wealthy elite, both Church and political, has had an uncomfortable time accepting the rebellious movement that set Nuevo España on fire and eventually freed it from the Spanish Empire, painfully turning the one-time colony into a place that became Mexico.   Both the country’s Church and secular elite (the gachupines or spur-wearers) sent armies to hunt down, torture and kill anyone connected to the Independence movement, especially turncoat Criollos  –those Spaniards born in New Spain.  It was a war between independence-minded Criollos, plus thousands of allies (mestizo and indios) versus the gachupines who saw themselves as “pure” Spaniards and thus the rightful rulers, in the name of the Crown, of New Spain.

However you view that “method of governance,” Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History used one method of forensic examination in 2010 and another afterwards, with (unsurprisingly) different conclusions.

The earlier method declared as a “meticulous process of restoration and preservation conducted by specialists from the INAH,” was proved to have been a lie by this recent forensic examination.

Photographs published by La Jornada show clearly that the remains of the “heroes” have been carelessly  treated.  Some were found simply dumped into containers of various kinds, including a wooden box and glass crypts, presumably both early on and evidently in 2010.  One box contained “more than 250 pieces of bone,” most of “distinct masculine adults, as well as the remains of five children between that ages of zero and six years, and four remains belonging to animals (deer).”  Another contained bones believed to be those of Leona Vicario and her daughter.  A wooden “urn” constructed in the form of a diamond bore a plaque with the name of Guadalupe Victoria (who died at 56), and contained bones of “an adult masculine individual, 45-50 years old.”

The Jornada article goes on in this manner, carefully describing what it found.  The clutter of the remains of the heroes being mixed is attributed by experts to the fact that at the time of their deaths they were certainly not considered heroes by their executioners.  Anthropologists and historians estimate they were gathered (theoretically together) sometime in the 19th century.  Mexico gained its freedom from Spain in 1821.  And there are records documenting the beheaded and mutilated body of Hidalgo being transferred to Mexico City in 1824.

Certainly those who had defeated Hidalgo would have wanted to preserve his bones.  The heads of Hidalgo, Allende, Aldama and Jimenez were displayed in metal cages on the four corners of the Alhondiga de Granaditas in Guanajuato, where the insurgents had slaughtered many Spaniards.  They hung there for ten years, until independence from Spain was won.  Yet doubt has surrounded what happened to the bodies of other leaders who were killed in battle or executed in diverse, often remote areas of the country. The remains of insurgents were treated with contempt by their enemies.  Outside of the trophy value – a warning to anybody entertaining thoughts of rebellion – there was little reason for victorious royal troops to preserve the often mutilated corpses.  And gathering them years later from various battle fields, sites of ambushes and often swift executions in an era when collecting bodies of “traitors” for historical purposes often seemed pointless.  There was, in the minds of royalists only one possible historical account, and the riddled and chopped bodies of insurgents had no place in it.

Jose Mario Morelos, the priest who took Hidalgo’s place – and was a more able commander and strategist – is an example.  He was born in Valladolid in what is now the state of Michoacan, and which today is the city of Morelos, the capital of the state.  He was executed in San Cristobal Ecatepec, in the present State of Mexico, December 22, 1815, and buried in the chapel annex of the village parish church.  By a congressional decree of July 23, 1823, his remains were to be removed to be placed with those of other heroes of the War of Independence in the Cathedral of Mexico under the Altar of Kings.

But a number of people had long before come to believe that Morelos’ body was not among those collected by congressional order. Those remains were later placed in the base of the “El Angel” column on Mexico City’s Paseo de la Reforma.  Morelos’ body, it was said almost immediately after his death, had been removed by his first son, Juan Almonte, to another, carefully concealed, grave.   Not a few people believe this, including some historians.