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American Revolutionary War Autobiography Music Racial studies

Mexico: The crypto and the mulatto

Here in Mexico, a couple of days ago, after my family celebrated the Day of Independence, I caught my Catholic father and sister speaking in high terms about Miguel Hidalgo, the Catholic priest that in 1810 started the war of independence; and José María Morelos, the mulatto that continued Hidalgo’s anti-white wars. While father and daughter recognized that Hidalgo and Morelos killed lots of Iberian white civilians and “from 20,000 to 30,000 prisoners of war,” they, nonetheless, regard them as “heroes.” In the Mexican wars of independence from Spain of 1810 to 1821 my father and sister could have been confused with Spaniards and, still, like many other Mexicans who could pass as Mediterraneans, they side the crypto-Jew and the mulatto. Why?

miguel-hidalgo

The 19th century portraits of Hidalgo are fake. All of them used a man of Austrian origin who posed as the father of the independence. Original reports depict Hidalgo with hooked nose. The overwhelming majority of Mexicans ignore that the Catholic priest Hidalgo was probably the son of Jewish conversos. Even the Mexican Jews, no longer cryptos, acknowledge it: “Two genealogical studies of the eighteenth century, the Archivo General de la Nación de Mexico and the Ramo de la Inquisición, suggest that Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, the father of Mexican Independence, had a Converso background and that Bartolomé de las Casas, a Bishop who fought to free slaves in Nueva España, also had Jewish ancestors.” In case of my family, they are under the naïve impression that both Hidalgo and Las Casas were of pure Spanish origin.

But what about the mulatto Morelos? The 1944 edition of José Vasconcelos’ A Brief History of Mexico that my father read long ago, says (my translation):

For Morelos, for example, to be comparable to Washington, it must be assumed that Washington had decided to recruit blacks and mulattoes to kill the English. Instead, Washington disdained blacks and mulattoes and recruited the English of America, who did not commit the folly of killing their own brothers, uncles, and relatives, only because they were born in England. Quite the contrary, each participant of the American Revolution felt pride for his British ancestry and hoped for the betterment of the English. This should have been the sense of our own emancipation, to transform New Spain into an improved Spain, better than that of the peninsula but with its blood, our blood. The whole later disaster of Mexico is explained by the blind, criminal decision that emerged from the womb of Hidalgo’s mobs and is expressed in the suicidal cry: “Death to the Spaniards!”

So why many Mexicans who physiognomically could pass as southern Italians, Greeks or Spaniards side the mulatto against their blood? Recently, for example, my father’s orchestra composition, La Espada (The Sword), was a success in Mexico City: an homage to the mulatto Morelos (my father has zero black blood by the way).

The music is good—the first ten minutes can be listened in the above clip—, but the libretto is outrageous. The poet Carlos Pellicer (1897-1977) wrote it and my father adapted it for 150 voices and orchestra:

Tú fuiste una espada de Cristo,
que alguna vez, tal vez, tocó el demonio.
Gloria a ti por la tierra repartida.
Perdón a tu crueldad de mármol negro…
Gloria a ti al igualar indios, negros y blancos…
Gloria a ti que empobreciste a los ricos
Y te hiciste comer de los humildes,
Procurador de Cristo en el Magníficat.

My rough translation:

You [Morelos] were a sword of Christ,
once, perhaps, touched by the devil.
Glory to you for distributing the land.
Sorry for your cruelty of black marble…
Glory to you for equating indians, blacks and whites…
Glory to you that made the rich poor
And made the humble eat,
Attorney of Christ in the Magnificat.

When Pellicer said “touched by the devil” he meant the killings of unarmed Iberian whites that the mulatto ordered in cold blood. That’s why Pellicer said “black marble”: Morelos’ appearance was even darker than the Amerind skin! So much that, to avoid being called names, Morelos covered his curly hair—obvious black heritage—with the legendary bandana that adorns his head in every single picture that represents him.

JOSE MARIA MORELOS Y PAVONThe rest of my rough translation of the famed poet needs no explanation. However, as far as I know Catholic Pellicer (whom I met as a child when my family visited him at Tepoztlán) didn’t have black blood either. You can imagine where all of these ethno-suicidal ideas came from: the religion of the inversion of values of these Body-snatched Mexican Pods, my family included.