Mexico: Empire to Revolution, © 2002, J
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MEXICO: FROM EMPIRE TO REVOLUTION HISTORY By Charles Merewether, Collections Curator, Getty Research Institute EMPIRE & NATION Legacy of Empires Since its invention, photography has played a key role as a scientific instrument in archaeological and anthropological expeditions, and in colonial conquest. In 1841, only two years after the invention of the daguerreotype, the American archaeologist John Lloyd Stephens and the English illustrator and architect Frederick Catherwood publish Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan. In it appear daguerreotypes of the ancient Mayan site Uxmal. The book inspires French explorer, archaeologist and photographer Claude-Joseph-Désiré Charnay, as it will inspire others after him, to come to Mexico. In 1857 he travels there on a scholarship from the French Ministry of Public Instruction to photograph the monuments and ruins of pre-Hispanic civilizations. These scholarships are part of the Commission des Monuments Historiques, established in France in 1837 to catalog and preserve all monuments of significant artistic or historic value. Lithographs of the ruins, based on daguerreotypes, inspire many to travel to the Middle East and the Americas to document them with more modern photographic methods. Charnay arrives in Mexico during a period of intense turmoil. Benito Juárez has just been sworn in as acting president, only to find himself opposed by conservative army forces led by General Miguel Miramón. In what becomes known as the War of Reform, 1858-1860, Miramón gains control of the country, briefly assuming the presidency in 1859. (In January 1861 Juárez is able to return to Mexico City and is constitutionally elected president.) Charnay arrives in Veracruz with 1800 kilograms of baggage. From there he takes a horse-drawn stage to Mexico City. Judging from what he later publishes and what original prints remain, Charnay’s first photographs of the city are of the principal historic sites and buildings. What is remarkable is that, perhaps inadvertently, Charnay chooses to photograph sites whose histories tell not only how one empire replaced another, but how such sites became symbolic of the assumption of power: he photographs Alameda Park, the former site of an Aztec market; the Church of Santo Domingo, constructed as the center of the Inquisition in Mexico over the palace of the last Aztec emperor; the Metropolitan Cathedral, built in 1573 over the remains of the Aztec Templo Mayor (Central Temple); the National Palace, formerly occupied by a huge rambling structure known as La Nueva Casa de Montezuma (The New Residence of Montezuma) and occupied by the Spaniard Hernán Cortés after 1529. Charnay also photographs the Basilica of Guadalupe, erected by order of Bishop Zumárraga in 1531 after reports that an apparition of Mary had appeared on the site; Chapultepec castle, which during the colonial period housed a branch of the Escuela Militar (Military Academy) and later became the imperial residence of Maximilian; and San Cosme, one of the wealthiest suburbs of Mexico City, through whose streets General Winfield Scott led the United States Army during the Mexican-American War. Before departing for the Yucatán, Charnay travels to the outskirts of Mexico City to photograph the pre- Hispanic and colonial ruins at Texcoco and Tlamanalco. The latter site was one of a number of locations where the famous missionary and Aztec archeologist and chronicler Bernardino de Sahagún worked. (His ministry began in 1529, only eight years after the arrival of Hernán Cortés.) Tlamanalco, its decorative Christian symbols carved by indigenous craftsmen, was an open-air chapel of a type invented by the first friars to accommodate the large numbers of newly baptized Indians. Charnay wants to go further afield and document the magnificent pre-Hispanic ruins he read about in Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan, many of which authors Stephens and Catherwood had “discovered” while exploring the land on horseback between 1839 and 1841. In September 1858 Charnay decides to travel to Mitla, located in the eastern part of the Oaxaca valley. Dating from 900-1200 A.D, the city was built by the Mixtec and contains masterpieces of architecture and ornamental design. However, it will take him more than five months to reach his destination, and even then he will be without his baggage and some of his equipment. The region of Oaxaca is engaged in the War of Reform (1858-1860), and the political upheaval means that roads are closed, transportation limited, and local labor scarce—often delaying Charnay’s work for weeks on end. While photographing at Mitla, he is threatened by rebels, who detain him for fifteen days. His supplies finally arrive, but even then the working conditions are extremely difficult. By the end of April he leaves for Mérida. The difficulty of travel can be conveyed by describing his journey: first crossing the mountain range to Tuxtepec by mule, then taking a canoe down the river to Alvarado, then a schooner to Veracruz, a steamer to Sisal and finally a stagecoach to Mérida. Over the next several months Charnay criss-crosses the country, seeking to avoid the continuing war between factions in the Yucatán. He visits Palenque, Mitla and Mexico City, but loses many of his negatives in a robbery. In April 1860 he travels to Mérida and plans for further travel. With twenty-five soldiers and Indians to accompany and protect him he begins more than a month’s work in Uxmal, Izamal, Chichén Itzá and Palenque. As the photographs show, the sites they visit are engulfed by jungle vegetation that has grown unchecked over the centuries. Charnay remarks, “One could pass by (a palace) ten meters away and not see it at all.” Days are spent carefully clearing the thick vegetation so as not to destroy the underlying ruins before he can either take photographs or make molds of the stone carvings. Uxmal, lying about fifty miles south of Mérida, was a Mayan city that flourished between 600-900 A.D., and consisted of structures elaborately decorated with carved stone inlays typical of pre-Hispanic sites in the Puuc region of Campeche. Izamal, originally an early Mayan religious center, lies a short distance from the ruins of Chichén Itzá, a Mayan center that was conquered and inhabited by the Toltecs from the north. Like the Toltecs, who incorporated extant Mayan structures into their own construction, when the Spanish conquered Izamal in the sixteenth century they forced the native population to flatten the top of one of the city’s pyramids and in its place erect a church (1553) and convent (1561). These are among the earliest surviving Spanish structures in the country. In 1860 Charnay returns to Mexico City, where he works with his associate, the photographer Julio Michaud, to publish some of his findings. The result, entitled Álbum fotográfico Mexicano, is composed of 25 photographs and depicts many of the principal colonial buildings and sites in Mexico City and its environs. While Charnay is busy preparing his publication, European creditors are demanding that the government of Juárez repay the debt incurred by the previous regime. Juárez’s refusal to do so leads the Spanish, English and French governments to send a European expeditionary force to Mexico at the end of 1861 to coerce the administration into payment. The Spanish and English troops leave in 1862, but Napoléon III of France, seeing that the Americans are immersed in their own civil war, seizes the opportunity to advance his power in the region. The incursion marks the beginning of a seven-year period during which two governments, that of Juárez and that of the French Empire, duel for domination. The French coin the term “Latin America” as a way to distinguish the region from the United States and place its people under the mantle of a Latin heritage. Charnay supports the European intervention in Mexico’s affairs, believing that the ruins he has seen symbolize the country’s inability to transform itself into a modern nation independently. He states: “It was France’s duty to rouse Mexico from its numbness . America will not protest . she will only be able to watch with a jealous eye the rebirth of the magnificent empire which escapes her.” However, the impending war with Napoléon and the advance of the French army signal to Charnay the end of his mission. By late December 1860 he has packed up and headed for Veracruz, arriving back in Paris on February 2, 1861. In 1863 he publishes Cités et ruines américaines. Extremely popular, it represents the most extensive of the earliest photographic documentation of Mayan ruins in Mexico, presented along with an extensive text by the eminent architectural historian Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc. Charnay’s photographs represent the vestiges of two empires, Spanish and pre-Hispanic, the legacies of which will continue to be a subject around which political leaders and parties wage an ideological war. Mexico: Empire to Revolution, http://www.getty.edu/research/tools/digital/mexico/, © 2002, J. Paul Getty Trust 2 French Intervention and New Empire Fresh from colonial wars in Africa, the French military governor of Mexico, General François-Achille Bazaine, leads an army of European soldiers and Algerian and American mercenaries from the port of Veracruz towards the capital. To keep supply lines open they advance on the cities of Orizaba and Puebla, besieging the latter city only to lose it to General Ignacio Zaragoza’s forces on May 5th, 1862. From this time on Puebla is known as ‘Puebla de Zaragoza’ and the day is celebrated as the national holiday of Cinco de Mayo (Fifth of May). The Mexican generals involved include Ignacio Cuellar and Porfirio Díaz, who will become President of Mexico sixteen years later.