Excerpts from La Tierra Caliente de Michoacán by José Guadalupe Romero, 1854

Translated from the Spanish by Roberto Hope

Taken from "El Trópico Michoacano, Hombres y Tierras"

Published by Sidermex  in 1984

Translator’s note: 

Michoacán is the name of one of the Southern states of the Mexican Republic, bordering with the State of Guerrero on the East, the Pacific Ocean on the South, the States of Colima and Jalisco on the West and the States of Mexico, Querétaro and Guanajuato on the North. When Mexico was a part of Spain, Michoacán was a vast territory covering, in addition to what is now the state of Michoacán, most of its surrounding states. The Northern part of the state because of its altitude enjoys temperate weather but the Southern region, bordering the Pacific Coast, is hot, humid and less populated. Since the time of the Conquest, the Michoacán region was known for its gold and, soon thereafter its mines were being exploited by the Spaniards. In our days, gold, iron, and other minerals are being extracted in the region.

The original article was written in January, 1853, a quarter of a century after the end of the Mexican war of independence. This means that the author was born when Mexico was still a part of Spain, ruled by a viceroy named by the Spanish emperor. So, the author was able to compare how most Mexicans lived under the viceroyship with how they lived under a republic.

The Torrid Region

On purpose have I left for the end the information on the towns and population of the hot region of Michacán because of their being so different from those of other climates, as well as in types of products, customs, and even in languages, because the moral state in which they now are is worse than that they had enjoyed at the time of Spanish rule, because from the independence to our days, having been destroyed and deeply demoralized by the continued revolts in the nation, the civil governments have not promoted a single material improvement or established a new school or a new hospital, at the same time, the number of priests has been reduced (theJesuits been reestablished in Mexico in 1814 but deported again in July 1820 - translator’s note TN) and the spiritual needs of this unfortunate people have not been properly satisfied. In vain has the Most excellent Bishop Portugal (Juan Cayetano Gómez de Portugal y Solís, Bishop of Michoacán, who was the first person in America to be named Cardinal but the notice of his designation arrived in Michoacán a few days after his death - TN) spent immense amounts of money to establish a school in the midst of these torrid and deadly regions; in vain did the Most illustrious Monsignor Munguía (Clemente de Jesús Munguía, successor of Bishop Portugal as Bishop of Michoacán,- TN) tried to establish a convent in Tsintsunsan to form missionaries to transmit the light and morals to the population of those regions and for the propagation of the faith; all these efforts made by the Church have been unfruitful because of our civil discords, Time is ripe to direct a compassive look at over one hundred and five thousand disgraced people who live in those regions; time is ripe to develop the plentiful and diverse sources of wealth that exist in the region, to try to diminish their pains and  make them participate in our social enjoyments.

The Franciscan religious were the first to enter this region, baptizing the Indians, but they later reduced themselves to cold and temperate zones. The Augustines and secular clerics founded the towns, built roads, and established what is good and useful in those places. Despite these efforts, little could be advanced in civilizing those people during the time of Spanish rule, but after our independence everything that had been built in three centuries of patient effort, abnegation and constancy on the part of the evangelical workers is being destroyed.

It is a pity to see the backwardness in which these people live, both in religious and in moral knowledge. Nowhere would it be so convenient to establish a seminary as in this region.

The town of Ario suffered greatly because of the revolution of 1810; the parish church and almost all urban buildings were set on fire then; its commerce, which had been flourishing before, decayed after the independence, until it became null in 1822.

The  Spanish Government had ceded the town of Tacámbaro as an encomienda to Cristóbal de Oñate (whose descendant, Juan de Oñate, explored and colonized the region of New Mexico - TN) who requested from Father Juan de San Román some religious to evangelize the Indians of the town of Tacámbaro. In 1538 the Augustinians came to this town and conducted the first solemn baptism  of thousands of neophytes in the days of Easter; founded a convent, built the parish church and established a priory.

The spiritual conquest of the people of the town of Zitácuaro (name which in the Tarasco native language means place of resurrection - TN) was due to the Franciscans; the parish was founded by the Most Illustrious Vasco the Quiroga (first bishop of Michoacán and famous for his Christianization and protection of the Indians, modeled on Thomas More’s Utopia, as well as for his promotion of indigenous crafts, for his founding of hospitals, schools and workshops for the Indian population; his legacy survives to these days in that region). Zitácuaro owed its material progress to an image of Our Most Holy Mother, that used to be visited in pilgrimage from all towns in the region and still continues to our days. The origin of this image is as follows: The encomendero of Tajimaroa (another town in Michoacán), Don Juan Velázquez de Salazar, brought this image of the Virgin from Peninsular Spain towards the end of the sixteenth century and passing through Zitácuaro donated it to the Franciscan Religious, to have them place it in the parish church. Don Manuel de Santa Cruz, a wealthy and fortunate miner who had obtained  great bonanzas from his enterprise, built the beautiful sanctuary that still exists.

Conclusion

The historical and statistical information I have just presented manifests the admirable effects that Catholicism produced in all of New Spain and especially in the Diocese of Michoacán. Bishops, religious and clergy have been seen to enter in the midst of barbaric and ferocious peoples with no other weapon than the Cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ that they carried in their hands; Indian families have been seen grouping together around them; temples being erected; schools being established; customs been mellowed; the restless and turbulent nature of these people being transformed. The successors of the first apostles, having inherited the wisdom, charity and zeal of their illustrious predecessors have continued that civilizing activity with a generous effort; they have been seen courageously making close alliances with the oppressed people, defending their liberties and interests, protecting the weak, resisting the strong, intervening with munificent power against all disorders, all disgraces, all perils; they have been seen laying down and founding towns, uniting wandering tribes, having Indians come down from the hills, teaching them religion, agriculture, arts, trades, sciences and literature; these apostles have been seen learning over sixty languages, subjecting these to grammatical rules and making use of these means to make men, to which God was mute, know Him, obey His law, and learn the way He wants to be worshipped, showing them all the spectacle of the universe; they have been seen founding universities, colleges, schools, hospitals, orphanages, and as many institutions as can improve the condition of man; they have been seen founding abundant and perpetual charities to relieve all the miseries resulting from age, from disasters, from passions or from the crimes of men; they have been seen not satisfying themselves with favoring their contemporary generation but to advance to the future and meet calamities that did not yet exist; with the most magnificent generosity they have been seen clearing forests, fertilizing deserts, building roads, drying swamps, building lakes, building aqueducts, building bridges, erecting the best buildings in towns and creating solid and permanent resources; they have been seen keeping public peace for over three hundred years (unfortunately in the 21st century this region is noted for its drug cartels, astonishingly being protected by the López Obrador and succeeding government - TN), extinguishing domestic discords, promoting and carrying out all types of material, intellectual and moral improvements; they have been seen opposing with saintly firmness but with admirable prudence and charity the introduction of all errors, the introduction of all anti-social and dissolving doctrines, to all attempts to invade and assault their property and the legitimate liberties of the people; and, lastly, suffering persecutions with docility and preparing themselves to repair the devastations in a time of madness (like, for instance, the war against the Cristeros in the late twenties and early thirties of the twentieth century).

Caso Williamson

 El Caso Williamson

1) La Fe y la Moral suponen la existencia de la Historia y la política (la cual es "moral social" y nada tiene que ver con partidos políticos). La separación entre la fe y la política es la esencia del catolicismo liberal. Más aún, los hechos históricos son la base de la fe católica: por ejemplo, si el nacimiento, la muerte y la resurrección de Jesús no fueran hechos históricos, nuestra fe colapsaría. Jesús nació bajo el reinado de César Augusto y murió bajo la autoridad de Poncio Pilato. De  manera semejante, el exterminacionismo es la base de la religión holocáustica que pretende reemplazar el Holocausto de Jesús, redentor del género humano, por el llamado Holocausto del pueblo judío.

2) Es imposible restaurar la fe en su integridad sin restaurar la vida social y política ("Restaurare omnia in Christo" fue la consigna de San Pío X) y careciendo de conocimiento basado en hechos, no mitos, especialmente si éstos son instrumentos para proponer un nuevo concepto teológico (el holocausto de los judíos) y desconocer el concepto católico tradicional (el Holocausto de Cristo).

3) El holocausto fue la base de la nueva doctrina del Vaticano II sobre el deicidio ("Nostra aetate"), de la reforma de la oración del Viernes Santo (Misa Novus Ordo 1970), de la teoría de Juan Pablo II sobre que "la Antigua Alianza nunca fue revocada (en Maguncia, 1981). Además, la "teología del silencio de Dios" nació siguiendo las reflexiones sobre el Holocausto judío, como se presentan por los "exterminacionistas". Algunos teólogos (siguiendo los pasos de Hans Jonas y de Giovanni Battista Metz) niegan la Divina Providencia y la Bondad de Dios y ponen en duda Su existencia por haber permitido que ocurriera el Holocausto. El Holocausto es para el judaísmo talmúdico un "absoluto metahistórico"; un acto sacrificial que tiene valor salvífico. Luego de la destrucción del templo (70 D.C). la exégesis rabínica reemplazó la fe mosáica en un Mesías personal por una fe en un "Mesías Colectivo", que es el pueblo judío. El cristianismo no puede aceptar esta sacralización del Holocausto judío, que constituiría una negación de su propia identidad y fe: el único Holocausto es el Sacrificio de Cristo en la Cruz. El admitir otro holocausto salvífico y "metahistórico" fuera del de Jesús sería un acto de apostasía.

Desafortunadamente, la nueva teología judaizada conciliar y postconciliar se desarrolló en un entorno progresista católico; esperamos que no haya contaminado el entorno adherido a la Tradición. Por lo tanto, es deber del sacerdote advertir a los fieles.

4) No me parece que sea un pecado o una ruptura el expresar la propia opinión de uno sobre la validez histórica de la vasta literatura que existe concerniente al "re-examen" (y no "negación") de la tesis del Holocausto, introducida por el pro-soviético Gromyko en 1948. Muchos historiadores (también en Israel) aseveran que no hay certeza histórica acerca de algún plan del Tercer Reich para eliminar a judíos en cámaras de gas. Por supuesto, sí ocurrieron deportaciones a campos de concentración, donde muchos judíos fueron asesinados. El matar a un inocente es un crimen y un grave pecado contra el quinto mandamiento.

El obispo Richard Williamson lo expresó claramente durante la entrevista que le hicieron, nada dijo que fuera contrario a la fe y la moral, sólo expresó su opinión personal, lo cual no desacredita la doctrina católica integral. Si un obispo, como obispo, habla de fe y de moral con autoridad eclesiástica, no significa que no pueda hablar sin autoridad eclesiástica, sobre temas de historia y de moral social. Además, si las posturas del Obispo Williamson o, mejor dicho, sus opiniones sobre el Holocausto no reflejan las opiniones de la Fraternidad Sacerdotal de San Pío X, me pregunto entonces: en ese caso, si es legal para la Fraternidad el hablar sobre historia y política ¿por qué no es igual para el Obispo Williamson?

5) Es por lo menos ingenuo el engañarse a uno mismo creyendo que una pequeña "mea culpa" (esperábamos que con la muerte de Juan Pablo II se hubieran acabado) hubiera apaciguado el enojo y el odio del judaísmo contra Cristo y Su Iglesia. De hecho, el rabino en jefe de Roma (Riccardo Di Signi) dijo que las disculpas del Obispo Fellay (quien sólo dijo que los comentarios de Williamson eran "inapropiados") eran totalmente insuficientes e irrelevantes. Es, pues, necesario re-examinar las antiguas posturas teológicas contra el judaísmo que, como dijo Jules Isaac (denigrando el Holocausto), niegan la libertad de culto (el ecumenismo, la negación del deicidio, lo apropiado de la Misa de San Pío Quinto), como lo reafirmó el rabino italiano en el 2007. En aquel entonces Di Segni pidió a la FSSPX que no se limitara a silenciar a un obispo "negacionista" (quien en realidad no es negacionista), sino que pusiera en claro su propia opinión acerca de la doctrina del Vaticano II acerca del judaísmo y si no se aclara (o sea, si se acepta una nueva postura, de la misma manera que están claras las posturas del Obispo Lefebvre acerca del ecumenismo y del deicidio), la cuestión seguirá abierta. No debemos imaginarnos poder calmar a un león dándole un pequeño pedazo de carne. Di Segni nos tildará de antisemitas como lo hizo con el Obispo Williamson.

6) Si Jesucristo no hubiera dado sermones inapropiados ("ustedes, cuyo padre es el demonio", Juan, VIII, 48) habría muerto en Su cama y no habría cumplido la voluntad de su Padre. San Pablo aconseja "predicad a tiempo y a destiempo". Santo Tomás, en la Summa Theologica, escribe "es necesario enseñar la verdad a los judíos sin temor a irritarlos, como Jesús que enseño públicamente a los judíos la verdad que ellos odiaban y los reprochó por su vicio sin temor a irritarlos" (Santo Tomás, III, 42, 2). Los Apóstoles estaban "contentos de sufrir persecuciones" del Sanedrín porque predicaban que Cristo había sido crucificado por los Sumos Sacerdotes y no temían ser desprestigiados, por el contrario, lo disfrutaban.

7) El Cardenal Bagnasco estuvo más firme y fue más justo, habló de una campaña orquestada por los medios de comunicación. No re-excomulgó a nadie.

8) Espero que estos datos no conduzcan a nuevas divisiones. Quizás una mayor firmeza doctrinal y verdadera caridad fraterna habría ahorrado lo que una dureza de corazón y una debilidad teológico-histórico-política parece haber puesto en peligro. El responsable de eso no me parece que haya sido el Obispo Williamson: el padre Reginaldo Garrigou-Lagrange escribió: "los liberales son de amplio criterio en la doctrina porque no creen con firmeza, y son incompasivos en la práctica porque en verdad no aman."

9) Finalmente (esta mañana) intervino Benedicto XVI en defensa, desafortunadamente, del Holocausto, y dijo que la normalización de las relaciones con los "tradicionalistas" depende de su total aceptación del Vaticano II. Quizás todos estos acontecimientos hayan servido para para remover toda ambigüedad; los católicos adheridos a la Tradición saben que, si no aceptan "Nostra aetate" y el judeo-cristianismo post-conciliar, no habrá ligar para ellos.

10) Que Dios nos dé el valor en estos desafortunados tiempos de "apostasía universal", para mantener la fe en el Holocausto de Cristo, el único Redentor verdadero del género humano.

Don Curzio Nitoglia

28 de enero de 2009

Citizenfitz escribió:

Quizás el Papa debiera simplemente despojarse de todo disimulo y mudarse para allá [Jerusalén]

Pues esa es toda la cuestión ¿o no? Durante años, el Vaticano se rehusó a siquiera reconocer a Israel como un estado legítimo y, en cambio, ahora el Papa está rezando ante el Muro de los Lamentos y en Auschwitz, y agasajando a rabinos, todo en nombre del "diálogo interreligioso".

Este es el plan que ha estado desplegándose ante nuestros ojos:

1) Desacreditar e infiltrar la Iglesia Católica.

2) Infiltrar a los cristianos fundamentalistas para que den culto a Israel.

3) Rodear Jerusalén y tomar posesión del Monte del Templo.

4) Librar a Palestina de todos los palestinos

5) Precipitar un conflicto mundial; atacar a Irán, meter a Rusia en el conflicto.

6) Anunciar una Religión Mundial Única y un Gobierno Mundial Único para acabar con todo conflicto.

7) Reconstruir el Templo de Salomón en el Monte del Templo.

8) Forzar a la Iglesia a que apoye este plan.

9) Seguir invocando el Holocausto mientras la economía mundial implosiona.

10) Establecer un Gobierno Único Mundial bajo control suyo, con el nuevo Templo de Jerusalén como sede del Poder.

Todo lo que usted ve en las noticias es parte de esta estrategia. Yo creo que, si logramos desaceditar el Holocausto, podremos librar al mundo de este plan diabólico. Aunque Israel tiene más de 200 armas nucleares, el Mito del Holocausto es más poderoso que cualesquiera de ellas combinadas. Pero esto va aún más allá que Israel -- el control judío del sistema de la Reserva Federal, el servicio de recaudación de impuestos, y todo nuestro esclavizante sistema monetario. Todo ello podría caer en pedazos privándolo de la tarjeta de condolencia del Holocausto.

 Liberalism

by Father Leonardo Castellani, SJ

Taken from “Las Canciones de Militis” Biblioteca Dictio Vol. 19

>Translated from the Spanish by Roberto Hope Sánchez Mejorada

Says Jean Jacques Rousseau that when a child is born he cries “I want not to be swaddled”. He pronounces swaddled with a light lunfardo accent, but he doesn’t say he does not want to be spanked, which would be quite natural but that he does not want to be wrapped in diapers. But he is wrapped in diapers nevertheless. “Men are born free and they remain free and equal,”  says Rousseau. Born they are but do not remain free ¡poor they if they had to remain free! The mother immediately, with a perverse anti-liberal instinct begins to establish between her and her  baby all kinds of links as in a chain.

Men, not to say women, are essentially seekers of chain. Precisely for that reason it is that they like the sound of chains so much. It is for the purpose of seeking other chains. Oaths of love, marriage agreements, religious oaths, promises of eternal faithfulness, strict military discipline, juridical formulation of laws, constitutions and Magna Cartas, loyalty to the chief, probity with a friend, attachment to the homeland … wherever man can find a chain that frees him from his essential mutability and contingency and that ties him to something permanent, as a shipwreck survivor to a mast, there he feels happy and noble. And what is more amazing is that he feels free. One of the freest men I have known was a Jesuit who in addition to the fourth oath that the Jesuits make, had made other five or six oaths on his own. And he would say that with one of them he had been freed from an internal tyranny. I believe he wasn’t lying, All this fundamentally  militates against a book by Rousseau named The Social Contract which I remember how difficult it was for me to understand when I went to school.

What’s worse is that another book by Rousseau, the Emile, is still more doubtful than the one above. According to it, the child, in reaching school age, is a being who loves to wash his face, who likes to be clean, who enjoys going to school and learning about everything, beginning with botanics, in books.

Oh, sweet Botanics and Geography!

Oh, comfortable Mineralogy!

You are the three muses that entertain me!

This is Rousseau’s child, but it turns out that the real child likes mud, rambling around in the streets, fighting  other children, stealing apples, and learning about everything on his own. When the desperate teacher tells him that he is a rascal, that he is a good for nothing, that he is a disaster, that he is shameless, any kid that respects himself and is not a fool and is not crazy responds with another phrase from Rousseau which is the nucleus of all liberal doctrine invented by this celebrated author: “leave me alone”. It is then when in the rule of circumstances, the two meanings of the word swaddle are muddled, the teacher, who in Teacher’s College was taught to respect the Emile as the bible of modern education behaves in practice, also if he is not a fool and is not crazy, as the most vulgar absolutist and anti-russeauist.

Now follows another book, called Julia or the New Eloise, by the inventor of liberalism. Here comes liberalism applied to women and here is where my knowledge ends because I have never been able to go beyond the first half of the first part, and it has five. I did read the entire index which contains a summary of the intricacies, because it is a novel, and left me with a vertigo such that I was unable to work the entire afternoon, a combination of urge to vomit and to fall asleep, which is the illness of the philosopher when he swallows an excessive amount of absurdity in one gulp. Liberalism applied to women is a perfect failure. There are three words that a woman will never understand and they are liberty, equality, fraternity.

Liberalism applied to nations is in Rousseau’s fourth book, called The Confessions, in three volumes because each of these volumes is longer than the one before. There one can understand everything. It is about a madman. A madman is the least free of men existing, though it may appear to be the opposite, even when he is loose, because a madman is seized up on the inside …  But this man Rousseau was a madman of the most dangerous kind because he was a madman who knew French very well and, besides, as every madman, imitative mimics. A madman is besides a born liar, an ambulatory fear of being locked up and a permanent scruple of doing wrong in anything he does. To react to these two killing affections, Rousseau invented the theory of “leave me alone!” and the theory of the essential  goodness of man; he defined that all he did was necessarily good and besides joly and mignon. Only an obsessed man is capable of writing with minute detail that description of the trivialities and filthy things in life wrapped in a caramelized whiff with an aftertaste of bedbugs and dirty clothes which now causes repulsion in us but in the living conditions of his time and place, that seem to have been the ambiance of the joly and of the mignon it produced a considerable effect. It even seems that he pleased himself by inventing dirtiness to give himself the pleasure of embellishing them, such as that one that he had five children and abandoned them to a foundling home. It is now believed with ample physiological and psychological foundation, according to J. Lemaitre, that he never engendered any child. Thank God.

True liberty is a state of obedience. Man liberates himself of the corruption of the flesh by obeying reason, he liberates himself from matter subjecting himself to the adamantine profile of a form, he liberates himself from the ephemeral by tying himself to a style, of the capricious adapting himself to the customs, of his solitary infecundity by obeying life. and of his mortal life he sometimes frees himself, losing it in obedience to Him that said  “I am the the Life”. Only the bad poet asks for the free verse, would say Leopoldo Lugones. The good poet multiplies the ties of his subject matter to make the triumph of the form more visible, of which beauty consists. Lugones went to look for the sand and mud of Rio Seco to make his last work that will survive the cedar, the marble and the silver of his prior works.Where the madman, the slave and the plebeian say: Liberty, the nobleman says Honor, Beauty, Love or Wisdom. Maximum liberty comes from maximum rigour, said Leonardo da Vinci: because man is freer to the extent he is stronger – as it is taught in the lecture on National Defense at La Plata – and the obsession with liberty is proof that the maximum weakness is the weakness of mind. Who is there in the world that wants to be free as the Uruguayans, who, according to themselves, are the freest men in the world?

Well; such an obsession for freedom, typical of a madman, came to serve the economic powers marvelously, which at that time broke loose; and the power of Money and Usury which were also obsessed with being left alone. They were left alone: over the soul and the flesh technology  and marketing triumphed; and all over the world an epoch was inaugurated in which never before has been talked so much about liberty but never has Man in reality been less free. A heresy partly Catholic, partly protestant and partly atheist – because Rousseau was successively protestant, Catholic, and atheist – he came to life just when we Argentinians were becoming independent. It brought us as much evil as a demijohn of rum in a cage of monkeys; and not, it did not entirely ruin us because by the grace of God we had here strong Spanish vitamins. And also, there were men that were not monkeys.

But the evil liberalism did in the old world where it was born was perhaps worse. Here the pampero, the sun and the long distances aerate much. There in Europe we have now this horrible war that I cannot even think of. And other moral and spiritual destructions much worse than war, if at all possible, that I cannot stop thinking of them even if I want to, and burden my mind in a way such that I untimely get old and they would also make me a madman if I had not the two celestial consolations of philosophy and journalism.

Philosopher Santayana dreamed sometime that he saw four horsemen on four horses, one black, one brown, one bay and the last one white. He saw them pass plumed and armored aand asked them:

– Where are you going?

– We are going to liberate peoples.

– Liberate them from what? – the philosopher shouted.

The crowned man on the white horse answered:

– From the consequences of liberty.

CABILDO, Buenos Aires N° 606, June 14, 1944.