Ben Earwicker shares his impressions of a tour around some of Mexico's most sacred places – with a little help from Mexican muse María Anna Águeda 

Photograph by Ben Earwicker

We met in a concrete corridor at Mexico City's Universidad Nacional Autónoma (UNAM) on a scorching afternoon in late May. A dusty haze hung low over the sprawling metropolis that competes with Tokyo for the title of World's Largest City. I had decided on a whim to explore University City, as it is known, home to the oldest university in the Americas. With a population larger than that of my hometown, Boise, Idaho, USA, UNAM presently serves more than 250,000 students at all levels of higher education. I think our encounter would have been less memorable, had I not just spent the last several hours traversing the city on the slithering orange sauna known as the Mexico City Metro. To make matters worse, I had narrowly escaped a violent encounter with a scruffy old man shouting obscenities at me in a garbled mix of Spanish, English, and his own vagrant dialect. While making my way through an ad-hoc market outside of a terminal metro stop, the scrappy senior grabbed my arm before attempting to kick my right leg out from underneath of me. Fortunately, dozens of shocked bystanders and my relative youth prevented his success, and he scampered off, muttering insults about who-knows-what.

I was still a bit shaken and slightly dehydrated when I noticed her leaning against the cool cement wall of the library. She introduced herself slowly, methodically, as if she were completely unaware of my frantic pace and frustrated smile. "Me llamo María Anna Águeda," she said simply. "Mucho gusto," I replied, taken aback by her calm presence and curious demeanor. It struck me that she nearly blended in to the carefully arranged space of the university buildings, with their mural-covered walls and elaborate, multi-colored sculptures. María Anna Águeda looked the part of a career librarian or visiting scholar, perhaps on a break from her otherwise mundane routine inside the walls of the towering biblioteca. Unlike her contemporaries standing a few yards away, she insisted on not smoking, preferring instead a puff of fresh air, if Mexico City air, can, in fact, be considered fresh.

"What brings you to UNAM?"

I mused, trying to sound as if I had not just narrowly escaped a ritual of public humiliation in the market. "I represent a forgotten tradition in Mexico today," she quipped, daring me to follow up with something like, "Oh, really…what is that, exactly," or, "Please, tell me more." I took the bait.

"A forgotten tradition?" My suspicions as to her occupation were not unfounded; Sra. Águeda had come to UNAM as an expert and guest lecturer on the history of the mystic tradition in Mexico. Originally from the town of Nepantla, she spent most of her adult life in Puebla, at the Convento de Santa Rosa. (Incidentally, the rich, chocolate and peanut-butter mole (MOH-lay) sauce is said to have originated in the yellow- and blue-tiled kitchen of Santa Rosa). She spoke of the 18th-century Poblano setting – the setting of Puebla – with its wide cobblestone streets and burgeoning monastic life; the appearance of the Virgin of Guadalupe in the 1500s and the so-called Marian following in Mexico; and the limited vocational options for women and girls during the Spanish colonial period. Female mystics and nuns educated young girls and provided them with a vocation at the center of colonial society. Many of the mystics, a select group of women who demonstrated uncanny, intimate knowledge of supernatural religious experiences, survived the watchful eye of the Inquisition. Ultimately, though, they could not withstand the advent of critical reason and the developments of humanism; the mystical lifestyle fell into disrepute as scientific endeavors replaced mysticism with a rational, inductive view of the world.

I must have listened to María Anna for the better part of an hour before she abruptly stopped and asked if I would like to join her on a short trip to several convents in and around Mexico City, Cuernavaca, and Puebla. I quickly accepted her invitation, and before long, we were winding through narrow, cobblestone streets full of street vendors and the characteristic green and white taxis of Mexico City. In building after ornate building, we admired the intricate stone work, elaborate carvings, and pretentious architecture that perfectly capture the religious ambiance of colonial Mexico and much of Latin America. Towering baroque Cathedrals contrasted with humble, rural churches made of mud and block. From Mexico City to Puebla and all of the small towns in between, our journey felt like a pilgrimage of sorts, an intimate tour of Mexico's colonial past. We sampled mole in a small restaurant across from Puebla's grand Cathedral and walked the halls of the famed Santa Rosa convent. We listened to the eerie strains of a medieval hymn echo through the chambers of Taxco's Cathedral, almost as if the religious culture there never advanced beyond that fixed point in time more than 300 years past. We stepped back in  time as we viewed various sacristies and altars and choir lofts, and my hair stood on end as more than one organ bellowed, louder and louder, until it seemed that the foundations of the structures around us would crumble from the massive, resounding vibrations.

María Anna seemed to thoroughly enjoy herself during our brief tour of South-Central Mexico, perhaps even more so because of my presence and her contribution to my personal enlightenment in all things religious. I must confess that my understanding of Mexico's painful colonial and religious past has not changed significantly as a result of my travels with María Anna, yet my appreciation of the symbols, monuments, and imagery associated with the colonial religious history has only deepened. I owe a debt of gratitude to María Anna for introducing me to some of Mexico's sacred places. Mexico's rich and lively history cannot be understood apart from the religious context, and I am fortunate to have seen firsthand many of the country's hulking religious relics from a bygone era. 

Ben Earwicker is Associate Professor of Spanish and Latin American Studies at Northwest Nazarene University in Nampa, Idaho, USA. He is currently completing a Ph.D. in Cultural Studies at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand