Tepito is the heart of Mexico
And Mexico is the Tepito of the world.
(Verses from Tepito)
Brother Bernardino Álvarez wrote in his Pax et Bonum: “The archangel Francis devoured the city with his ferocious jaws and blinded the pretentious frilly-collared foreigners. I also know that the Infante Petro, a voracious warrior, lies in wait at Siete Cuevas.” [1]
The archangel Francis character is Brother Álvarez’s allegory in which he attempts to expand the apocalyptic nature of his work. Although, really, he is demonstrating the era’s depraved character that he foretold, as others had done with Babylon.
In mid-year of 1566, in a lot next to the convent of St. Hipolyte in ancient Mexico City, Brother Bernardino founded the first hospital for the insane in the New World. The friar controlled his sanatorium for thirteen years until he himself became insane. As soon as he began
to feel his reason become diminished, he decided of his own accord to confine himself in the convent of San Fernando. In that place, he wrote the aforementioned apocalyptic work where he states, “There will be a leader who will be born very near to where I now write. He will raise the old and humiliated blood of the Indians and bring about the end of the archangel Francis.”[2]
His writings were compiled in 1878 by Don Luis Malanco in the masterpiece titled Pax et Bonum.
Thanks to the recent archeological finds in the mythical vestiges of Mexico City, we know that Brother Bernardino Álvarez was correct in some of his visions. Other rarely-read sources also confirm it: the Fernandine Catechumens[3], for example, bequeathed to us their interpretations of the aforementioned Pax et Bonum and the theory that the heir of the archangels would be chained to the heavens, face-up, by a hero with Aztec blood. We even preserve around a hundred legends that narrate the life of the Infante Pedro Güicholobos[4] who has been linked to Friar Bernardino’s allegorical character, Petro. It is difficult to trace the historical origin of Güicholobos. Some devotees faithfully accept the disordered stories about this personage as fact, swallowing them up like orphaned calves drinking from a bottle, while others may be working on shaping a reliable biography. These notes are for those who may bring something to the table.
Last year, historian E. H. Noriega, a very close friend of mine, worked on a project at the ruins of the crowded Guerrero neighborhood. By chance, he discovered a plaque with the inscription: Magnolia Street. While excavating the area, thanks to the maps of Don José María Marroquí,[5] my colleague located the foundations of a French-like construction. When first built, it must have been a lovely structure; later when it fell into disrepair, it housed the disreputable. In his subsequent excavations, E. H. Noriega found the element that won him the annual archeology prize: the remains of a wall with a fragment of the verses of “Oh, dear dove” attributed to the poet José of Dolores:[6]
You found me on a black path
Like a pilgrim
Without direction or faith.
By the light of your divine eyes
My sorrows became
Joy and pleasure.
I do not know what my life is worth,
But I give it to you now.
Some legends from Tepito tell that the savior’s father, haunted by his sins, wrote that poem on the wall before he triggered the tragedy. The historical materials that survived and the correlation with bibliographic sources have made it possible for the location that was excavated by E. H. Noriega to be named as the neighborhood where, in interior 10, Luis Lobos and Tamar Cruz, the Infante Pedro’s parents, lived. Many people associate Güicholobos’ mother with the white dove, which represents the Holy Spirit.
If Tamar is compared to a symbol of such purity, it is because, according to the facts, she is Luis Lobos’ victim. Rosaura Hernández, a teacher and E. H. Noriega’s grandmother, left a written statement[7] that Guerrero’s survivors were re-located to the Sacred Heart neighborhood of Veracruz after the city’s incineration. There they formed a church, where Tamar received complete devotion.Tamar was born in Peralvillo. She met Luis Lobos in high school. Before they had even dated a year, he deflowered her. They rarely attended school. They played hooky and went to the Chinese Palace, the Alameda, and the steam baths. In time, Tamar Cruz became pregnant. Her parents refused to listen to reason and threw her out. In those moments of tribulation, Luis and Tamar sought refuge in San Fernando. The catechumens, who sensed something because they read Friar Bernardino regularly, allowed them to spend nights in the cemetery’s covered walkway.[8]
Luis Lobos began to work as a merchant and they were able to rent a room. After the fifth month of pregnancy, Luis asked Tamar to get rid of the baby. Tamar declined at first; Luis beat her until she gave in. The abortion was done negligently in the Magnolia neighborhood. A clandestine doctor, as can be gathered from González Obregón’s compendium of legends, carried out the surgery. The physician performed a caesarian section but made the incision too large. Luis Lobos watched his wife, her body open and bleeding out. Remorseful, and in a sort of trance of atonement, he painted José of Dolores’ verses on the wall. The doctor extracted a bloody fetus who trembled as if from being cold, but they were death throes. The little body became waxy in the depraved man’s hands. However, another fist sprung at once from Tamar’s open womb. It was Güicholobos. At birth, he measured 12 inches and looked like a baby Jesus made of porcelain. With one hand he strangled the doctor and with the other snatched the dead twin’s body. The first lesson learned by the savior was to recognize his own death in his brother’s dead body, a mirror that was provided by the gods. He, himself, baptized his brother with his mother’s blood; he named him Monstrous Dog[9] and then threw him out of a window so that he would be humiliated and torn to pieces in the street. The young mother was still able to see the body of the dead fetus fly through the air; then her eyes swelled up, she stiffened her body, and died.
The miracle child spared his father’s life and took his name, Luis Lobos, from which the name Güicholobos derives. However, in the version of the Tepito scribes[10] the hero killed his father as an act of mercy so that he would not have to carry the guilt of Tamar’s and Monstrous Dog’s murders. Whether true or not, what is certain is that Güicholobos became orphaned at a young age. In his youth, he lived with the indigent children of San Fernando. When he turned 15 or 16, one of his father’s brothers went to pick him up and took him to Tepito. There, he learned the trade of informal merchant. There is no further information about Güicholobos until the age of 33; by then, he is already a sturdy, olive-skinned, mustachioed, and strong-armed man. He also sang, often at the Garibaldi Plaza. Apolonio of Tepito[11] left us a testimonial titled, “I Met
the Infante Pedro:”[12] “People looked at him, his striped shirt and skipper’s cap drew their attention. He was a handsome man. A woman selling bootleg records shouted: ‘He looks just like The Idol!’ And I, recalling the old Fernandine prophecies, lavished his new name around the barrio: Infante Pedro Güicholobos.”
Pedro participated in all types of trade, including the dark dealings of La Merced. Before he turned 40, he was the spiritual owner of Tepito and was named leader of the street vendors. Virginal women followed him everywhere; old men marveled as they listened to him speak; and he was respected by his buddies who always regarded him as being brave and witty. One time he accompanied his uncle to the Zócalo. There, dancers were re-creating ancient Aztec rituals. Güicholobos had his first revelation as he observed the circles and spirals, the fire and the wind restoring themselves in human bodies. The afternoon gave way to the night. Pedro deciphered the wisdom of the ancients in the writings of the stars. A few weeks later, he joined the dance group. At night, he attended the talks of Aztec resurgence conducted among blood and wine rituals in a large house on Jesús María Street, where he began his worship to Quetzalcoatl and recognized the figure of Huitzilopochtli in himself.
Despite his interest in the secrets of the Mexica, he never neglected his obligations as spiritual chief of Tepito; and he was named captain of the dancers’ legions. His fame began to spread. From San Pablo, La Candelaria, Mixcalco, La Lagunilla, San Lázaro, Belén, Tultenco, to a part of Viga, Iztapalapa and its villages of poor people, the tribes of the different neighborhoods found out who that Infante Pedro Güicholobos was who had taken dancers to Tepito and vendors to the Zócalo. The Mexico City authorities could do nothing when he reinstated the Parián in the heart of the Plaza Mayor.
The second revelation was also predicted by Friar Bernardino: “The archangel Francis has been discovered; he trembles in the dusty corners; he whimpers; and his tears draw in Güicholobos, who sweetly whispers his vengeance.”[13] The scribes of Tepito write that on the early morning of the next revelation, Güicholobos woke up in a trance and went out into the street with his member showing. He was seen walking barefoot from his uncle’s house to the cathedral where he walked in and interrupted mass. The priests fled; parishioners from adjacent neighborhoods began to arrive. The Infante took a picture of the archangel Francis from the pulpit and broke it on the floor. The crowd watched him, anxiously. Among them, Apolonio could not be missed: “I heard someone ask him in a loud voice, as soon as Güicholobos had smashed the archangel’s picture, how they could conquer Francis and Christ. He responded: with leprosy. He swore that he would infect the great Tenochtitlan and, at that point, asked us to wake our conscience and make ruins on top of ruins.”[14]
In effect, any high school graduate of Mexico knows by heart that the ancient capital was devastated in less than a hundred years because of an infallible pestilence. Those who believe in one solitary uncontrollable epidemic of leprosy are wrong. When Güicholobos spoke of leprosy, he made a forceful statement. He did not merely provoke it in a physical sense; rather, he made it into an urban, spiritual pestilence that went beyond the flesh. It can now be affirmed that the archangel Francis symbolizes as one the metropolis proper; he is a metaphor of the collapse, the corruption, the permanence of a convalescing religion. That is why his sword hangs between his thighs with utter lack of stateliness. The iconographic representations that exist of him demonstrate a return to the dark baroque of unintelligible voids. The Catholic Church had only recently adopted the fabrication of this figure, but he lasted less than half a century on the list of martyrs. Güicholobos knew that the archangel meant depravity and concluded that a God who cures leprosy could only be destroyed with leprosy.
The reinstatement of the Parián meant that Güicholobos would be solidly established in the city’s heart. From there, he set off in the four directions, heading long lines of merchants that he guided through the streets and assigning them spots at will. Soon there was no vacant space left at the informal market. However, in the Guerrero neighborhood, the prostitutes, drug dealers, vagrants, and those who were mentally touched denied the savior’s name. That heretical mob burned down the main gate of San Fernando, murdered the seminarians and, in the cemetery, threw a wild party over Friar Bernardino’s grave. It would be the first neighborhood to be razed. Five years later the city was overrun by multi-colored tents and numerous ear-splitting noises. The churches and cemeteries were looted, people slept and defecated in the streets, and garbage clogged the neighborhoods. Everything was bought and sold in that enormous open-air market: anyone who was an orphan could buy a mother, or a child, or a body part. Organs such as hearts, livers, lungs, and male genitalia were sold for witchcraft and fetishisms. Deals involved various sorts of drugs, be they mind-altering, common to the neighborhood, musical, or electronic. The possibilities in the sexual domain went beyond anyone’s fill in passion and lust. And, finally, when the other leprosy began to emerge, unheard of items were sold: the saliva of an albino pig in two or three-ounce sizes, the jawbone of an amphetamine addict, or backings and chairs with various odors.
When that first leprosy epidemic devoured the city, the stars came together in service to Güicholobos. Someone informed him that the last of the infected had died in the country’s last leper colony (located on the border with Chalco). Therefore, clothes, blankets, sheets, and other belongings of the lepers were to be incinerated in the desert. It was not difficult to bribe the health authorities, and so a convoy of fifteen buses traveled from Chalco towards the heart of Mexico. There, the objects were distributed principally in the second-hand clothing market that was behind the convent of San Antonio Abad; in fewer than two days, there was no trace left of the infected pieces of clothing.
The first cases of leprosy recorded by the diminished city officials were linked to some thirty prostitutes who skulked about the Los Angeles plaza.[15] The subsequent investigation found the cause of the disease: those women tended to buy their work clothes in second-hand markets. The thirty streetwalkers were shut away in the San Jerónimo cloister. Despite this, the consequences of their profession had already been spread throughout the Guerrero neighborhood. The indigent took care of spreading leprosy everywhere. In the evenings, the good neighbors of the barrio could be seen walking as if they were real ghosts, scattering pieces of skin all around. According to the compendium by González Obregón, one day those lepers knelt down in the San Fernando plaza and asked the Infante Pedro for forgiveness. He had appeared inside the church, blinding everyone with his luminous presence, announcing that they would be redeemed. “This episode can be understood as the installation of the Church of the White Dove. The blind and infected began to cry out Güicholobos’ name and their seed was not silenced but half a century later.”[16]
Leprosy did not respect the imaginary walls of the city. It spread from the region of the lost colonies of Azcapotzalco, Tlatelolco and Colhuacan to the Hills of Chapultepec, Santa Fe, and the towns of Coyohuacan and the Ajusco. A good part of the urban and rural zones of Mexico state were infected, even Toluca succumbed. The archangel Francis lost his flesh daily as Brother Bernardino had foretold: “… in the heart of the beast, the archangel and warrior will fight, and the archangel will be accorded the worst part. He will run naked dodging the debris. His rotting body will be displayed in the streets. His hands will not be enough to hold back the tears of shame that will burn his cheeks. Güicholobos will have no pity and before guiding his
people to the desert, he will have torn out the dark liver of the archangel.”[17]
In the last stage of the pandemic, the federal government decided to set fire to the city, determined to eradicate leprosy, and moved the capital to the port of Veracruz. E. H. Noriega maintains that at this phase, the real Infante Pedro Güicholobos, flesh and bone, died from an infection of the very disease he had unleashed. This is true: a group of young archaeologists is confident that it has found an absurd registry of cadavers in the ruins of San Fernando where one name is legible: Pedro, Infante of Tepito. Even so, it is impossible to affirm that Güicholobos succumbed to his own plan.
If we pay heed to popular texts, we will find various versions of his end. For example, the scribes of Tepito state that he built a ladder to the heavens from the ruins of the cathedral and the Pure went up with him, cinching headdresses of glossy feathers and breastplates of gold and turquoise. On the other hand, the Church of the White Dove recognized Güicholobos’ living quarters on the planet Venus, from where he shed his grace each night. Another very eloquent, if not most veracious story, is that of the blessed Apolonio of Tepito:
“The city was already a tainted remnant where some set bonfires to bring light to the darkness which prevented the sunlight from reaching the surface. The perverse died first. A handful of the members of the Aztec aristocracy held a council meeting under the flag pole in the main square. In the middle of the rubble, they heard the Infante Pedro Güicholobos, who was already in the last phase of his revelations, about to reach illumination. He raised his wooden club with obsidian blades, his feathered shield and stated thus: ‘Many of you are sick; you will die. I tell you that your death will not be in vain. You will reach fundamental peace. I beseech those who are dying to lose yourselves now in the darkness; try to die in solitude. Far from men, truth breathes onto our faces. Each object or living being we renounce signifies an illusion broken. Die in peace; emulate Quetzalcoatl. He dislocated his bones and came to comprehend all knowledge in the ballgame where he confronted his Twin, the Dark One, in a fight of survival between day and night, wakefulness and dream, life and unequivocal death.’ He said goodbye to the lepers, organized his other followers in a line behind him, and walked them north, heading to the desert, to Siete Cuevas. He took a staff with him, with the head of the archangel Francis impaled on top. The hummingbird of legend (?) guided them to his spot and there, they dwell jubilantly, drinking the honey of the divine spring.”[18]
The mythological Güicholobos was over a hundred years old when he guided a tribe of the Pure, protected by a hummingbird, to the legendary Chicomóztoc, the place of origin, leaving behind the destroyed capital as a sign of his vengeance. Mexico City’s devastation occurred during a period of nearly one hundred years. Its end will forever be connected to the figure of the Infante Pedro, who made its heart wither.
We will have much more to reason out regarding the Infante Pedro Güicholobos, but it is necessary. Only by understanding the poetic allegories emanating from these myths can we finally come to know God.
[1] Pax et Bonum, 12:3
[2] Ibidem, 4:15.
[3] The last seminarians of the San Fernando convent of Mexico City, from where missionary campaigns departed toward the northern part of the country.
[4] Legends disguised as prophecies that were compiled by Don Luis González Obregón in Verdaderas visiones del Apocalipsis mexicano: Profetas varios. Work edited by Don Manuel Porrúa in 1935.
[5] Marroquí, José María. Plano milimétrico de la nobilísima capital de México. La Europea; Mexicaltzingo, 1907. Vol. II, p. 325-326.
[6] Mystic who has been called the St. John of the Cross of Guanajuato. His doctrine is influenced by the philosopher Plotinus. Thus, he demonstrates a clear disdain for life, while similarly enjoying its daily return. Today, this poet has few works preserved. In times past, his verses were sung copiously in bars and brothels. The fragment that was found by E. H. Noriega corresponds to a lyric poem that praises the Holy Spirit and unabashedly exchanges the figure of the white dove with that of a female subject.
[7] Hernandez, Rosaura. La iglesia de la Paloma Blanca y su relación con los textos dolorosos. Mexican Institute of Culture Toluca, New Era.
[8] Graveyard next to the convent of San Fernando, famous for containing the tombs of Mexico’s eminent people of the 19th century. Fifty years ago, José Palestina, an engineer, financed by the National Indigenous Institute, discovered the tombs of Benito Juárez and General Tomás Mejía. Today, those tombs are on display, one of them in Celaya’s Museum of History and the other in the Gallery of Distinguished Traitors in Romita, Michoacán.
[9] Like the Xolotl of the ancient Chichimecs.
[10] Sect of scribes. In reality, they were from around Santo Domingo, but having been struck by faith in devotion to the Infante Pedro, they renamed themselves as being from Tepito. They gave themselves over to the task of documenting the life and work of the savior. Their writings were never published. What is known about them has been through the oral tradition.
[11] Theosophist of the rough neighborhood. He was a friend of the uncle of Güicholobos. Thanks to this fact, he was a witness to the wonders that occurred.
[12] Apolonio. “Yo conocí al Infante Pedro”. José María Sandoval Printing, Jesús María Street, Number 4, Veracruz.
[13] Pax et Bonum, 47:8.
[14] Apolonio: p. 109.
[15] The Guerrero neighborhood’s famous plaza which once held a temple to a virgin as miraculous as Guadalupe.
[16] Hernández, Rosaura: p. 14.
[17] Pax et Bonum, 2:15.
[18] Apolonio of Tepito: p. 243.
Juan de Dios Maya Avila / Escritor 