Camino Guanajuato Part 2: They've got the guns, but we've got the numbers

So in the last post I mentioned that the city of Guanajuato is a cool place, even if the expo was eye-gouge-outingly dumb. Guanajuato itself is one of my favorite Mexican cities though, and has some really interesting history. Of course, interesting history is the kind you wouldn't want to live through personally...

This picture is of the Alhóndiga de Granitas (public granary), site of a bloody siege where Mexican soldiers first turned against the Spanish Crown. The richest families of Guanajuato had barricaded themselves inside with all their extravagant loot, servants, and slaves, protected by several hundred Spanish soldiers. Outside, tens of thousands of indigenous slaves had broken out of the mines. (These workers were typically kept underground for the entirety of their short lives, naked and packed as tightly as cattle). They threw themselves at the bulwarks armed with little more than sticks and stones, dying by the hundreds every time the Spanish riflemen fired or poured mercury over the sides of the building. When actual soldiers came to the aid of the mob, they organized themselves a little better, and the tide of the battle began to turn--whenever the Spanish ducked out a window to fire they would be greeted by a hail of bullets and stones. You can still see the pockmarks all over the wall.

The Spanish launched a desperate calvary charge, and killed several hundred more before being drug off their horses and beaten to death. Then the Mexicans sent a miner nicknamed El Pípila to set fire to the heavy wooden doors, protected by a stone slab that he carried on his back. When the angry slaves finally broke in, they slaughtered every man, woman, and child inside. (Including, sadly, the helpless slaves of the Spanish nobility).

The Spanish, never to be outdone in the arts of cruelty, came up with an equally bloodthirsty scheme once they retook the city. Obviously some of the townspeople were complicit in the rebellion, but which ones? Since there was no real way to tell, they revived the ancient Roman punishment of decimation. (They held a lottery where the winners were rewarded with a trip to heaven).

Father Hidalgo, the leader of the movement, was eventually betrayed and captured--sadly a common theme among Mexico's national heroes. He was shot in a firing squad. According to one legend, no one could be found to decapitate his corpse, so they found some really drunk guy to chop off the head, who then committed suicide the next morning when he realized what he'd done. Father Hidalgo's head was then hung in an iron cage from the corner of the granary in the photo. It stayed there for the last decade of Spanish rule to teach the Mexicans a lesson about not yearning for freedom. Luckily, it didn't work.