August, 2011: Mexico City - Night

As I was passing by the Plaza Santo Domigo around the Cathedral hotel in the morning, a hugh poster above its entrance got my attention. It looks to be a poster for an exhibition for the Inquisition. I decided to come back to it late in the evening after my round at the Cathedral. Well, anything about atrocities carried out in the name of religion catches my attention.

In the late afternoon, having done the tour in the Cathedral, I was back at the Plaza to check out the exhibition about crime done in the name of the Catholic church. I bought my ticket and was handed a MP3 player and a pair of earphones. A soundtrack was looping on the MP3 for all the stations in the exhibition. The guy at the entrance warned against photo-taking, and so no photo was taken. And the soundtrack only came in Spanish. In any case, the display and the video playing on the flatscreen TV (an except from the movie Goya's Ghost and another about Jesus) was providing enough info. Basically, you walk through the an old darken room, with exhibit showing the torture tools used by the Inquisition. Pictures, maps, write-up and video provided the background. But the main attraction, morbidly, was the static displays: life-size mannequinns with facial expression of pain as they were put through the torture routine. One such display had a female mannequinn being lower onto a sharpen wooden stake through her you-know-where. A lady with her young son in toll must be thinking it was not such a good idea to have brought her son along. There are other tools on display, let's just say if the church had free the mind of the people on other stuff instead of such creative torture apparatus, the Industrial Revolution may have came much earlier.
From the write-up cards, I realized I had the wrong idea about the subject matter of the exhibition. It was not about the SPANISH Inquisition, but rather, the Inqusition in Nueva España. I guess New Spanish is Mexico. When I googled it later, I realized it really is about the Inqusition in Mexico, right here in Mexico City. In fact, the Plaza itself (and maybe the exact rooms I was in) is the actual site of all the torture going on roughly between 1736 to 1820.

Fortunately, those days are long gone. The Palace of the Inquisition is now owned by the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), which converted it for its new use as the Museum of Mexican Medicine. Some of the medical equipments somehow looks like the torture tools.
Stepping out into the sunlight again, cheerful music was streaming from another corner of the Plaza.
It brought me into the auditorium of UNAM. It seems there was a Mariachi competition going on amongst the various faculties. The student body, the academic and admin staff were all involved. I had planned to pay to watch a Marichi performance in Mexico City, but here, I got it for free.
The performance was a really fun event. Group of various size came on stage in full regala. The size really doesn't matter, each played to their strenght and limitation, and all were entertaining and skillful. And it's not just singing, they will throw in some standup comedy, a little skit (mostly about a priest, a funny one going by the laugh they got from the Spanish-speaking audience), a simulated bull fight (playing with the cape he is wearing) plus a highly-charge dance.
So, everytime, I decided to leave the auditorium, the next group got me back on the seat. By the time I left the auditorium, it was getting dark and was drizzling slightly.

Opposite the Plaza, some protestors were camping out outside another building. I think it was asking for a higher budget for education. But it does looks like a predecessor to the Occupy Wall Street movement.
I found a Chinese restaurant near the hotel. It was serving buffet. Great, I will have my fill of Chinese food. The owners were from Guangdong in China. Once they realize I speak their language, we striked up a conversation. Too bad, he did not bother to inform me about last order, as they got their Mexican workers to clear the buffet before I got to my 3rd and 4th servings.
Before I left I ask to take a picture of the statute of the Chinese deity GuangGong (unmistakeable, by his red face), on the wall next to the TV with a football match going on.
Interestingly, in Santos in Brazil a couple of months later, I was at another Chinese-run restaurant, and it was like déjà vu.
I guess when the Chinese came all the way across the Pacific many years ago to the New World, it was not the god of wealth, longevity or prosperity that they thought of; but Guan Gong, the deity most often related to the code of brotherhood and righteousness.
《三国演义》第二十七回：“美髯公千里走单骑，汉寿侯五关斩六将。”