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| Friar Juan de Zumárraga |
At the General Chapter of the Franciscan
Order held in Toulousse in 1531, Friar Juan de Zumárraga reported on what was
needed for the missions in New Spain. “Each convent of ours needs another house
together, to teach the children, where there is school, bedrooms, refectory and
a devout chapel.”
[1]
Friar Juan
de San Miguel was sent to find a suitable location in the central highlands
274 km north of México City. After scouting the territory of the
Chichimeca thoroughly he built a small chapel next to the river the indigenous
called Izcuinapan.
He placed the mission under the patronage of his own namesake, the Archangel
San Miguel. The Chichimeca were not hospitable to this endeavor and
twenty years later they killed fourteen Spanish soldiers set to guard it and Friar
Juan
fled for his safety. His replacement, Friar Bernardo Cossín, moved the
mission a short distance away on a hill that could be better defended. He
built a rugged sanctuary and dedicated to the Virgin of Guadalupe hoping to
capitalize on the image that had been growing in popularity among the
indigenous. When the rains came and washed away a good portion of the
land the sanctuary was built upon, he began to worry about the building
toppling over the steep cliff overlooking a ravine. He managed to
persuade some neighboring inhabitants to widen and fill in the ravine with
cobblestones. Unfortunately, this activity led to more flooding. When the
rains came, the waters had no place to go and the whole area flooded. Friar
Bernardo was killed by natives in retaliation along with both of his successors
Francisco Doncel and Pedro Burguense. As the Spanish began extracting
silver from the mines in Zacatecas and San Luis Potosí, their wagon trains on
the Camino Real were repeatedly raided and robbed. Over the course of the
next forty years war more than 4,000 Spaniards were killed by Chichimeca in Guanjuato[2]
[1]
(López Espinoza 2010), pp. 128-129
[2] (de
Morfi 1989), p. 95
