Juan F. Molina Solis, representative of one of the oldest and most respected families of Yucatan, was born June 11, 1850, in the village of Hecelchacan. His father was Juan F. Molina Esquivel, his mother Cecilia Solis de Molina. In 1857, the family removed to Merida, where the boy’s education was carried on. He received the degree of Master of Arts from the Seminario conciliar de San Ildefonso, after which he studied law, graduating in 1874. He has ever occupied a prominent position in Merida as a successful lawyer, as teacher in the Seminario, as professor in the Law School, as journalist, and as author. In literature he has largely confined himself to history—especially the history of Yucatan. His Historia del Descubrimiento y Conquista de Yucatan con una reseÑa de la Historia antiqua de esta Peninsula (History of the Discovery and Conquest of Yucatan with a Summary of the Ancient History of this Peninsula) is a standard authority. It is admirably written and is marked by a sober criticism and constant reference to original sources. Besides this, the largest and most important work that he has written, we may mention a collection of polemical historical articles and of miscellaneous editorials presented under the general title El Primer Obispado de la Nacion Mejicana (The First Bishopric of the Mexican Nation) and an interesting historical sketch, El Conde de PeÑalva (The Count of PeÑalva). In his editorials SeÑor Molina often discusses matters of transcendant importance to the nation. While extremely conservative, and hence often in the opposition, his writings on such themes are thoughtful, candid, just, and patriotic. Among such articles are some treating of Representative Government, The Election of Deputies and Senators to the Federal Congress, The Commercial Treaty Between Mexico and the United States, etc. The passage presented here, in translation, is a chapter from El Conde de PeÑalva.

THE HORRORS OF 1648 IN YUCATAN.

The Count could not arrive at a more unfortunate moment nor amid conditions sadder than those among which fate decreed his coming to these shores. The situation of the Peninsula could not be more sorrowful or calamitous. An epidemic disease, whether cholera, or yellow fever, or the black plague, is uncertain, was just ceasing to devastate the community, and the misfortunes and ruin which it caused had not yet ended. That pest began in the year 1648, year unlucky for Yucatan. After the season of northers in February of that year, a drought set in, so rigorous as to sterilize the soil and to produce intense heat, which was increased by burning over the fields in preparation for the year’s sowing. This drought, these heats, the Peninsula suffers ordinarily, but for a short time only, from the month of March until the rains fall in May—and, it even happens often that, before the rains, showers refresh the air and moisten and fertilize the earth. The year 1648 was not, however, such; the heats, initiated in the month of February, augmented, more and more, until they reached the extreme degree which human nature can endure; the inhabitants of the country anxiously begged for rain to diminish the heat, in which they were burning; but heaven, deaf to their clamors, refused to open its stores, and time passed without a single drop of rain coming to refresh the thirsty earth. Sometimes, the rains delay until the end of June, but what was seen in 1648 has never been since repeated; June passed, July passed, August began, and the land was as dry as a fleshless skeleton, exposed to the quivering rays of a dog-days’ sun. The dust, fine and penetrating, was constantly raised in clouds, from March on, at the blast of the southeast wind, and shut out from view the barren fields which, when visible offered to the eye nothing but leafless trees and ground overgrown with briars and brambles without greenness. Nor was the afternoon breeze any relief from the extraordinary heat and drought, because that little current of air, blowing so softly and agreeably on summer afternoons, at that time came impregnated with an odor strong and pestiferous as if the whole Peninsula had been encircled by filthy and stinking cesspools. And this was because that period of drought coincided with an extraordinary infection of the fishes of the sea, which died in infinite numbers, and their bodies, tossed up by the sea onto the shores, formed gigantic heaps of putrefaction, which poisoned the air. How great must have been the number of those dead fish, since it is stated that the vessels that were navigating near our coasts were checked in their courses and journeyed slowly, as if they were running in the belt of calms or through spaces filled with drifting ice! In vain our police force, then in embryo, sent out daily, from all the towns near the coast, files of Indians led by a Spaniard, for the purpose of burning the dead fish. The very stench of the burning came to be unbearable, so that finally the expedient was abandoned, as harmful.

Suffering under these tribulations, the people intensified their affliction, by dire forebodings, which existed more in their imagination than in reality. As always happens, in time of social calamity, aged persons spoke of similar times, in remote epochs, which had preceded horrible disasters. The air appearing thick and heavy, they imagined that the sun did not shine as it was accustomed to do, but was as if eclipsed; and, in fine, the inner sadness of minds was reflected in external things, conspiring to exalt the fancy with dread of vague misfortunes, of coming and fatal ills.

And the fear became reality, since in the month of June a terrible and contagious disease made its frightful appearance in Campeche. Whether it was the Levantine plague, which a little before had ravaged Europe and was brought by some vessel to the port, whether it was occasioned by the putrefaction of the dead fishes, whether it was the cholera which visited us for the first time, or whether it was the yellow fever scourging with an iron hand, we cannot say. It is enough to know that it was a terrible disease, which converted Yucatan into an immense cemetery. Sometimes, without any warning, it showed itself in intense pains in the bones, accompanied by excessive fever and delirium; at other times with the fever was united vomiting of putrid blood; now it presented the diarrhoea of the cholera patient; now the putrid dysentery of pernicious fever. Some died in eight or ten hours; others lasted through three, four, or even seven days. Men more than women, and the youth, lively and vigorous, more than the feeble and infirm, were the field preferred by the epidemic. No one escaped its deleterious influence, and the Spaniard and Indian, the negro, the mulatto, and the mestizo all paid their tribute to the contagion, which showed no respect in its depredations. In its course, it sometimes skipped populations; and while it swooped pitilessly down upon some obscure and distant village, it neglected some town close by and exposed to its attack. Sometimes it seemed to spare the Indians, only to return later and make a clean sweep of them.

There were great sadness and horror in Merida when notice was brought of the rapid, frequent, and painful deaths, which were taking place in Campeche, and which suggested the existence of the plague; the more so as an effort was made to minimize the reports of conditions. The pest, the sombre and frightful pest, which brings death as a daily thought to the minds of all; and not sweet and peaceful death, but the most distressing of all, death in solitude and abandonment! The stupor, caused by the news, did not prevent some measures of sanitation to prevent the invasion of the contagion, the principal of which was isolation. The city completely separated itself, closed the highways, set numerous guards in the roads, and all the inhabitants turned their eyes to God, imploring pity; the temples were thronged and deeds of mercy were more frequent and general.

Nothing, however, sufficed to stay the advance of the disease; in turn, it attacked Merida, leaping over all the populations in the line of progress, and appearing in the city at the end of July. At first it attacked but few, here and there a person; although the number stricken did not cause a panic, the promptness with which they died struck terror. This, however, was but the beginning of the affliction; because, afterward, in the first days of August the disease increased above measure, and by the middle of the month almost all the inhabitants of the city were stretched upon the bed of pain by the contagion. Whole families were stricken and died in isolation, with no one to care for them or even to call a nurse, a physician, or a priest to give some aid. In the sad and deserted streets were only to be seen, passing like fugitive spectres, the secular clergy, the Jesuits, and the Franciscans in their long gowns, rapidly crossing from house to house to administer consolation to those dying who had the happiness to receive them; because, not infrequently, when the priests crossed the threshold of the house of death, they only encountered sepulchral stillness and corpses; at other times it happened that the priest, who bore the viaticum, was himself suddenly stricken with the disease and was obliged to lay himself down to die in the first doorway, while another priest came to take the holy elements from his hands, to continue the sacred task of abnegation and sacrifice. In the cathedral, in Santa Lucia, in San Cristobal, in Santiago, in San Sebastian, in Santa Catalina, the corpses were buried in the burying grounds near the churches; but so great was the crowd of the dead that the town government commanded new cemeteries to be opened and blessed in the fields; and, in order not to increase the panic, it ordered that the bodies should be carried to all these cemeteries at dawn, where a priest received them and repeated a prayer over them, and they were thrown into the common trench. That was a mournful spectacle, which those fields of death presented at that hour, with long files of corpses, badly clad or wrapped in serapes or in henequin mattings, laid out on boards, or stretchers.

The Governor, Don Esteban de AscÁrraga did not escape the pest; he died August 8 and was buried quietly, not to augment the consternation of the city. A Franciscan friar, JosÉ de Orosco, mounted, hale and hearty, the pulpit in the church of San Francisco, to preach the sermon, and descended ill, and died. The regidors, in the town government, died; of eight Jesuits, who lived in the Colleges of San Javier and San Pedro, six sacrificed their lives on the altar of charity, succoring the sufferers day and night; twenty Franciscans perished in the same labors; clergy, seculars, canonigos, pensioners, royal employes, in short, the principal and choicest of the city went down to the tomb in the month of August, 1648.

Public consternation had reached its height; the city was completely overwhelmed. Without physicians, without adequate supplies of medicines, with no hospital except that of Nuestra SeÑora del Rosario, later known by the name San Juan de Dios, from the fact that it was in other times served by the mendicant friars; sustained with difficulty, without sanitary police, without hygienic arrangements, with the deaths increasing, the public spirit crushed. It was then, when deprived of every human succor, the inhabitants of Merida redoubled their appeals to heaven, and, recalling the great devotion of the Province to the Most Holy Virgin Mary, resolved to make a pilgrimage to the Sanctuary of Izamal and to bring the sacred image, there venerated, in public procession in order to attribute to it special worship during nine consecutive days. The Licenciate, Don Juan de Aguileta, Vice-Governor, was appointed by the city to represent it and bring the sacred image to Merida. In so great faith and mortal terror were all the people that the Licenciate Aguileta, himself ill with the pest, did not hesitate a moment to receive the commission, and without discussion started for Izamal. Whether for the faith with which he undertook the journey, the change of temperature, or some other reason, the fact is that the licenciate was cured before he reached Izamal. As soon as the Indians learned the object of his journey, they tenaciously opposed the removal of the sacred statue, fearing that it would not be returned to its traditional sanctuary. The persuasions, threats, and exhortations of the authorities availed nothing, nor did those of the friars themselves; the Indians distrusted all, and did not willingly lend themselves to permit the departure of the sacred image until the Provincial of the Franciscans agreed to remain in Izamal, as a hostage, until the venerated figure should be restored to its temple. And so seriously did the Indians take his proposal that they placed guards upon all the roads out from the town to prevent his escape.

These measures having been taken by the Indians, the holy image started from Izamal for Merida. It was not a procession; it was a grand popular festival; it was a triumphal march, with an enormous accompaniment of people, who poured forth from their homes, to see pass by on the highway, the statue of the venerated Patroness of Yucatan, whose aid was besought. Those who know the faith, the ardor, the effusion of soul with which the humble and common people devote themselves to religious practices, can imagine the enthusiasm, bordering on delirium, with which the inhabitants of the surrounding towns flocked together, anxious to render their homage of love to the Virgin Mary. Long and closely packed files of devotees, with lighted torches, formed the accompaniment, which stretched, as a broad, blazing strip, through the dry and arid wastes bordering the road. All on foot, all praying, all filled with remorse, and penitent, they arrived at the outskirts of Merida, where a numerous and select concourse awaited the procession. The Regidors, the Canonigos, the principal ladies, had gone, barefoot in sign of penitence, and, when the procession passed through the streets of the city, from the Cruz de la Villa to the Plaza Mayor, the sick had themselves brought to the doors and windows of their houses, to implore health. After a brief rest at the Cathedral, the procession went to the Church of San Francisco, where for nine days constantly the most solemn worship[9] was attributed to the Most Holy Virgin.

The nine days having passed, on the 23d of August, 1648, the Alcalde Governor, Don Juan de Salazar y Montejo, returned the sacred image to the Sanctuary of Izamal, with the same splendor, pomp, and accompaniment. The pest mitigated, in fact, in Merida at the end of August, and had almost disappeared before the middle of September, although merely changing the scene of its ravages.

As happens always, the gathering of people, the numerous concourse of inhabitants from other towns, scattered the seed of the contagion, which spread its devastation throughout the whole country. The first to be attacked were the Indians of Izamal, who, faithful and devoted, did not abandon the sacred image for a moment on its journey from its natal city to Merida. From Izamal the pest extended slowly to the east and south. The great procession took place in August, and already in September the District of Izamal was smitten; in October the epidemic had propagated itself to Ticul, Chapab, Bolonchen, Mani, Bolonchenticul; in December it had spread throughout the whole coast, and, thus, spreading from town to town, it fiercely struck its claws into the whole Peninsula during two long and weary years.