Mexican literature -- Translations into English; Mexican prose literature
The 30th of July, the last day of his life, dawned and in his last hours
he showed the greatest calmness. “He noticed,” says Bustamente, “that at
breakfast they had given him less milk than usual, and asked for more,
saying that it ought not to be _less_, just because it was _last_.... At
the moment of marching to the place of execution, he remembered that he
had left some sweets under his pillow; he returned for them and divided
them among the soldiers, who were to shoot him.” At seven in the morning
he was taken to a place behind the hospital, where the sentence was
executed; he did not die at the first discharge, but after falling to
the ground received numerous bullets. His body found sepulchre in the
Chapel of San Antonio of the Convent of San Francisco, and his head and
those of Allende, Aldama and Jiménez were carried to Guanajuato and
placed in cages of iron at each one of the corners of the Alhondiga[6]
of Granaditas, where they remained until 1821, when they were taken to
the Ermita de San Sebastian. On the door of the Alhondiga, by order of
the Intendant, Fernando Pérez Marañón, the following inscription was
placed:
“The heads of Miguel Hidalgo, Ignacio Allende, Juan Aldama, and Mariano
Jiménez, notorious deceivers and leaders of the revolution; they sacked
and stole the treasures of God’s worship and of the royal treasury; they
shed, with the greatest atrocity, the blood of faithful priests and just
magistrates; and, they were the cause of all the disasters, misfortunes,
and calamities which we here experience and which afflict, and are
deplored by, all the inhabitants of this, so integral, part of the
Spanish nation.
“Placed here by order of the Señor Brigadier, Felix María Calleja del
Rey, illustrious conqueror of Aculco, Guanajuato and Calderon, and
Restorer of the Peace in this America. Guanajuato, 14 of October,
1811.”
But, the hour of reparation, though tardy, arrived; one of the first
acts of the independent and liberated nation was to consecrate the
memory of its martyrs and to reward the efforts of its loyal sons, and
on the thirteenth anniversary of the glorious _Grito de Dolores_ (The
Cry of Dolores, i. e., the motto of independence) the heads of Hidalgo,
Allende, Aldama, and Jiménez, slowly become fleshless in the cages of
Granaditas, and their other remains buried in the humble cemetery of
Chihuahua, were received with solemn pomp at the Capital city and a
grateful people bore them to rest forever in the magnificent sepulchre,
before destined for the Spanish viceroys; the names of those heroes and
of other eminent leaders, were inscribed in letters of gold in the Hall
of Congress, and those of all will remain in indestructible characters
in Mexican hearts.
GENERAL NICOLÁS BRAVO.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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