Cholula

In the previous post I described my experience as a student at the University of the Americas in Cholula, Mexico, way back in 1973.  In those days Cholula was a small rural town not far from the city of Puebla. 

In 1973, when I took this picture, it was not unusual to see a burro hitched up along the street.

 

In 2012 I revisited Cholula with my friend Alejandro, and the changes were dramatic.  When I went to school there, you could look across the fields and see Puebla on the horizon.  Now Puebla has expanded right up to the limits of Cholula, and the once sleepy town is a suburb with a population of over 100,000.  The University used to sit about a mile from the edge of town.  I would walk down the road through the countryside to Cholula.  Now the road to the campus is lined with businesses, restaurants and bars... it is a completely urban area. 

 

1973 - The city of Puebla is off on the horizon.  The university campus is left of center, and as you can see, there is a lot of farmland.

 

 

2012 - Now Cholula is a part of the urban sprawl of Puebla. (If you look carefully, you can see that Puebla has even sprouted a number of skyscrapers.)  The much larger campus is amongst the trees, and there isn't much in the way of farmland left.

Back then the University was small with a student population made up largely of gringo students studying Spanish.  Now the campus has expanded beyond recognition and it is one of the most prestigious private universities in the country.  I wanted to visit my old school, but now the campus is gated with guard posts at the entrances.  I explained to the guard that I had attended the University many years ago, and he grudgingly allowed us to enter.  But he told us that we were not to leave the car.  We drove around the campus for a while, but I never even saw the original buildings with which I was familiar. 

Back in the 70s there were very few tourists in Cholula.  Now tour busses roll into town, and there are hotels, restaurants and souvenir shops. Tourism now accounts for over one third of the city's economy.  What do the tourists come to see?  They come to visit the remains of Cholula's pre-Hispanic and colonial past.

Cholula is more than 2500 years old.  Around 300 B.C. work began on what was to become a huge pyramid.  By the Classic Period (A.D. 200 - 900) Cholula was an important agricultural, trade and ceremonial center with a population of at least 20,000 people.  It was influenced by the great city of Teotihuacan to the north (see earlier post on Teotihuacan).  As Cholula's importance grew, the pyramid grew in size.  It was common among the pre-Hispanic civilizations to build on top of existing structures.  The pyramid of Cholula consists of four superimposed layers, and, by the time it was finished, it was the largest pyramid in the world.  It is not as tall as the great pyramids of Egypt, but in terms of volume, it is larger.  The base is four times the size of the pyramid of Giza.  Today the pyramid is covered with vegetation and it appears to be a large hill.  I always thought that this had occurred after the Spanish conquest of Mexico.  But in the 1200s the Toltecs moved into the area and took control of Cholula.  On the site of Cholula's present-day town square, the Toltecs built a temple to their principal god, Quetzalcoatl.  That temple became the focus of worship and pilgrimage, and the great pyramid was for the most part abandoned.  So, by the time the Spanish arrived, the pyramid already looked like a somewhat symmetrically shaped hill.    

              Here you see the pyramid.  The Spanish later built a church on top of it.

 

One small section at the base of the pyramid has been restored to its original appearance.

 

(Image from the web)

Here's an artist's representation of how the pyramid might have looked.



From the top of that restored section of steps, I saw something that I had never noticed before.  There is obviously another smaller pyramid nearby.  I suspect that when I was a student here, there had been buildings where that open plaza now is.  They probably hid the view of the mound.

 

 

 

Around the base of the great pyramid there has been a lot of excavation work done since the 1970s.  Courtyards, altars and carvings that were a part of this grand religious center have been uncovered.

 

On the plaza in front of the pyramid there are periodic performances of the ritual ceremony of the "voladores" (flyers).  In this ceremony five men climb to the top of a tall pole.  Four of the five are tied by their feet to the pole.  The fifth man plays a flute and drum.  The four "voladores" hurl themselves from the pole, and as the ropes unwind they revolve around the pole until they descend to the ground.  This ritual is most associated with the Totonac tribe of the gulf coast, but in pre-Hispanic times it was performed throughout Mexico.

 

 

 

 



Cholula continued to flourish under the rule of the Aztecs.  It was a holy city that supposedly contained 365 temples.  The population may have been 100,000, and it was the second largest city in the empire, surpassed only by Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan (present day Mexico City).

 

In 1519 a small band of Spanish soldiers led by Hernán Cortés arrived on the coast of Mexico.  They had heard rumors of the riches of the Aztec empire, and they marched inland.  Along the way they made an alliance with the Tlaxcaltecas, enemies of the Aztecs.  Tlaxcalteca warriors augmented the ranks of the Spanish, and they continued their trek toward the Aztec capital.  The army arrived at Cholula.  The Spanish were offered hospitality, although the Cholulans asked that the Tlaxcaltecas camp outside of the city.

 

According to the accounts of Cortés, the Cholulans' hospitality was a ploy.  They were in fact planning to ambush the Spaniards and eliminate the white skinned intruders.  The mistress of Cortés, an indigenous woman known as La Malinche, heard about the planned attack, and warned Cortés.  The Spanish captain beat the Cholulans to the punch and carried out a massacre of the leaders of the city. 

 

After the Spanish conquest, Cholula fell into decline.  The population was decimated by epidemics of diseases such as smallpox which were unknown in the New World until the Spanish arrived.  Nearby, the Spanish built their own settlement, which became the city of Puebla and which supplanted Cholula as the major center of the region.   It is said that the Spanish built a church on the site of each of the 365 temples.  In fact, the town has thirty seven churches.

 

The largest church is the Church of San Gabriel.  It and its adjoining Franciscan monastery were constructed in 1540s.  It is still occupied by Franciscan monks.

 

   

 

 

                     Alejandro and I climbed the pyramid to the colonial church on top. 

 

 

 

From the top there is a view of the two snow covered volcanoes Popocatépetl and Iztaccíhuatl, the second and third highest peaks in Mexico.  On the other side of those volcanoes is Mexico City.  Although the pollution here is not nearly as bad as in the capital, the air is not as clear as it was forty years ago.  To the left you see Popocatepetl and to the right, partially obscured in clouds, the flanks of Iztaccíhuatl.

  
At the top of the pyramid is the Church of Nuestra Señora de los Remedios which was built in 1594.  On the main altar is a statue of the "Virgen de Los Remedios".  Hernán Cortés is said to have brought an image of this Virgin with him on his expedition to Mexico, and the "Virgen de Los Remedios" became known as the protector of the "conquistadores".  There is some debate as to whether the image here is the original statue that belonged to Cortés.  Most historians are of the opinion that it is a later image that was placed here by the Franciscans.

       

A final view of Cholula from the steps of the pyramid