Bernardo Bátiz V.
C
Undoning one leaves Making old, what recently happens to me, there is a tendency to remember episodes of childhood or youth, which appear in memory and revive some event of that time, which today produces a sensation of peaceful nostalgia. “I was there, I was part of that event” and remembering it causes me retrospective joy.
That happened to me on Wednesday 17 of this month; When reading a brief but well -achieved note of the reporter Andrea Becerril, published with the header “Look for the upper house to claim Colonel Santiago Xicoténcatl” and another note with a larger letter that says “Outstanding performance in the defense of Chapultepec Castle.”
The report not only reminded me that on September 13, the well -known are celebrated by all Mexicans, “heroes”, which are the cadets of the Military College that died in the battle that took place among the powerful and well armed US invaders and Mexican forces with lower quality weapons, but with a clear concept of honor and patriotism. The Americans had already been able to succeed a couple of days before in Molino del Rey and nothing prevented them from taking the capital of the country, which entered a couple of days later, not without receiving bullets and stones from the roofs of the houses of the angry and brave neighbors.
Of course, we always remember the six young people, almost children, who with courage and courage defended their school and died in the unequal battle; They are, it doesn’t matter to repeat it, we must not forget it, Lieutenant Juan de la Barrera and the Cadets Agustín Melgar, Fernando Montes de Oca, Vicente Suárez, Juan Escutia and Francisco Márquez; By the way, they have long been honored by giving their names to the streets of the Condesa neighborhood and, in addition, with a beautiful monument to the main entrance of the forest.
But there is something more and very important, what happens is that in that battle of Chapultepec, Colonel Tlaxcalteca Felipe Santiago Xicoténcatl also died, along with most of the members of the San Blas Battalion, of which he was in command and that heroically resisted in the forest and on the slopes of the hill, whose cusp is still the castle.
The other memory that comes to my memory is not known publicly or is as important as the one I just relived. This is: I finished primary school in a public school in the Alamos neighborhood in Mexico City; His name was the state of Chiapas, but we all told him as much familiar “La Chiapas”, that of the Alamos neighborhood in what is now the mayor of Benito Juárez.
And I return to memory; I was in the fifth or sixth grade and was the director of “La Chiapas” another Tlaxcalteca (like my mother and my grandmother), his name: Don Lino Santacruz. The memory that I share with my readers is that, to the wide garden of the Alamos neighborhood, Don Lino Santacruz managed to formally receive the official name of his countryman, “Felipe Santiago Xicoténcatl” and there also wore that they also sowed a few “blades” because in that garden pirules, eucalyptus, thunderous, pines and other species of trees grew. Doubt was an incongruity.
I think it was in 1947 or 1948, no matter, but then I heard for the first time the lips of my school, the name of the heroic colonel who faced until he died with the Yankees invaders. I do not remember the details of the ceremony; The girls and boys of the school go through the main door formed in groups to make a picture in the park; Our teachers and some mothers were, of course Don Lino, the director, then I heard from his lips for the first time the story of the battle and the name of the hero that still gives his name to that beautiful garden in which, another interesting fact, there is an astronomical observatory that attended with wisdom and goodness Don Gabilondo Soler, the famous Grillito Cantor.
And since we are remakeing, recalling the personal history interwoven with the homeland, I think it is important to remember that the Nahuatl name of Xicoténcatl took two tlaxcaltec caudillos that between doubts and surprises shyly ophed to the passage of Hernán Cortés by their territory. Xicoténcatl the old man was already about 90 years old when he had to receive the conqueror, who was looking for allies to approach the Great Tenochtitlan, who, as everyone knows, was a rival of those of Tlaxcala. The “old man” died for that time and the most aguerrido succeeded him, his son who brought the same name, but was known as “the young man” and who was most likely killed to convince his subjects that they had to support the Spaniards.
For me, the park was very important; There I learned from Don Lino some history, I had friends, I learned to ride a bicycle; There I played American football and there I also walked shy, from the hand of a girl I will not name.
