The history of this pantheon, the Panteón San Nicolás, in León, Guanajuato, dates back to the beginning of the 19th century, many decades before it was established as a repository for the remains and the promised final resting place of all its designers. In the 1930s, the first corpses already fell in this area on the outskirts of the central and tourist area of the city of Bajío, although it was identified as a cemetery until the 1990s.
It is known as the oldest pantheon in the city, although the city was founded much earlier, around the second half of the 14th century, under the pretext of the prolonged wars of conquest in this region against the Chichimecas. Who knows where the deceased would end up during those almost three centuries without a full-fledged pantheon.
Those who have reviewed the Municipal Historical Archive say that the first dead person came to this land in 1833, a certain Francisco Urteaga, and was the first of a flock of transcended by a terrible scourge of cholera in the city. The extensions of the land were given according to the demand. In the 1950s, another epidemic, this one of smallpox, contributed a few hundred more lifeless neighbors. Here, then, due to the unfortunate epidemics, something that is familiar to us, a cemetery that is now emblematic of the city was instituted.
Well, for this Friday night, the San Nicolás Pantheon is one of the curious venues of the Cine entre Muertos program, one of the four complementary programs of the Guanajuato International Film Festival (GIFF), which this weekend occupies León as its first of three host cities, within the framework of the 25th anniversary of the film meeting. With this program, the GIFF has taken over cemeteries from the main cities of the state to bring to them films of horror, fantasy and other types of paranormal intrigues to the public that is not afraid to wake up to sit next to a grave, regardless of the reason for death. of that person who lives in it, and let yourself be surprised by an abnormal way of appreciating a film.
Of crosses and graves
Agonizes natural light in the city. In the background, between the tops of the trees that surround the high fences of the cemetery, we can already see, rather, as shadows that darken the grayish sky even more, a neon cross is noticeable, one of those that dark-souled movies wear where Christianity acts as a catalyst to sustain the plot, —read “Hellboy” (2004) and “El Cuervo” (1994)—. It is the cross of the Parroquia del Perpetuo Socorro, which is located a couple of blocks from the pantheon and a prelude to the experience that hundreds of people are about to experience on this first day of screening of Cinema Among the Dead in the city of León.
It’s past nine at night. From the interior, it is finally notified that the installation of the equipment and the chairs to receive the public inside the pantheon is ready. The doors are opened and visitors are strongly requested not to deviate from the marked route to the place of the projection, for heaven’s sake. The pantheon is dark and foolishness will not be seen well by the guards and perhaps not by its residents.
On the left side, as soon as you enter, there is a building with niches containing the ashes of hundreds of infants. They have deposited dolls, carts, pinwheels. Everyone in this tower is deceased children. Behind, among the trees, white tombstones can be seen, very much in the style of Montparnasse, an older part of the site can be guessed, by the top of the tombstones that crown the tombs.
You have to walk to the middle of the pantheon and then turn right, there is an open area where the chairs and projection equipment were installed. On the side stands another tower of niches, but in this one lie the ashes of elderly dead who perished at different times: Doña María Loreto Canchola, who died in February 1972, with an epitaph in memory of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren, inscribed in gold letters , unlike his neighbor, Fernando Carmona, who also died in February, but in 2020 and whose epitaph is written by hand and with a marker on the stone. To this they have left a small figurine of the Virgin of Guadalupe.
Like these, hundreds of deceased will be witnesses in the front row of the double filming that is about to start. The first film is the German “Luzifer” (2021), directed by the Austrian Peter Brunner, based on the true story of an exorcism, a difficult job for the public due to the density of its plot, since its background reveals the human creation of myths, religion, extractionism, the true existence of evil in the human being.
The second film to be screened is “Bingo Hell”, directed by the Mexican-Canadian filmmaker Gigi Saul Guerrero and starring the Mexican Adriana Barraza, who in this edition received the National Tribute and gave a keynote speech.
But it is better to tell what happens in the public between projection and projection.
Snack and setting
“What is the name of the movie we are going to see?” asks a woman in the audience who has reached the places closest to the screen. She and her family bring a topper full of snacks and have started devouring it before the screening starts. “’Luzifer,’ says another younger woman from the same family. And then everyone yells “Aaaaahhhh!”, as if setting the scene for the preamble, hoping that the tape will get as many “jump scares” out of them as possible. They cannot imagine the type of tape they are about to see.
“If you feel that your legs are being pulled, then, then you stop and run away,” says another voice in the background to provoke the rest of the rose, before inviting him to try a little more than a pack of Takis.
It is the type of interactions generated by a project like the GIFF, which for many editions has taken the appreciation of cinema out of solemnity. Although, it is necessary to say, the only experience closer to the paranormal tonight is going to be the wave of insects that will be bothered by the presence of beings alien to their environment, between flies and cockroaches.
