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Enkidu Summer Conference: Storytelling, Memories and Identity Constructions II Mexico City 28 July - 1 August, 2010
THE STREET GANTE The building in Calle Gante 15, at the corner of Calle
16 de Septiembre where most conference activities, including the academic
sessions will take place, is a beautiful and monumental edifice owned by the
state government of the city of Mexico. It is situated in a wonderful
pedestrian street with several cozy restaurants, bars, street musicians and
terraces. There is something for almost every taste and wallet in
Gante and most places have access to wireless LAN. You can thus bring your
lap top and enjoy the sun while working or keeping in touch with your friends
and family. There is a Starbucks Café in Gante close to the conference with a
particularly clean toilet. The street Gante starts at the corner of Calle
Francisco Madero, one of the major shopping streets in downtown Mexico,
leading up to the Zocalo, the main square of the city where the cathedral,
the presidential palace and the city administration are situated, The street
Gante may look short, but it has several interesting buildings. The street is named after the Flemish friar Pieter van
der Moere, one of the celebrated first three Franciscans to arrive in the
proud, but defeated imperial capital of Mexico-Tenochtitlan few years after
the conquest. Van der Moere, was of aristocratic family and a relative of
Karel (Charles/Carlos) V, the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire (and thus king
of Spain). Few Spanish speakers were
able to pronounce his real name, therefore people soon started referring to
him as “Pedro de Gante”. His hometown in Flanders was Ghent, which is called
Gante in Castilian. In 1523 he founded a prestigious school and academy for
young, noble indigenous men in the city of Texcoco. Shortly thereafter
another School and college for the indigenous nobility opened its doors in
the convent San Francisco in the heart of Mexico-Tenochtitlan. This school,
along with the famous school in Texcoco contributed to the enormous spread of
Nahuatl literacy in the early colonial period. It should be noted that Pedro
de Gante also wrote a Doctrina cristiana en lengua Mexicana. This book in
Nahuatl was among the very first books to be printed anywhere in the
Americas. There is a monument to him in the end of the street donated by the
city of Ghent in 1976. The current street of Gante was laid out in the second
half of the 19th century, as one component in the process of opening up the
enormous area of the former Franciscan convent San Francisco, which occupied
a large part of the central areas of the city after Mexican independence. In
fact everything between Calle de San Francisco (today: Francisco I. Madero)
in the north, Avenida San Juan de Letrán (today: Eje Central Lázaro Cárdenas)
in the east and Calle de Zuleta (Today: Venustiano Carranza) in the south was
covered by the convent area. It was nationalized by the secular Mexican Government
in 1856. A conspiracy against the government inside the convent walls was
conveniently discovered and the president in those times, Iganacio Comonfort
immediately issued a decree nationalizing the property of the order. The
central parts of the City of Mexico were given a new vitality as many areas
overnight were given back to the city after centuries behind convent walls.
The Street of the Bethlehemites (Calle de Betlemitas), today Filomeno Mata
(named after a 19th century Mexican journalist who during the dictatorship of
Porfirio Diaz advocated among many other things universal suffrage). was
prolonged immediately and this prolongation became Gante. The surviving buildings of the old convent
were used for several purposes in the following decades and every edifice
tells a fascinating story. Vestiges of the old convent can be seen in many
surprising places in the area. In 1866, the
Italian Giuseppe Chiarini rented the cloister and the main church for his
circus and a passage to Gante was carved out through remaining convent
edifices. In 1870, the owner sold the propriety to the Methodist Church. With
the change of ownership, a brutal process started, removing, selling off, and
often simply destroying the invaluable colonial pieces of art that once had
characterized the convent. The altars were dismantled and figures of saints
removed from their niches. In 1873 finally the Methodist Church as it can be
observed today was opened. The old cloister of the convent with its early
colonial columns and arcades can still be seen. |
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