Saturday nights can be pretty wild in Queretaro City, and this can be a big surprise for anyone who has not been there in a while. Disco music flows out over the historic center. The Boutique Hotels people had invited me to spend a few nights at their cozy little Doña Urraca on Cinco the Mayo. When I strolled out of my gentile confines onto the street I might have been back in Colonia Condesa, complete all its with traffic. Bistros and bars beckoned. They even have a Viejoteca appealing to jovenes de edad avanzada (young people of an advanced age). All this in what once was known as the City of Convents. Yet perhaps I should not have been surprised.
Stopping by the very handsome Queretaro Regional Museum before the sun went down, I learned that Queretaro stood where the Empire of the Aztecs and the Kingdom of the Tarascans ended and the Gran Chichameca began. The Chichimecas, you may recall, were the barbarians of prehispanic Mexico, and of post-hispanic Mexico as well. They were a wild people. Wild and untamed. This may be why the young and young at heart feel so much at home in Queretaro.
To ease any pangs of guilt about enjoying yourself too much, when the sun comes up you can soak up a bit of culture. Queretaro, declared by the United Nations to be Patrimonio de la Humanidad, can claim to be the most historic city in Mexico. Hours can be spent aboard sightseeing tranvias and on guided walking tours as you learn all about the past. The history lessons are not those you received in school.
The Independence Movement supposedly was born in Queretaro, although our guide indicated that there is some doubt about whether the plotters really sought independence. Napoleon had invaded Spain and made his own brother king while imprisoning Spains own Fernando VII. The Peninsulars in Mexico City responded by naming their own viceroy, which was a royal prerogative and consequently a move to which the native-born Creoles objected. The conspirators in Queretaro, our guide said, wanted Fernando back. That was what Hidalgo demanded in his famous Grito (Cry) which launched what became the War for Independence on September 16, 1810.
Mexico eventually got independence anyway, then, some 25 years later, sold more than half the land it had taken from Spain to the United States for 15 million dollars. That sale was consummated in Queretaro, since at the time Mexico City was occupied by a United States army, which negotiated the sale at gunpoint. Say what you will, few conquerors pay anything for the lands that they have conquered. Apparently the United States was no exception. According to our guide, almost nothing was received, since the conquerors claimed Mexico owed them 14,999,999 dollars for expenses related to waging a war.
Defeat, it might be said, was followed by victory when the forces of the Republic triumphed over those of Maximilian, the would-be emperor enthroned with the help of Napoleon III, nephew of the Napoleon whom the Queretaro conspirators considered to be their enemy. Maximilian was executed in Queretaro. What I did not know until my guide told me is that Max was a very sick emperor, possibly dying of syphilis and certainly ill with dysentery. Those stricken with dysentery are said not to be worried that they are going to die, but worried that they will not. Max did not need to worry.
Fifty years after the empire expired in Queretaro, the Constitution of 1917 was written and signed there when, for the second time in its history, the city served as capital of the republic. According to our guide, that Constitution has been altered so many times that none of the original signers would recognize it. Sadly, none are around to ask.
Queretaro also is where the political organization known today as the Partido Revolucionario Mexicano was born in 1929. It held onto the presidency until 1970 and some say it may be coming back. Beyond relaying this information, none of the guides had much to say about that.
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