Morelos Monument, Colonia Morelos

The Morelos Monument in the Colonia Morelos is one of the most curious and interesting of the hundreds of similar monuments across Mexico.  José María Morelos y Pavón, the insurgent and anti-royalist was also a priest.

Don’t mistake his toga here for those of a Roman Senator espousing Republican ideals. Just like complicated Tepito, Morelos is here in priestly attire. He was, after Miguel Hidalgo, the second important Roman Catholic priest among insurgent pro-independence Mexicans.

The statue was originally commissioned by the governor of Mexico State to stand in San Cristobal Ecatepec. The city wouldn’t be renamed for Morelos, who was executed there in 1815, until 1877. Today it’s more likely to be referred to simply as Ecatepec, although most people recognize it’s official name as Ecatepec de Morelos.

The statue though never made it to Mexico State. It was only finally carved by an Italian sculptor named Antonio Piatti in 1865. Most accounts of the statue’s somewhat sorry tale like to point out that it was much hated in its eventual and first resting place. Where the Guardiola Building is now, at the end of the Avenida Francisco Madero, was the Plazuela de Guardiola, named for the Marquises of Guardiola as is the building even today. The Escandón family had a house here. The counts of Orizaba still lived in the Casa de los Azulejos. All of them hated the statue. That’s to say nothing of their feelings for the emporer. Maximiliano placed a plaque (since lost) reading:

“To the illustrious Morelos who left the altar to fight, win, and die for the freedom of his country.
– Maximiliano, Emperor, 1865.”

With the fall of Maxmiliano (1868), the statue was quickly hurried off to the Plaza de Santa Veracruz. Sometime after, in the 1870s, it was moved to its current location on the Avenida del Trabajo on the very eastern edge of Tepito.  At that time, the larger Colonia Morelos would have been on the very outskirts of Mexico City, and this was considered one of the entrances to the Barrio Bravo of Tepito, as it today.

Sources cited on this page:
October 14, 2014, El Bable:
El monumento a Morelos que Maximiliano mandó levantar. 
http://cabezasdeaguila.blogspot.com/2014/
10/el-monumento-morelos-que-maximiliano.html