Sorrowful Mystery #3

The Third Sorrowful Mystery depicts the Crowning of Thorns. The monument is the first modern replacement that strollers, or pilgrims, will encounter along the Calzada de los Misterios. In the mid-19th century, the construction of the railroad to Veracruz badly damaged seven of the 15 original Misterios monument. These were entirely lost to history.

But in 1999, in anticipation of a visit by Pope John Paul II, the City began modernizing the street. The missing seven Mysteries were replaced with contemporary replicas. Those walking the old pilgrimage route and having past the preceding original monuments will see that the effect is consistent with the route. Just 25 years later, the newer monuments honor the past and evoke something of the sense of majesty, even for purely secular Modern passersby.

The walk follows an ancient course to the old temple of the goddess Tonantzin Coatlaxopeuh. The Church re-interpreted that deity beginning  in the 1530s with the Marian apparitions. These rather quickly evolved into the Villa de Guadalupe and a Marian following that spanned the world and became likely the most important Roman Catholic spiritual center in the Americas.

But curiously, this Third Sorrowful Mystery is the first in the historic Colonia Industrial. With the railroads came a century of manufacturing and big business in the old temple neighborhood. Street names still colorfully reflect the old business firms that employed thousands and allowed at least the managerial classes to populate the many surrounding streets. They built their houses, walled in their gardens, and generations adapted to an entirely different reality.

When you walk the Calzada de los Misterios today, you share in that history. Parallel to the Calzada, and just one block west, is the Calle La Corona. It commemorates not the Crown of Thorns but the Jabon La Corona soap factory. The plant opened on the edge of la Villa de Guadalupe in 1920. The detergent Roma is still acutely sensitive to the P.h. of Mexico City’s water and manufactured just across the city limits in Ecatepec as it has been for 104 years.