Sanctuary of Atotonilco (Santuario de Atotonilco)
Seven miles northeast of San Miguel de Allende, is the church of Atotonilco. In the indigenous language of the region, Atotonilco (pronounced ah-toe-toe-NEAL-co) means ‘Place of the Hot Waters’. It actually started as a hacienda with a spring, (there is still a hot spring there today). Luis Felipe Neri de Alfaro, a local priest and native of San Miguel, bought the land from the hacienda’s owner, Don Ignacio Garofa, and began construction of the church on May 3, 1740. Padre Alfaro commissioned, Miguel Antonio Martinez de Pocasangre, to paint the murals for which the church is so famous. Pocasangre painted the priest’s vision of the life and resurrection of Jesus.
The church is sometimes referred to as the “Sistine Chapel of the Americas” and almost every square inch of the walls and ceilings inside the Sanctuary is covered with Mexican folk art. The murals also portray angels, archangels, saints, and demons mixed with flowers and fruits.
A few of the murals are among the most horrific paintings in the world. The central image is of a hemorrhaging Christ. All around him are other tortured, bleeding, and dying people. In addition to these murals, the church houses a treasury of sculptures, which also date from the late 1700s. Due to neglect, environmental degradation, and human touch, over the centuries, murals and sculptures are in extremely fragile condition.
Today the Sanctuary of Atotonilco is still a special place, in regards to the religious life of central Mexico. A compound of buildings surrounds the sanctuary. It includes dormitories, dining rooms, and meeting halls for the many religious retreats, which are held here throughout the year. Thousands of Catholics come here each year to participate in religious exercises such as sleeping on cold rock floors, in stone cells, crawling around the outside of the sanctuary on bare and bloody knees, flagellating themselves with whips and wearing crowns of thorns. Everyone has their own reasons for doing this but many of the pilgrims feel they must experience pain, as Christ must have felt it, during his carrying of the cross to hill of Golgatha, and his subsequent crucifixion, on the cross. Historians state, that from 1880 to the present times as many as 100,000 people a year have made pilgrimages to the sanctuary.
Atotonilco’s small population is expanded greatly when these retreats are held. Approximately thirty weeks a year 5,000 to 10,000 pilgrims converge on the sanctuary from all over Mexico. The usually deserted, dusty main street of the village is filled with people shopping among the stalls of vendors selling religious articles, clothing, pottery and food. The plaza then has a fiesta like atmosphere. Traditional dances are also held at the sanctuary on the third Sunday of July.
There is a tradition that dates from the early 1800’s, it is an annual midnight pilgrimage, which starts from the sanctuary of Atotonilco and goes seven miles to San Miguel. The procession (which usually has several thousand pilgrims) begins at midnight and they arrive in San Miguel at sunrise. It is approximately a six and a half hour walk. The procession is filled with people singing and carrying brass lanterns to light their way through the dark night. Bonfires are lit along the road and fireworks light up the night sky ahead of the procession.
The pilgrims accompany, the image or statue, la Milagrosa Imagen del Señor de la Columna (the Miraculous Image of The Lord of The Column) from his home in Atotonilco on his yearly visit to San Miguel. The statue is worshiped, by the people of the area because of the numerous miracles that are attributed to it. The miracles and the tradition of the pilgrimages began some 175 years ago when an epidemic struck San Miguel, which killed many people. A wealthy merchant of San Miguel, gravely ill, asked that a religious image be brought to him as a comfort, on his deathbed. The statue was carried from Atotonilco to his home. The dying merchant recovered and the epidemic in San Miguel ended. Every year, since, during the Easter season, the tradition of the visit by the statue to San Miguel has been carried on.
The World Monuments Fund recently named this historic and artistically important church to its list of “100 most endangered monuments.” With a grant from American Express and the State of Guanajuato, in 1996 a Mexican non-profit organization began work on the restoration of the sanctuary. With these efforts, the church and its murals are being restored.
