Restoring La Merced Monastery in Guatemala City and creating the Museum of La Merced

The staid, stone, Neo-Classical façade of La Merced Church in Guatemala City belongs there, designed according to the time it was built, early 19th century. So why the gilded, elaborate, full-of-movement Baroque altars that fit the niches inside the church? Because, some might say, they actually belong in the Baroque-façade La Merced Church in La Antigua.

In 1778, when Santiago de los Caballeros, then seat of the Spanish kingdom in Guatemala and now La Antigua, moved to what is now Guatemala City, “…the Mercedarians built their new church to accommodate the altars which had graced the abandoned building in Santiago. These were readily removed and reassembled where they are used at the present time,” wrote Verle Annis (The Architecture of Antigua Guatemala 1543-1773). The new church was built according to measurements of the altars to be relocated there.

In 1813 the new La Merced Church and, although not finished, the adjacent monastery were inaugurated. Seventy years later the government of Justo Rufino Barrios ‘nationalized’ some church properties, including that of the La Merced monastery. The space became headquarters of the national police, with barracks, a jail for more than 200 prisoners and a hospital. And so it was, with earthquake repairs in 1917-18 and 1976.

In 1999, through efforts of the Asociación Amigos de La Merced, use (though not ownership) of the prison space was returned to the church, which by then was in the care of the Jesuits. In 2006 use of the hospital area was granted. The police, the jail and the hospital had been an oxymoron in the space, like the Baroque altars behind the Neo-Classical façade; and dedicated professionals went to work.

Archeologists sifted through rubble to salvage every useful bit of information, while architects studied foundations, walls, columns and colors to restore and recreate the monastery space as it had been almost 200 years before. No longer a home for 25-or-so priests, it is now home to the Museum of La Merced. Under the dedicated direction of Ana María Urruela de Quezada, curator of the museum, church treasures were collected, identified and registered, cleaned and conserved.

Treasures of the La Merced Church formed the largest collection of those brought from the churches of Santiago. Some were lost with the passing of time, starting with the move in 1778 and including political changes during which artworks were destroyed or distributed, even to individuals. Safeguarding the thousand-or-so works the church still claims, the museum guide states: “Only in museums, archives, libraries, etc. can their permanence be guaranteed and avoid dispersion, illicit interventions and theft.”

The museum has four rooms with paintings, sculpture, including small ‘domestic’ sculptures, religious vestments and temporary exhibits plus a ‘treasury within the treasures’, with gold-plated silver items, crowns and relics of the church.

Artworks date from the 17th to 19th century. To name a few, there is a sculpture of the descent of Jesus from the cross, created from a copy of Rubens’ painting; a funerary altar with figures dressed in the mode of the 17th century, which has been exhibited in Mexico, Philadelphia, Vienna and Madrid; an 18th century, spiral crafted cross inlaid with tortoise shell, of Moorish style; a 7-yard-long silver rope belt; sculptures of both Saint Peter of Nolasco of Barcelona, founder of the Mercedarian order.

Looking to the future, yet to be restored is the remaining hospital part of the monastery. The goal is to house the archives of the archbishop and a school for art conservation and restoration of all kinds—sculpture, painting, textiles, paper, musical instruments. But for now the walls are still covered with hospital-green, 4-inch ceramic tile, the white tile floors broken here and there to reveal original foundations, drains and another stone entrance ramp.

Among the colonial church treasures moved to the new La Merced Church is the organ, which has been called the most beautiful in Guatemala and was played at the church inauguration in 1813. Refurbished in 1960 and 2002, music resounds from the lead pipes and horizontal trumpets, returning the organ, like the church and its treasures, to its original dignity.

Museum of La Merced: 11a avenida at 5a calle, zone 1; Mon-Fri 9:30-1 and 2-5; Sat 10-1; Q50; locals Q20; tels: 2230-1588 /89

photos by Jack Houston

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In June 1737 the nuns of Convent La Concepción invited the town of Santiago de los Caballeros, now La Antigua Guatemala, to a celebration. Sound strange? Yes, but the lovely young ladies of convents in the colonial city were no ordinary nuns and led somewhat different lives than what we might expect today.

La Concepción was the first convent founded in Santiago (1578), as well as the largest, richest and most sumptuous. The La Concepción nuns were especially privileged, being daughters of Spanish nobility and bringing with them hefty dowries. Life in the convent, rather than being marked by devotion, seclusion and vows of poverty, allowed these women to avoid unwanted marriages and relaxed the rules so they could pursue the arts and even carry on businesses. Festivities within the convents, with guests of family, friends and the court, were common. In fact, they became so extravagant and raucous that they brought complaints from the neighbors. The story, as reported in the October 2007 Revue, continues to unfold.

Since 2007 the National Council for the Protection of La Antigua Guatemala, called the Consejo, the University of San Carlos (USAC) and the Republic of China (Taiwan) have been working to prepare the convent for its reopening as the Museo de Semana Santa (Holy Week Museum). During the past year they have uncovered colors, secrets and surprises.

“The fountain in the large courtyard is the jewel of the project,” beams Rocío Araujo, architect of USAC and director of the work. Unlike most fountains, this elaborately carved one was decorated in red and yellow. Colonial fountains and decorations typically are of one color—natural dye red. Rocío and her team, which includes USAC architecture student Marvin Escobar and Miguel de los Reyes, restorer and conservator of Barcelona, hold to strict rules of conservation. “The easy thing would be to say, ‘Let’s go buy red,’ but that’s not what we want to do,” says Reyes. They apply extract from nopal, a cactus, and natural resins to bring out the color that has been hidden under residue of the centuries. “The fountain gives us the information, the gift of showing us the original colors.”
Short stairways to the fountain have also been uncovered. A wooden platform is being constructed so visitors can appreciate the fountain at close view without touching it. The dream is that the fountain, filled with water, will function again.

Simple, square, concrete bases have been set for columns to support a roof over the corridor around the fountain patio. Rocío explains that they found remains of the bottoms of the bases, “…so we knew they were here. But we didn’t know what they looked like, so we made them very simple.” Off the corridor are rooms that served various functions, including a chapel earlier thought to be the private chapel of Sister Juana de Maldonado y Paz, the most famous recluse of La Concepción Convent for her writing, theater and music.

“But Sister Juana never saw this,” Reyes announces quietly. What?! Say that again! Careful research of recent months in the Archives of Central America in Guatemala City and study of construction materials and style of adornment show that the whole patio area, including fountain, are from the 18th century, not the 17th, when Sister Juana lived there. Indications are that the cloister seen today was built between the earthquakes of 1717 and 1773. “There is probably a fountain under this one that was here at that time,” Reyes continues. The excavation team believes there are as many as six layers of construction in the convent, each built on top of rubble of destruction of the previous.

A quick word of reassurance to lovers of the legend of the illustrious Sister Juana: the tiled hot water bathtub further back in the private cloister-within-a-cloister is indeed verified to be hers, its red richness now recovered through painstaking treatments of nopal. The system for heating the water and channeling it to run into the tub is clearly evident.

Sister Juana became Mother Superior and after her death was buried under the altar of the convent church. Her luxurious private quarters, provided by her wealthy and doting dad, were left to a trusted nun, who eventually sold them to another family of another young nun. According to the archives the quarters were two-storied, but nothing remains of the second floor.

Just weeks before writing of this article, a similar, hand-painted tile bathtub was discovered several meters from that of Sister Juana. In the same area are a washstand with two hand sinks, including original stone stoppers, another fountain, another pila and what seems to be an herb garden box. Studies and digs continue for more information. Records show that the convent was so populous by 1633 that the nuns urgently petitioned for and were granted more space, pushing the walls out, absorbing and rerouting the street of that time.

The Convent of La Concepción closed, like most of Santiago, after the earthquake of 1773, when the seat of the Spanish government moved to what is now Guatemala City. But its own end actually came before that, its numbers diminishing like other religious institutions, suffering from effects of declining religious dedication. It had become but a “testimonial to past glory,” wrote Magda de Aragón in the Guión Museológico para el Museo de la Semana Santa.

“We are trying to discover the rest of the story, with three or four centuries of energy here,” Reyes explains. He knows this team may not be the one to uncover everything. “We keep a data bank of information for later workers. We change nothing but only consolidate the broken parts. And in the end, it should look as if we were never here.”

For more La Concepción history, see the October 2007 Revue at www.revuemag.com.
The author thanks Elizabeth Bell for her assistance.

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Large San Jerónimo plaza; kitchen chimney peeks over back wall (photo by Jack Houston)

For the real story, follow that wall west along 1a calle. It’s a dusty, noisy bus route, and there’s no sidewalk. Just past the stylistic entrance, whose base rests about three feet underground, hangs a plaque identifying the chapel of the Jesús Nazareno de San Jerónimo, now known as the Jesús Nazareno de La Merced de La Antigua.

The first church home of the image, facing west out of town, can be seen from outside a barbed wire fence around the back of the ruins site. Garbage collects alongside the church nave, where caretakers also build fires and hang laundry. “Undoubtedly, San Jerónimo [church] is one of the most sober and simple, if not the most, remaining in La Antigua Guatemala,” say University of San Carlos researchers. According to La Antigua expert David Jickling, “Two small sculptures still intact in the façade are among the first built into the niches in Santiago.” Short and plain, the façade contrasts with the enormous La Recolección complex a long block west and the elegant La Merced two blocks east.

What happened here? For answers let’s see what was going on some four centuries ago in the early days of Santiago de los Caballeros, now La Antigua Guatemala.

Although three religious orders, the Dominicans, Franciscans and Mercedarians, had issued statements abolishing slavery, the Spanish wanted to avoid mixing of the races; but mix they did, resulting in complicated caste definition. “The Spanish never constructed a physical wall that separated the Spanish center from the indigenous periphery but created spacial and ideological limits,” according to the Propuesta al Valorización de la Ermita de San Jerónimo y su Plaza (University of San Carlos, 2001). Early plans for the town of Santiago even included boulevards to mark the borders of the ‘ins’ and the ‘outs’. These were never completed, but the tree-lined Alameda Santa Lucía marked the western border.

Ten neighborhoods (barrios) developed in the extramuros, i.e., outside the invisible walls, the barrios at the western edge of the city becoming the worst slums, according to historian Fuentes y Guzmán (Historia General de Guatemala). The fermented fruit drink chicha, made mostly in the poor barrios, was “…a very important clandestine industry for the urban economy.” The San Jerónimo barrio of craftsmen, shoemakers and tailors, at the northwest corner of Alameda Santa Lucia, was fraught with drunkenness and violence.

San Jerónimo was under Mercedarian care. It was off the nave of the humble church of that troublesome neighborhood that, in 1684, a chapel home was built for the image Jesús Nazareno de San Jerónimo, sculpted by Alonzo de la Paz in 1675.

In 1726, the Franciscans and the Dominicans already having schools, it seemed appropriate that the Mercedarians have one too. Funds were available in 1739, and construction began on donated property behind their little San Jerónimo church. It took almost 20 years to build the school; and just about the time it was finished, in 1757 the church passed from the administration of the Mercedarians to the parish of San Sebastián, leaving the Jesús Nazareno alone in the chapel.

At that time there were rivalries between the religious communities and, as if the road wasn’t bumpy enough, the matter of the school, established without a royal license, was brought to the attention of Spanish King Charles III in 1761. Tired of the impetuous, impertinent behavior of subjects in the New World, the Crown assumed its authority and ordered the school not only closed but demolished. It may have been a blessing in disguise for the struggling school of the Mercedarians.

Nonetheless, the property was considered too new and strong to be destroyed, and local authorities managed to continue the matter for a few years. In 1766 it was resolved that the site could serve as the Royal Customs House, incidentally relieving La Merced’s unpaid debt for wine and oil, and also that the worrisome barrio of San Jerónimo might benefit with the presence of military barracks. Modifications to adapt the facility included a stable for 150 horses along the south and east sides. This was all abandoned a few years later, when the earthquake of 1773 forced moving the Spanish seat to now Guatemala City. Then pillage took its toll.

The chapel continued in use until some time after 1804, when the Jesús Nazareno was moved to the church of San Sebastián and then to La Merced in 1883. As a point of clarification, an earlier Jesús Nazareno de La Merced image, sculpted by Mateo de Zúñiga, had led the last of the stragglers from Santiago to the new capital in 1778, where it remains today.
Restoration work at San Jerónimo in 1975 and 1998 by the Council for the Protection of La Antigua saved the all-but-forgotten chapel. Little is left of the scant decoration inside; the outside was even less decorated. As for the fine plaza and fountain, floods as well as use as a garbage dump had raised the level over three feet.
Now at home in a chapel of honor in La Merced, the much-venerated Jesús Nazareno “whose look penetrates to the soul” (Escultura Colonial en Guatemala) is carried in grand procession to the awe of thousands every Good Friday.

The school of San Jerónimo was not the only construction ordered torn down. Similarly, in 1740 the people of barrio El Tortuguero, at the south end of town, collected alms and began construction of a chapel for their image of Saint Joseph (San José), another work of Alonzo de la Paz. Historians say it was probably due to lack of understanding by the simple barrio folk that they went ahead without license from King Philip V. The Town Council had authorized the work; but, instead of approval when inauguration was requested in 1742, “the authorities in Spain took a dim view of the procedure and ordered the hermitage closed and the building torn down.” (Markman) Further, His Majesty fined the town treasurer for not opposing the project.
The work stopped, but, again like San Jerónimo, the building was not torn down. In 1759 the neighbors’ appeal for a place for religious service was granted. Construction restarted; and the building, made bigger and more beautiful after 20 years of delays, was inaugurated in 1762.

But the end came for San José with the earthquake of 1773, despite its preservation by smart, short and wide construction. After serving briefly as a temporary convent for the Carmelite nuns of Santa Teresa, the church, like much of the city, was abandoned when the capital was moved to what is now Guatemala City. The space eventually was used as a tannery until the 1930s, when it was declared a national monument. Its name was changed to San José el Viejo when the parish church of San José was founded within the cathedral in the early 1800s. The ornate façade near the center of La Antigua, on 5a avenida and 8a calle, no longer at the edge of society, is enjoyed by townspeople and tourists alike. The church is often the site of musical events.

One such event was a concert in 2008 by the Bach Ensemble of Leipzig, Germany. Having experienced its own isolation inside East Germany, the group presented a concert together with the Mayan AJ musical group of Chimaltenango to a diverse crowd in the Church of San José el Viejo and expressed hope that “our concert contribute to the annulling of prejudices in society.” It was a positive evening of culture mix on the very site of an ostracized group 250 years ago.

San Jerónimo is open daily 9-5; Q30; foreign students, Q15; locals, Q2.

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Ruins of monastery and church of La Recolección (photo: Jack Houston)

La Recolección is off the beaten track but worth the extra, dusty walk, being among the most impressive ruins in town.

Religious reformers punctuate history as far back as anyone wants to go. Constantine, Luther, even Henry VIII, the Wesley brothers. The past century knew Billy Sunday and Billy Graham. Antonio Margil de Jesús is hardly a household name, but Jesús María García Añoveros said he left an indelible memory in the Kingdom of Guatemala and called him one of the most celebrated missionaries in America. (Historia General de Guatemala, Vol. III) His legacy lies in the grand ruins of La Recolección in La Antigua Guatemala, on the western edge of 1a calle poniente.

La Recolección is off the beaten track but worth the extra, dusty walk, being one of the most impressive ruins in town. Massive hunks of masonry lie high in the church nave, on a heap of centuries-old rubble, unlike the convent ruins of Santa Clara and Las Capuchinas, cleaned up and planted with gardens; or San Francisco, the Cathedral and La Merced, now rebuilt or restored functioning churches. The word for La Recolección is ‘huge’; it rivaled as the largest religious facility in colonial Santiago de los Caballeros, now La Antigua. Fray Antonio Margil was its first director.

He arrived from Spain at the port of Veracruz, Mexico in 1683 with 24 other Franciscan Recollect evangelists. They dispersed throughout the territory of New Spain to preach the Gospel. News of the traveling evangelists spread, and by the time two of them, one Fray Margil, arrived in Santiago in 1685, they were received enthusiastically by important families of the nobility, who expected the “conversion of a multitude of sinners—of whom there was no scarcity in the city,” wrote Pardo, Castellanos and Muñoz in the Guía de Antigua Guatemala.

The humble Recollects established a home base at the Calvario church while they continued their itinerant missions. “The Franciscan Recollects entered non-conquered regions accompanied by a small group of soldiers, not with a mission of attacking the natives, but to avoid to the extent possible any violent reaction. After the missionaries were seated peacefully, the soldiers withdrew; the missionaries organized the people into groups and evangelized them. The groups became parishes and were entrusted to the secular clergy.” (Añoveros)

The Recollects requested royal permission to establish a missionary training school in Santiago, like one already established in Mexico. As it had before and after, the town council opposed adding another religious order to the 16 in the town, given economic and space limitations. According to Añoveros, in 1687 the Crown itself, concerned with the extent of possessions of the religious orders, had “issued the first of a series of decrees expressly prohibiting the acquisition of new real estate by the convents.” Church entities had become the largest bank and finance company and held the most property. They made loans, guaranteed mortgages and invested new donations, increasingly adding wealth—at a time when the monarchy was relatively impoverished.

Impoverished or not, freedom from the Hapburgs and alliance with the French in 1700 brought new strength to the Spanish monarchy, giving the throne unquestioned divine right and responsibility that overruled civil authority. When royal approval came, the town council pitched right in to help the Recollects build a simple, thatched convent and church in a field just outside town. Within months supporters put up funds, and the cornerstone was laid for a new church as well as the school, called Colegio de Cristo Crucificado. In 1702 Fray Margil returned from his evangelist journeys, crisscrossing back and forth through Guatemala from Chiapas to Costa Rica, to oversee the school.

And maybe none too soon. Although the whole territory was considered evangelized by the 18th century, some missionaries concentrated on revival among Christians. Religious life had deteriorated to decadence. Sixty years earlier Thomas Gage wrote, “Great plenty and wealth hath made the inhabitants as proud and vicious as those of Mexico…fearing neither a volcano nor mountain of water on one side; neither a volcano of fire or mouth of hell on the other side, soaring within and threatening to rain upon them Sodom’s ruin and destruction…” Gage may have overdramatized. But some clergy “showed scandalous public behavior,” and the bishop “made a fortune” taking advantage of priests’ weaknesses by blackmailing them. True, he spent great sums on convents. “But these activities were blemished by his excessive greed.” (Añoveros)

In contrast, the Recollects were characterized by their strict practices. Fray Margil was austere and simple, always going barefoot. He left Santiago in 1706, evangelizing in Mexico and the Texas territory until his death in 1726.
Meanwhile in Guatemala, construction of the monastery continued, and the church and school of the Recollects was inaugurated in May 1717, four months before the hard-hitting earthquake. Repairs were carried out, only to be bashed and broken again in 1751. Reconstruction built a bigger and better church, among the largest in Santiago, and comfortable cloisters to accommodate perhaps 100 Franciscan Recollects; the 35 in 1740 needed help to carryout the mission of the monastery. The two simple Recollects in 1685 would have been amazed at the sheer size of it.

The façade with three entrances looked east to the edge of the plaza of the Dominican church on the northeast corner of town, with properties of San Jerónimo, La Merced, Santa Teresa and Las Capuchinas along the way.
Numbers of clergy declined in the second half of the 18th century, the Recollects being the final monastic order to be established in Santiago. The Escuela de Cristo group received Papal confirmation later, in 1704, but had been founded in 1683. A half-century earlier they had occupied the simple, temporary structures vacated by the Franciscans. They never achieved expected support but quietly carried on their work of evangelization, prayer and meditation. Their church on Calle de los Pasos was completely rebuilt in 1730 by master architect Diego de Porres after he finished La Recolección.

The magnificent walls and columns of La Recolección tumbled in the earthquake of 1773, although the much-photographed 60-foot arch that spanned the sanctuary defied nature for another 200 years before it succumbed to the quake of 1976. The Casa of the Recolectos, to the south of the monastery and no longer open to the public, was restored in the 1980s by the Council for the Protection of La Antigua Guatemala and the Organization of American States.

Much of the great ruins of La Recolección remain where they fell, but not all that remained has been left to rest in peace. To nature’s force was added unconscionable pillage. Materials were scavenged and the cloisters used for sports events, fairs and a race track. The sacristy became a soap factory and the dining hall a stable and wagon shed. The original kitchen can still be seen, when the office now occupying it is open. Almost nothing is left of the second floor.

In the early 1900s a swimming pool was dug in the main cloister. The vaulted, columned cloister corridors—gone. Stairways—gone. Domes —gone.

Silent spaces and vestiges of the vaulted, sculpted ceiling of the long dining hall taunt the imagination. Who were these Recollects? Despite the lamentable moral state of the Church, the egoism, vice of drink and cruel treatment of natives, “The Franciscan Recollects offered a more optimistic vision of Guatemalan society,” wrote Añoveros. “Dozens of missionaries went from the school to found missions in Nicaragua and Costa Rica,” and Fray Antonio Margil de Jesús has been credited with thousands of converts.

While the Recollects preached in Latin America, the Salem witch trials were held in Massachusetts in 1692. Older folk hoped the First Great Awakening in the 1730s would effect young folks’ morality as well as stir religious revival in the American colonies. Isaac Newton was buried in Westminster Abbey in 1727.

Open 9-5 daily. Q30; foreign students, Q15; locals, Q2.

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