O Bells of San Blas (part 2)

In the aftermath of the occupation of San Blas, Mercado took possession of all the ships in the docks of San Blas: two Spanish frigates, a brigantine and some supply ships. Unfortunately, all of those ships needed to be refitted and thus, the revolution didn’t have a way to trade out goods.

Meanwhile, Hidalgo had left Guadalajara (but before this, he proclaimed the abolition of slavery in the Americas, which, of course, he could not enforce) and the Spanish started to close the siege on western Mexico. Mercado had already captured the arsenal at San Blas and was on the way out to take on Guadalajara when he heard the news and immediately returned to the port, in preparation for what he anticipated would be a long siege, as Spanish General José de la Cruz was on his way to overcome the rebel troops.

Unknown to Mercado, the parish priest of San Blas, Nicolás Santos Verdín, started plotting a counterrevolutionary coup in San Blas with some of the Royalist merchants. When Mercado came back in the port in the last days of January 1811, he set up his headquarters in the Contaduría (Customs House).

But the bells of San Blas tolled again at eight o’clock on January 31^st, 1811. On Santos Verdín’s order, a rabble stormed the Contaduría building, taking Mercado and his staff by surprise. After a short battle by candlelight, fought with pistols, machetes and even fists, the three aides to Mercado died after causing eight casualties. Mercado, surrounded, decided to flee. Where to?

If you ever visit the Contaduría in San Blas, you’ll have to turn left after crossing one estuary in the delta of San Blas River, filled with mangroves. You will have to climb (or drive) up a short, but winding and steep road. And you’ll find the building against the backdrop of the town and the estuary behind it, but imagine that in the 19^th century, the sea had not receded so much. So for Mercado there was nothing but death to choose: a humiliating mock trial in which he would first go through the shameful defrocking, a process that all the priests captured in the rebellion endured, or suicide. He chose the latter. For the last part of your visit, you will see Mercado’s bust in the place from which he allegedly jumped to death.

Father Santos Verdín ordered Mercado’s body to be flogged and hung by the neck in the public square. The rest of the leaders were captured or killed within the next months. And San Blas returned to its position as the last port in the Spanish Americas, but the flame of freedom had already started all over the continent, and the Nao de China just stopped once or twice during the 11 years of the revolution.

When independence came on September 27^th, 1821, the port of San Blas was still a stronghold and a point of commerce, but the trade from the newly independent Mexico to Asia or even other “sister republics” was virtually none.

And so San Blas, and Mexico, faced the 19^th century with many, many clouds on the horizon.