NEW SOLIDARITY

July 21, 1980

Page 4

MIGUEL HIDALGO
The Fight to Destroy Aristotle And Establish the Mexican Republic by Carlos Mendez

Fr. Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla (above left), leader of the Mexican Revolution of 1811, and his philosophical opponent, Aristotle.

There is a vicious lie that circulates through the ruling elite of Mexico, including the circles of President Jose Lopez Portillo, and that cripples its ability to defend the republic. This is the lie that the priest Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, the organizer of the first Mexican Revolution in 1811, and his associates were part of the Enlightenment and Jacobin movements created by the Society of Jesus. In truth, Mexico is the only other nation in human history, besides the United States of America, to be founded on the explicitly republican principles carried forward by the Neoplatonic elite since Plato himself. Mexico's founders, like Benjamin Franklin and George Washington in the United States, rejected the Enlightenment ideas of Rousseau, Voltaire, and

Montesquieu, in order to establish a republic based on the moral principle of the supremacy of reason. Mexico's Father of the Fatherland, however, waged this fight with a philosophical aggressivity which the American founding fathers never practiced. Hidalgo openly denounced the "poison" of Aristotle as the root evil behind the heretical anti-industrial and feudalist policies being pushed by the Jesuits and Jacobins. It was his organizing on this basis which eventually led him to demand the independence of Mexiconot for independence's sake, but due to the necessity of preventing the genocide which Aristotle's ideasimplemented by the Jacobins and Hapsburg monarchiststhreatened to unleash in "New Spain." To know the real Hidalgo is not only a strategic necessity for Mexicans, who are now under deadly assault by the Club of Rome, the Brandt Commission, the United Nations, the Society of Jesus, and the Malthusians running the United States government. It is equally critical for Americans who must find in Mexico, as well as in Europe, the republican ideal and allies to capture and rebuild the United States as a Neoplatonic republic once more. Aristotle's Poison Hidalgo's understanding that the key enemy of truth and progress is Aristotle appears in his Disertacin sobre el verdadero mtodo de estudiar teologa escolstica (Dissertation on the Correct Method of Studying Scholastic Theology). Written for a public contest in 1784, when Hidalgo was 31 years old, this essay directly challenged the hegemony which Aristotelians, through the Jesuits, had exercised in New Spain over nearly two centuries. Aristotle had been adopted by the Jesuits for the same reason that the Persian oligarchy had chosen him as their key weapon against Platonism. Plato had defined the purpose of government, and in fact human existence, to be the rule of reason, or The Good; the essence of a republic based on natural law therefore consisted of fostering progress, of educating the entire population to the ability to act according to Reason, the fundamental organizing principle of the universe. While citing Plato's goals as the same as his, Aristotle's entire work was devoted to destroying the idea that Reason was either knowable or attainable, and keeping the bulk of the population under the thumb of the feudal oligarchy. In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle argues that government should be premised on a pact between educated and intelligent men, and the ignorant

ones; the people who should rule, he says, are those who know how to "live well." The bulk of the population is to be left in their "natural" state as animals ruled by passion, and manipulated by those in power. Aristotle says this is just the way things are; in fact, every aspect of his work is devoted to obscuring the authentic ideas of causality, virtue, and government put forward in Plato's Dialogues by the introduction of logic, ethics, and other areas of so-called "practical knowledge" separated from the pursuit of truth. Aristotle's view contains the seeds from which sprouted both the "right" and "left"the former in favor of brutal suppression of the ignorant masses, and the latter in favor of anarchic rule by the ignorant majority. Thus Aristotle prefigures Hobbes and Rousseauwhose aim is to suppress scientific progress for the oligarchy. So when the black nobility took over the Papacy in the 13th century, they naturally resurrected Aristotle as their key philosopher. The system of socalled knowledge they developed according to Aristotelian logic was called Scholasticism, the subject of Hidalgo's dissertation. Hidalgo begins with an aggressive irony: "It's a perverse obsession to feed yourself acorns after fruit has been discovered." The basis for eliminating the acorns (Aristotelianism) is available, Hidalgo is sayingreferencing the concerted assault against the Aristotelians which had begun in the universities and countryside of Mexico by the emissaries of Spain's Charles III. "The most capable theologians of our times have conspired to restore this Queen of Sciences to her former throne; and, in fact, in the world's most celebrated universities the true theology is already soundly in place. Those scholastic artifices which were only good for perverting good taste and wasting time are already forgotten." Hidalgo, who had attended New Spain's leading university, the Colegio de San Nicolas, and taught First Theology there, then cites the great Portuguese Augustinian and anti-Jesuit, the Abbot Luis Antonio Verney (El Barbadino), and zeroes in on Aristotle: The words "Scholastic Theology" have two meanings: one is in terms of a method based on arguments and responses. [The other meaning.] . . . is that based on the substantial and accidental forms of Aristotle, which are not only condemned by the cited authors and many others, but the very Councils and the Popes tried to exterminate it and leave it buried in its cradle.

As soon as this abuse (Aristotelian scholasticism) was introduced into the University of Paris, its pernicious effects came out. Before this fake theology was in France for 60 years, the Academy itself was obliged to condemn it in 1204 as the source of the errors of Almarico [Almaric of Bene]. Pope Innocent III confirmed the sentence in 1207 and forced Almarico to retract publicly. But rather than serving to put the brake on the seditious disciples of Almarico, this condemnation seems to have been an incentive for acting foolishly with greater liberty. So many errors came forth during the next three years that the Bishop of Paris had to call a Council in 1209 to extinguish entirely this plague. . . The Council was not content merely to free the Church from the present danger, but is also sought to protect it from future ones; and thus, they not only burned the books of David Dinando, one of Almarico's main disciples, but also those of Aristotle himself from which Almarico had imbibed all the poison, and banned them on pain of excommunication so that no one in the future would dare to read them, copy them or possess them. . . This same sentence was approved by Gregory IX in the Bull which he delivered to the Academy of Paris in 1228. . .

Above, the entrance to the capital city of the Mexican state of Guanajuato, as seen in an 1827 lithograph. Hidalgo was active in the cities of Dolores and Valladolid, Guanajuato.

Hidalgo cannot reference later direct attacks on Aristotle by the Church oligarchy, because it was shortly after 1228 that the scholastic, and later saint, Thomas Aquinas, rehabilitated Aristotle. To attack Aquinas openly would be to expose yourself immediately to the reprisals of the Inquisition, which was ever-watchful in New Spain as well as Europe. Hidalgo, however, did not compromise himself on the question of Aristotleas, for example, Hamilton would do on the question of empiricist Locke, or Franklin on the Aristotelian Newton. Our Angelic Teacher [Aquinas] flourished during times in which the corruption of the theologians reached the extreme of giving greater credit to a gentile philosopher than to the sacred oracles. The consiliar prohibitions, papal censures, and Royal punishments couldn't have separated them from such delirium. Thus, what more useful and opportune means could the Saint find but to take their very arms and throwing against them doctrine which they accepted in order to direct them to the truths they should embrace? This is the truest motive which can be found for why Saint Thomas would have utilized Aristotelian doctrine; since, persuading oneself that he did it out of love for that Philosopher, is not only improbable, but injurious to the Holy Doctor. Hidalgo's dissertation proceeds to destroy the Aristotelian theology text of French Dominican Jean-Baptiste Gonet, then used in the Colegio de San Nicolas. The text was thrown out of the university one year afterwards. This housecleaning of the Aristotelian disciplesthe so-called "enlightened" or left Jesuitswas absolutely indispensable to carrying out the organizing that led to the establishment of the Mexican republic. Jesuits vs. Progress From their arrival in New Spain in mid-1572, the Jesuitswith the support of Philip IImonopolized the educational system, and from there moved to take over the minds as well as financial control over the colonial population. During the first period of colonization (1523-72) the Franciscan Order had founded the Colegio de San Nicolas Obispo and the Colegio de Tlatelolco, built cities, moved to abolish slavery, and began to educate the young sons of the Indian nobility in Plato, Vives, and Erasmus in preparation for selfgovernment. Vasco de Quiroga, one of the great citybuilders of this period,

was an explicit disciple of Erasmus and Thomas More in his theory and work of uplifting the population. The Jesuits, deployed as Hapsburg agents, moved to wipe out this Neoplatonic influence. Inspired by the model of the Roman Empire, they created a syncretism between paganized Christianity and the bestial prehispanic myths and practices. They systematically promoted the Guadalupe cult, for example, a true Isis cult which the Franciscan Father Sahagun had fought with all his might. They refused education to the Indians, and on their latifundia, controlled their peons and slaves with sophisticated brainwashing techniques that would keep them split up, docile, and convinced that pride in knowledge is the greatest of sins. The greatest Neoplatonic intellectuals of this period, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz and her close friend, Carlos de Siguena y Gongora, were silenced by the Society of Jesus and Dominican Inquisitors. This Jesuit social order directly reflects the feudal system that Aristotelianism promotes and justifies, the bulk of the population are left to the "practical" life of scratching out a living, shut off from the possibility of education, technological development, and political participation. Religion and philosophy for the ordinary member of society is not considered a means of reaching truth, but of fulfilling primitive physical and emotional needs in fact, of keeping the individual on an infantile, ignorant level. Cults are encouraged as a way for people to reach "individual truth," while the feudal oligarchs strive to ensure that they have total control over all real scientific knowledge, so it can never be used to upset their absolute power. The Jesuits controlled most of the land, and hence credit. They based their economic system on slavery and the payment of tribute by the Indians steadfastly opposing the development of technology and industry. Through their controls, and speculative practices, the Jesuits were in large part responsible for the death by famine and epidemics of hundreds of thousands of Indians. Once the Jesuits' sponsors, the Hapsburgs, had been defeated in Spain by the progressive Bourbons in 1715, the Jesuits rushed to organize a Jacobin-style rebellion among the Indian masses, as they had done in Paraguay. This conspiracy prompted the monarchy to send Jose de Galvez to New Spain as a royal inspector. Galvez coordinated the expulsion of the Jesuits from New Spain in 1767.

Meanwhile Galvez's collaborators in Spain launched the necessary intellectual assault against the Jesuit hero Aristotle, and began to mobilize the population of Spain toward the Platonic aims of popular education, science, and industrialization. The movement, centered around Charles III, was called Las Luces, or "the lights." In 1763 the first of the Societies of Friends of the Country was established as a vehicle for organizing the population to these ends. Charles III and his ministers immediately spread this movement to the colonies as well. The so-called nationalist movement which the Jesuits founded in order to counter the Spanish reformers was a preview of the French Jacobin movementthe mobilization of a mob in defense of its backwardness. They launched a "restorationist" movement that called for studying Aristotle in the original, but attacked every symbol of culture. Their call for "independence" was based on exalting Mexico's indigenous past in opposition to western culture, and on a desire for separation from the Platonic values of education and city-building of Charles III. While previously they had been the strongest supporters of the monarchy, they now wanted to be free of a monarchy controlled by Las Luces, who conceived of their nation-state as part of a universal world order-without which, as Schiller says, man cannot conceive of himself as a universal being. The argument of "enlightened Jesuit" Francisco Javier Alegre, epitomizes the reasoning: "The source of authority is (1) not in intellectual superiority; (2) much less is it physical or physiological superiority; but (3) is founded in the social nature of man, but its next source is the consent of the community. All reigns, therefore,, of any form, have their origin in this convention or pact among men." The Aristotelian-Rousseauvian content of this thesis is clear. If Alegre does not cite Rousseau by name, it is only because at that time Rousseau was considered a heretic by the Church. Las Luces and Hidalgo In 1764 Francisco Fabian y Fuero, a member of the Economic Society of Valencia and part of the Las Luces movement around Charles III, was elected Bishop of Puebla, Mexico. Puebla, after Mexico City the most important Jesuit bastion and diocese in New Spain, was a key target for the monarchy's plans to extend economic and educational reforms. Fabian y Fuero brought with him as his personal theologian, Jose Perez Calama, the man who became the sponsor of Hidalgo.

Perez Calama and Fabian y Fuera were part of a wave of emigrants to New Spain who also included Jose Antonio de Alzate. Alzate was a scientist and publicist of science, follower of Ben-Franklin (he built the first lightening rod in Spain), and a member of the Academy of Sciences of Paris. He worked closely with Hidalgo and with Perez Calama. Fabian y Fuero and Perez Calama launched educational reforms immediately, and established academies throughout the country. Where possible, the Jesuits organized the villagers against them. Eventually the two were expelled from Puebla, but Perez Calama understood how the movement would spread. As he said years later: Just as a small spark can set afire an entire forest, so also an economic, a literary project, although in its beginnings very tenuous for one or another reason, can with time come to be the joy of a province or an entire kingdom. Perez Calama's organizing took hold most strongly when he was deacon of the Cathedral in Valladolid. In November of 1783 he convoked a council of all the theologians of the diocese in order to launch a battle against ignorance and openly challenge the Aristotelians in public debate. In an edict issued from that gathering, Perez Calama recommended the works of the leading anti-Jesuits and anti-Aristotelians, Feijoo, Piquer, and Barbadino. It was during this council that Hidalgo won the prize for his dissertation against Aristotle, for which he received the imprimatur of Perez Calama: Although tied up with business, I have stolen a little time to read your Dissertations in Latin and Spanish which you have written on the correct method of studying theology. Both works convince me that you are a youth in whom Genius and Work are honorable competitors. From now on I will always call you the antiworker of Minerva, without leaving out the other name: an industrious bee who knows how to choose and to drink the most delicate honey from the flowers. With the greatest joy of my heart, I hope to see you become the flame of the candle, or a city placed on a mountaintop. . . In imitation of the ants who are narrow in womb and waist, I am fully prepared to restrict all expenses and even to eat little if only this would lead you and other ingenious youths to become consummate theologians, without any of the thorny and tangled

theology which you, for whom I wish all happiness, refuted with such solid premises. Immediately Hidalgo came under attack for being a Jansenist by the Jesuits. But with the support of Perez Calama. Hidalgo was able to continue introducing educational reforms into the College of St. Nicholas, where he became first professor, then treasurer, vice-president and finally president up until the time he was expelled from Valladolid in 1792. Hidalgo's educational work was the continuation of the revolutionary process that had begun by Perez Calama when he arrived in Valladolid in 1776. The institutional success of Perez Calma reached a high point during 1784-5, when he temporarily served as bishop while waiting for the new appointee to arrive. He proposed the creation of an Academy of Political-Christian Literature, arguing that he made this proposal "to excite this government to the fullest, universally supported by all the wise men in that the happiness of the Church and of the State depends on the good education of its youth." He also proposed the creation of an Economic Society of Friends of the Country, which became the first such society to be established in all of New Spain and the second in America. Perez Calama's action drew a loud cry of opposition from the leading ecclesiast of the state because the program of popular education and industry threatened their Jesuit hold on the population. When the new Bishop arrived in Valladolid, he gave his full support to Perez Calama's initiatives. He especially endorsed the Political Charity Theology, an economic program by which the Church offered long-term, low-interest loans to all those who wanted to cultivate corn beyond the rainy season. This cultivation required new irrigation systems and techniques which had been publicized by Perez Calama through the publications of the Economic Societies of Spain. This economic program was responsible for the fact that the Valladolid population alone was able to avoid totally devastating effects from the corn shortage of 1785-6, one of the most deadly shortages of the colonial era. When Perez Calama was named Bishop of Quito, Ecuador in 1789, the Jesuits took the occasion to escalate their campaign against Hidalgo. By mobilizing the grain speculators and the anti-industry, anti-education layers

of the population full force, they succeeded in getting Hidalgo expelled from Valladolid in 1792. Hidalgo, City Builder Once he was established as a priest in Dolores, Guanajuato, Hidalgo immediately set to work to replicate the progress he and Perez Calama had made in Valladolid. His work in communicating and explaining all the scientific news and latest industrial techniques helped bring all the industries of the area to advanced stages of development: ceramics, blacksmithing, agriculture, cultivation of silkworms and grapes, leather curing. He created "discussion groups" where people talked of literature, science and politics; a lover of music he organized a musical band; he translated the works of the great dramatist and anti-Jesuit Molire, and had them performed. Hidalgo constantly traveled through the entire region, visiting the most educated people and their libraries. Upon his return to Dolores, he would communicate all he had learned to the population. His home was dubbed "little France." Like Benjamin Franklin before him, Hidalgo was only forced to take up arms for independence once his efforts at building a humanist scientific culture began to be unrelentingly opposed in the center of the Empire. After the death of Charles III in 1788, the Spanish throne was taken over by the imbecile Charles IV, and Charles Ill's principal collaborators were either jailed or displaced. In France the antiscience mob deployed by the British and still criminally acclaimed today as the Jacobins had taken over. They launched a total destabilization of industry, and witchhunt against science and education. In 1808 when Napoleon invaded Spain, there were no more Las Luces. Hidalgo was left to organize a movement for national independence with whatever support he could find in America. His aim then, as before, was not a Rousseauvian government based on a social contract, but a government of reason that would "dictate soft-benevolent law and govern "with the gentleness of fathers." Those who do not understand that, do not have the capability of understanding the revolution Hidalgo started and Benito Juarez took up, or the defense of the republic today.