Tlatelolco (10f)


Source:WTL photo in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas, Mexico, D.F.
Image: Polychrome statue of Santiago (St. James) in the Templo de Santiago.
Comments: Spain's St. James is always depicted on a his famous white horse. He is known as Santiago Matamoros (hence, the name of a large city in northern Mexico) because, according to legend and pious belief, he miraculously appeared from heaven mounted on his white horse and led northern Spanish Christian Visigoths in a victorious battle against Muslims of Al-Andalus in southern Spain in 1844. Matamoros means "Moor killer". In the mind of Spanish conquistadors in the 16th century Santiago aided their conquest of the Aztecs just as their patron saint did seven centuries earlier. (St. James' remains had been discovered in 813 in a field near present-day Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain.)
For another humanities piece representing Santiago later in the Latin American colonial period, see: => La Compañía, #3.