17 - Omens

Summary

The combination of violent crimes, gruesome and prolonged execution spectacles, and natural disasters created an atmosphere of tension and fear in late 1780s Mexico City. Scientists of the era identified the flaming clouds that Gómez described above as an aurora borealis. But most people in this era would not have read these scientific interpretations. Instead, shocking natural phenomena prompted a turn to their faith in the supernatural for explanations and remedies. This reaction drew from both European and Indigenous connections between the divine and the physical world. Gómez himself communicated a sense of the ineffable links between human acts and natural phenomena (perhaps caused by unseen supernatural entities) in the first quote by juxtaposing an earthquake with the execution of five men. The skepticism of the European Enlightenment did not diminish the Novohispanic belief in miracles.