Above is one of a half dozen side chapels in the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Atotonilco which includes nearby San Miguel de Allende. While most tourists luxuriate in the colorful town, this whole area is historic, beautiful and fascinating!
By all means, visit Ignacio Allende’s house next to the church founded by San Juan de Miguel, who founded the town. You will learn how Allende, the hero of Mexican Independence, lost his eldest son in battle defending his father and see how the Creole elite lived when the Spanish King decided to take the lion’s share of the treasure in silver from the mountains. The mixed race locals were furious that some overseas French-backed King was against the Jesuits educating them, and they rebelled.
Was Allende the mastermind or the Priest Hidalgo, who cried for independence? The smart money is on Allende, but the poor must have listened to Hidalgo. Either way, they were captured and executed, both becoming martyrs. And the people rose up and won their independence from Spain. There’s much to explore!
Harriet was born in remote southeastern Maryland, and the joint NPS-Maryland park is within the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge. Her knowledge of survival skills in the marshy fields and forests of the area helped her free 70 slaves directly and many more indirectly through her instructions. Unlike her home site in Auburn NY, there are no structures from her time here, but the visitor center has exhibits telling her story and busting many of the myths about her, such as the ‘secret messages’ in quilts. The brochure further explains that she could not have sung “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”, since it was written by an Oklahoma Cherokee after the Civil War. But she did sing “Go Down Moses” and “Bound for the Promised Land”.
“I had reasoned this out in my mind; there was one of two things I had a right to, liberty or death; if I could not have one, I would have the other, for no man should take me alive.”
Harriet Tubman
The stories of her childhood, her Underground Railroad missions and of the Combahee River raid are all told here, as is the story of her friendship with the Abolitionist Thomas Garrett. While he did not risk his life as Harriet did, he was involved in almost three thousand escapes over four decades, at considerable personal financial cost. His partnership with Harriet must have felt serendipitous to both. She was a natural, simple, pure person of faith, from childhood, but especially since her injury-caused epilepsy. The Quakers held strong convictions of faith, even over the law, and prized simplicity, humility and doing good deeds. Each was exactly what the other needed, a Moses leading her people out of the wilderness into the promised land, and a network of believers willing to contribute time, money and help to end the abomination of slavery. Yet despite their acts, millions remained enslaved.
Charleston is a magnificent old port city, well worth an extensive visit. Beyond the colorful stately homes, historic churches and carriage rides, there’s the fateful battle that ignited the Civil War and much more. When I visited Fort Sumter by park ferry (before renouncing carbon travel), my kids and I stared in awe at the ships and harbor. In May of 1862, Robert Smalls, an enslaved ship’s pilot, secretly commandeered a confederate steamship, the Planter, brought his family and friends aboard under cover of darkness and maneuvered the ship out of Charleston, past forts and ships to deliver it to the Union. Fort Wagner of Glory fame (see Boston & New Bedford) was one of those confederate forts at the mouth of the harbor, before the sea took it.
Why the bench? Beloved author Toni Morrison once explained that she wrote that book in part due to the lack of suitable monuments to capture the enormity of slavery, despite centuries of oppression and discrimination. From the impact on Africa, the millions killed in the transatlantic passage, the millions bred in captivity, the millions worked until death, the millions separated, raped and tortured, to the millions kept in ignorance and darkness for centuries, there has been no full accounting, no complete understanding and precious little effort to try. Since the interview, benches have been place in a few places around the world, including the back corner here, at Fort Moultrie near the dock.
“There is no place you or I can go, to think about or not think about, to summon the presences of, or recollect the absences of slaves . . . There is no suitable memorial, or plaque, or wreath, or wall, or park, or skyscraper lobby. There’s no 300-foot tower, there’s no small bench by the road. There is not even a tree scored, an initial that I can visit or you can visit in Charleston or Savannah or New York or Providence or better still on the banks of the Mississippi.”
Toni Morison, from an interview in 1989
This vast crime against humanity, slavery, was the cause of the Civil War, not the attack on Fort Sumter. And the bench, while far too small a gesture, is a good place to start thinking about it. Another step would be to fund grants and awards to the descendants of enslaved people for producing literature and other great works, to help make up a little of the deficit caused by centuries of enforced silence, forbidden literacy and lives erased.
Zero Carbon Travel 