The day of the inauguration of the telescope finally arrived, February 17, 1942. Soldiers stood on either side of the road from Tonantzintla to the observatory, holding the national flag to render honors to President Avila Camacho and his guards. Next to Puebla governor Gonzalo Bautista and a tense and pale Luis Enrique Erro, the president walked over the last stretch of the now paved road that would take him to the telescope. The guests followed between the impassive soldiers. More than ten thousand people from Puebla and Mexico City waited. Domingo Taboada, the contractor and amateur astronomer, had given part of the land for the observatory. This was a personal triumph for him. Thirty scientists from the United States and Canada accompanied Harlow Shapley, godfather of the new observatory. Bart Jan Bok, his second-in-command, who was in charge of the Schmidt camera at Harvard, was among them. Journalists and photographers ran in front of the committee, competing for the best snapshots.
The North Americans had great hopes. They climbed Tonantzintla’s steep hill under the beating sun and felt the warm embrace of Mexico, and they were grateful, in light of the war. Shapley read a message from Henry Wallace, the vice president of the United States, who one year earlier had attended Avila’s swearing in. Wallace confirmed that Roosevelt wished the conference to take place in spite of everything that was happening in the world.
Governor Bautista’s speech had a profound impact on the listeners. He said that Mexico would defend education and scientific research alongside the United States, and that this meeting would seal the pact between two neighbors who were more than friends. Allied in science and technology, they would fight for progress, health, and social equality.
Luis Enrique Erro vowed that the whirlwind of the war, of a sick world, would not hinder advancement; on the contrary, scientific progress would be the future of humanity, free of all wars. Eloquent, Erro gave his best speech.
At that moment Lorenzo—standing in the back next to Eduardo Miranda—saw their friends Tecuatl, Toxqui, and Tepancuatl, dressed in their sandals and cotton pants, coming up the road, followed by more than seventy peasants. One woman from the city took off her bracelet and put it in her purse. The women advanced, united, alongside one another, their straw hats on their heads, and skinny dogs bringing up the rear. Once up the hill, they came closer. “It is also our telescope.”
Lorenzo smiled. He understood their pride. It was the same as his. When the two large doors of the cupola slid smoothly open, the farmers, hats in hand, kept an expectant silence. George Z. Dimitroff, standing next to the team of mechanics, asked Avila Camacho to press the buttons on the command console. Upon seeing the telescope elevate, an “Aaah!” ran through the crowd. Luis Enrique Erro’s features relaxed, his hands too. Dimitroff gave an explanation of the functions of the Schmidt camera, and many barefoot children raised their curious little faces toward the apparatus.
Shapley smiled. “Maybe the astronomers of the future are among them,” he said.
The town band followed with the joyous and deep sound of the bass drum while rockets exploded deafeningly in front of the church below. There would be fireworks that night. The celebration banquet took the visitors by surprise. On red and yellow tablecloths, under crepe paper streamers, were glass containers of fresh fruit water in strident colors: Jamaica flower, tamarind, orgeat, lime, alfalfa—fruit shakes crowned with pineapple and watermelon. Harlow Shapley sat in the place of honor next to the expert on nebulae, Dr. Donald Howard Menzel, who exclaimed with a smile, “I never dreamed I’d eat chicken with chocolate sauce.”
Chandrasekhar bit into one chile after another. “In India they eat very spicy food,” explained Blas Cabrera, who looked ill and ate very little. The presence of the refugee scientists from the Spanish
Civil War piqued the curiosity of the North Americans. They sat next to Pedro Carrasco and Vicente Carbonell, and Marcelo Santaló, who was preparing a guide for observing the Mexican sky and at that moment was describing his trip on the transatlantic steamer Sinaia that had brought him to Mexico. They talked a lot about Pan-Americanism and the union of Latin America with the United States. Alba Andrade initiated a long conversation with George Birkhoff. Head straight, eyes self-confident, Luis Enrique Erro attended to everyone. This was a very big day for him. He showed Otto Struve how to drink tequila with lime and salt. Erro’s inventiveness caused Shapley to remark, “What a complete man. He knows science, politics, history, and even Mexican cuisine.” At that moment he was expounding on the glorious epazote herb, which gives the beans their unique flavor. The two González sisters, Graciela and Guillermina, who would work as secretaries at the new observatory, touted the beauty of Puebla to Walter Sydney Adams, who came from Mount Wilson: “You can’t miss the Casa del Alfenique. It’s as special as a kiss.”
“A kiss?”
“Yes, yes, a kiss.”
Braulio Iriarte made them all, including Cecilia and Sergei Gaposchkin and the Canadian J. A. Pearce, laugh out loud.
Well into the afternoon, they descended to the Santa Maria Tonantzintla church, oohing and aahing with admiration. Was it the effect of the tequila or a hallucination? A waterfall of little angels and cherubs, with yellow pineapples and red pomegranates, stretched out their arms impetuously. Unsuspected paths and inviting curves opened inside the round and powerful columns; the supports were interwoven like palms; the stucco rose like half-baked bread. “This sanctuary makes me delirious!” exclaimed Iriarte. “It’s baroque art, but created by Indian hands.”
“From which century?” asked Shapley, his gaze fixed on the innocent saints and the rain of large golden flowers.
“The sixteenth.”
“Why did the Spanish entrust the decoration of their churches to the Indians?”
“Because the Indians instantly reproduced any design. That
was when the Spaniards realized that these were extraordinary artisans.”
“The polychrome of the angels is the same as the colors in the tablecloths and the bandolier on the tables up there,” Bok commented. “What a wonderful sense of color.” The scientists wanted to know about indigenous art. Were there other similar chapels? Of course. The Rosario was right there. Mexico was ultra-baroque because it was afraid of emptiness, and that was the reason for the excess. Nothing could be left blank.
“Why do the angels have yellow hair?” asked Cecilia Payne.
Iriarte answered that he himself was blond and Mexican, and he had the face of an angel.
Cecilia replied that she shared Paris Pishmish’s preference for the dark-skinned ones.
Iriarte ventured the hypothesis that perhaps the profusion of children and sculpted flowers was an homage to girls and boys who in the month of May dressed in white and offered flowers to the Virgin Tonantzín, their little mother, the indigenous goddess.
“Hey Braulio”—Lorenzo passed by him—“you’ve spouted off enough. Erro is waiting outside. He’s furious.”
Lorenzo’s admonition had the opposite effect and gave Braulio wings; he became lyrical. “Did you notice the orchestra of cherubs?” And he went on to describe each one of the instruments. “Isn’t it marvelous? And you won’t believe Cholula when you see it. It’s a great ceremonial center from after the fall of the Teotihuacan Empire! On Thursday I’ll have the honor of being your guide.”
Braulio informed them that the observatory was constructed on top of what must surely have been a ceremonial center. The peasants went up one or two times a week to sell artifacts made before the conquest, crying, “Buy it from me, please!” The artifacts were authentic, and during their walks Lorenzo and he had found obsidian arrows, ceramic fragments, vessels, even a mask with the features of Tláloc, the rain god.
As they left the church, an explosion of fireworks made them raise their heads. Bok stopped in front of a woman who was taking ears of corn out of a steaming vat. He asked for one and bit into it.
Delicious! Many followed his lead. “This is the best party I’ve been to in my life!”
It was time to begin the Inter-American Science Conference at the University of Puebla, and the translators had not arrived. The grandiose project was falling apart. Ay, Mexico, what a traitor you are!
Erro approached Graef. “You’re the only one who can save me.” With his customary good nature, Graef accepted. “I believe that the most appropriate course, in order not to interrupt the presenter’s train of thought, is to translate when he is finished.” Graef waited for Dr. Otto Struve to complete his presentation and then gave a clear synthesis of his ideas. Next came Fred Whipple. Graef listened attentively and made a precise outline of his paper and even interjected clever comments. The same with Joel Stebbins, the pioneer in photoelectric photometry, and Robert Reynolds McMath, the solar astronomer who proved the existence of light curves for different solar eruptions.
Increasingly impressed by Graef, George Birkhoff invited him to teach relativity and gravitation at Harvard. At the same time, Birkhoff accepted an invitation from the University of Puebla. He would come to work in Mexico. In exchange for his teaching, Graef had promised him a group of good students: Javier Barros Sierra, Roberto Vazquez, and Francisco Zubieta, who was attempting to explore a new path in differential geometry. With Alberto Barajas, an unsurpassed teacher, they could work on the gravitation theory, since both Barajas and Graef had solved the difficult problem of two bodies in the theory of gravitation.
Erro meanwhile congratulated himself for having integrated Paris Pishmish into the Tonantzintla team. The students felt comfortable with her. She generously introduced them to the important guests who came to visit.
“Is he approachable? Can we introduce ourselves to him?”
Paris guided them, smiling. Fred Whipple, the North American, proposed a process he had discovered for the formation of stars through the condensation of clouds of interstellar dust. Joel Stebbins
spoke about photoelectric measurement, through its color index, of the interstellar material that formed clouds. Walter Sydney Adams (Juan de Tena asked if he was a relative of the discoverer of Neptune) expounded on the topic of interstellar material, which he believed took the form of a cloud because of the multiplicity of interstellar lines in its spectrum.
The degree of complexity of the papers by the Mexicans and the Spanish refugees surprised the North Americans. The presentation on magnetism by the physicist Blas Cabrera especially impressed the younger ones. And when he left Spain, Pedro Carrasco, a professor of mathematics and physics, had decided, “I can find a country in Mexico; I will only find work in the United States.” Many of his students said that it was a delight to hear him speak. They had requested “theory classes” in order to keep listening to him lecture.
The conference continued during meals and during the visits to the Palafoxiana library and the Puebla cathedral. While Braulio pointed out the painting of the great cypress with the four doctors of the church—Saint Augustine, Saint Jerome, Saint Gregory, and Saint Ambrose—the scientists returned to their favorite subject: astrophysics. Nothing satisfied Lorenzo more than these discussions, which were a continuation of those in his youth with Dr. Beristain; the ones with José Revueltas about Combate; and the ones with the guys as they set up the telescope. From the words came the experiments. The beautiful camaraderie of research and the interchange of ideas struck him like the electrons of an atom.
At the end of the sessions, Juan offered to take them for a ride, and Cecilia was fascinated by the landscape along the way to Atlixco. “I feel like I’ve entered a painting from the fourteen hundreds. All that’s missing is for them to speak Italian.”
Braulio laughed. “If we go to Chipilo, you’ll hear Italian. There’s an Italian neighborhood there where people make butter, cheese, and salami.”
“This country seems so much like mine that I feel at home here,” said Chandrasekhar, whom his colleagues had nicknamed Chandra.
In the colonial building that housed the hospital for the poor of San Juan de Dios in Atlixco, a little boy showed them an oil painting
that was in a terrible state. They could barely distinguish the characters he described in the archaic language of Lope de Vega. “Look at these indecent and lascivious beauties. See San Juan de Dios here, on the verge of recovering some prostitutes from the voracious inferno.”
“Boy, you’re really taking us back to the fifteenth century,” commented Erro, amused. “All that’s missing is for the Celestina to appear.
“You’re amazing. What’s your name?” Cecilia Payne asked the child.
“Héctor Azar. Atlixco is my land, and I’m going to remove the dust from all these paintings.”
Braulio Iriarte recalled how, years earlier, Aldous Huxley had exclaimed about Tonantzintla, “This is the most sensual temple of Catholicism!” Cecilia agreed.
Mexico, what a contradictory country! The visitors went from one surprise to another. Puebla de los Angeles was comparable to any city in Spain. Throughout Mexico they discovered the culture of a country that was treated with disdain. They felt ashamed.
“What have we been thinking?”
“Where were we two hundred years before Christ?”
Iriarte explained that the Great Pyramid in Teotihuacán was much taller and covered a larger area than the Pyramid of the Sun, which was four hundred meters on each side and sixty-five meters tall. “Archaeologists have dug tunnels and discovered tombs, murals, friezes, and carved stones.”
Birkhoff climbed the sixty-five meters of the pyramid. From the top he looked out over the plaza and its impressive construction, proof of a superior culture that the conquistadores had slashed to shreds. Who were the barbarians—the Spanish or the Aztecs?
Mexico, with its fields where the water evaporated because no one knew how to retain it, its cornfields that were consumed by the sun, its dried-up fruit, was getting into the veins of these visitors. They walked in the dark humidity through the longest tunnel inside the pyramid, thinking that they might be asphyxiated. Emerging into the sun, they were confronted by children with bellies big
from malnutrition, and by vendors with idols, willing to hand over their treasure for a few cents.
Sergei Gaposchkin squeezed his wife’s hand as he suddenly bent his head. They were no longer comfortable about being westerners. The weight of Catholicism on an entire race was devastating. Of course, the regal art was a marvel, but it had been built on the damp ruins of another wonder: the indigenous culture. In Cecilia’s head, the Aztec gods and the angels danced macabre dances, and the cascade of gold on the baroque altars overwhelmed her, making her dizzy. “We’ve all been affected,” said Henry Norris Russell. “We never expected anything like this.”
Lorenzo was honored that Shapley would call him—a student—to walk by his side. Lorenzo was also used to meditating as he walked along the road. Erro had the same habit. They walked around the perimeter of the observatory three or four times, deep in thought. Lorenzo’s steps on the earth helped him undertake a systematic analysis of a problem, one foot after the other, in step with his train of thought.
Graef had been a three-hundred-meter-dash champion, the strongest rower at the German Club, and a first-rate diver, but lately he refused to walk. However, on this occasion he joined Shapley, strolling in the splendid landscape, and Lorenzo accompanied them happily.
Donald Menzel summed things up: “There is no doubt that this conference is one of the most important in the history of science. The relevance can be measured by merely looking at the great number of discoveries reported for the first time here in Mexico.”
The conference was to continue at UNAM and to end at Universidad Nicolaita de Morelia, where Harlow Shapley, Manuel Sandoval Vallarta, Henry Norris Russell, and Walter Sydney Adams were to receive honorary doctoral degrees.
The Mexican effort had borne fruit. “We must treat Mexico differently,” the scientists said. They wanted to publish the Mexicans’ work and invite them to be part of the international scientific community. Russell, director of the observatory at Princeton University, extended an invitation to Erro. Adams offered the Mexicans observation time at Mount Wilson. Otto Struve at the Yerkes Observatory
in Chicago did the same. Dr. J. A. Pearce, from the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory in Canada, called the Mexicans colleagues. “With fewer resources and more ingenuity, they have achieved what many in their great laboratories have not.”
With the elation from the unveiling of the Schmidt camera behind them, Erro now realized that he needed people. Little by little the euphoria diminished. The Tonantzintla institution, which had come out of nothing, awoke with empty arms. Its researchers faced a new and unfamiliar challenge. The only ones with any academic background were Graef, Paris Pishmish, Alba, and Felix Recillas, who was about to graduate. Graef, as brilliant as he was in theoretical physics, did not have any training in astronomy; he wanted to work on gravitational phenomena, which, he frequently pointed out, he couldn’t do in Tonantzintla. Besides, they were clamoring for him at UNAM.
Erro, who was previously absorbed by the immediate problems of mounting the telescope, now recognized the weaknesses of the brand-new observatory. Then Shapley approached Erro to invite Lorenzo Tena to come to Harvard. They needed young astronomers, and it would do Tena a world of good to become familiar with other telescopes and to see the North American way of conducting scientific research. Besides, Shapley realized during his days in Mexico that the idea of change was not unappealing to the boy.
“What do you mean you’re going to the United States?” Erro’s voice trembled as he checked his hearing aid with one hand. “Who is going to study the magnitude of stellar colors and the spectra of the austral Milky Way? You belong to the southern sky, the galactic pole, to Carina, to the constellations of the Southern Cross, to the Magellanic Clouds. You’re indispensable to me. On top of everything else, the Schmidt camera has defects, and although these don’t hinder its operation, they cannot be corrected until after the war.”
Lorenzo remembered his first night in front of the telescope and the emotion he felt at seeing the sky. When he went by to say
good-bye to Erro, he decided to say good-bye to the Schmidt as well. His fate was sealed. He would devote himself to the science of the stars. From his planet Earth, he would study the objects in the sky: the sun, the small planets, the comets, meteors and meteorites, and interstellar matter. From the moment he had opened the cupola of the telescope and aimed it at the sky, he had begun advancing toward that still elusive place that made him feel he was beginning to be happy.