How beautiful is love when you live in freedom. But many of the love stories that we have inherited from our grandmothers are written in the key of tragedy. Far from the Disney world where the ‘Happy End’ always prevails, the reality of lovers, and even more so if we go back centuries, is full of long absences, frustration, secret love, hidden passions and many tears.
Those are the ingredients that remind us of the Mexican legend of the Nun of the Cathedral of Durango. But let’s go to the beginning.
The sad Mexican legend of the Nun of the Cathedral of Durango
- Beatriz, as in most myths, was a beautiful young woman with a good education. She lived happily with her family near the religious temple. And like many young women of the time (mid-19th century), she decided to swear her vows and enter a convent. Her parents only wanted to see her happy, and if her daughter’s happiness happened to be married to God, they had nothing to say. This is how her father donated his entire fortune to the monastery, in addition to having previously paid a large dowry for his only daughter.
- However, these were troubled times. While the French troops invaded and took over the Mexican haciendas, the Reform also affected the interests of the clergy, who had to close convents and religious institutions. That was how Beatriz had to return to her house from her. But her home happiness had long since gone out the window. Her mother had died and her father was very ill. And, after his death, our protagonist had to mortgage the last thing she had left: her family home. Her prayers were only oriented towards being able to return to monastic life.
- As the days passed wrapped in tears, Beatriz did not know that the light of joy would soon knock on her door. And it is that every day, the French troops paraded in front of the convent and the house of the young woman. This she, from the window, she gracefully looked at a French soldier. As luck would have it, one afternoon, the young man, named Fernando, knocked on her door asking for help, because the Mexican resistance had ambushed them and in the midst of so much crossfire a bullet had hit him.
- Beatriz not only gave herself up to the cure, she also gave her body and soul to the soldier Fernando. They both fell in love and the war that was being fought behind closed doors seemed to take place at a great distance. But life always gives us one of lime and another of sand.
A love story with no happy ending…
- Napoleon III decided to withdraw his troops from Mexican lands. The young lovers lived then without finding comfort. On the one hand, they planned to live their eternal love locked up in the house, but they both knew that the secret could not be kept forever over time and, furthermore, it would mean Fernando’s desertion from the army with the consequent dishonor and death if they found him one day. Finally, good sense prevailed. Beatriz and Fernando said a tearful goodbye with the promise on their lips that they would meet again soon.
- Fernando joined his troop. In the retreat, the Mexican army trailed behind. While the former looked for a place to hide, the latter did not blink an eye and opened fire. All the French soldiers were shot, including our young lover. He could never fulfill the promise made anymore.
- Beatriz anxiously awaited Fernando’s return. In addition, in her bowels the proof of his true love of her grew. Every day, the young woman would go up to the bell tower of the Cathedral to scan the horizon in search of the sign that would indicate that Fernando was returning to her arms. As her gut grew so did his despair of her. The mortgage on the house would expire shortly and she would find herself on the street, because pregnant as she was, she knew that no convent would take her in. And hers Fernando did not come to give her comfort, love and a solution.
- The days passed and the tragedy approached. One afternoon, when the priest opened the door of the religious temple, he found Beatriz’s body lying lifeless on the ground, apparently she had fallen from the bell tower, from a height of more than 30 meters. Without knowing the causes, gossip speaks of the young woman rushing into the void before her son was born without her father. And it is that, the eternal wait turned out to be very long for the young woman and, the best way to meet her lovers again, was in the world of the dead. However, since then, there are those who claim to see the pregnant silhouette of a woman in the bell tower of the Cathedral of Durango at sunset.