ABSTRACT
A number of circumstances provoked Mexico City’s plebeian population, particularly its Indian sector, to revolt on June 8, 1692. Carlos de Siguenza y Gongora, like his friend Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, was an important Mexican luminary. Born in 1645 in Mexico City, he entered the Society of Jesus at age fifteen, took his vows two years later, but left the order in 1667 or 1669. The excerpt from Siguenza’s writing included here comes from a letter he wrote in late August 1692 to his friend, the Spanish admiral Andres de Pez y Malzarraga, in which he described Mexico’s most dramatic urban riot prior to the independence wars. In 1672 he became a professor of astrology and mathematics at the University of Mexico and the following year was ordained as a secular priest, serving as chaplain of the Hospital del Amor de Dios from 1682 until his death in 1700.
