El Chicuarotas: The Visionary of Santa Maria Aztahuacan

By: Gibran Rivas Category: Aztahuacan Legends / Subcategory: Characters and Stories of Reconstruction

The Destiny of Heroes in Our Land

For those of us who have adopted Santa Maria Aztahuacan as our home, it is fascinating to see how the town has walked through time. Our history is divided into great stages that have completely transformed the landscape: first, that indomitable ancient town surrounded by the Cieneguilla wetland; then, the time of the haciendas and the subsequent distribution of the ejidos; and finally, the era of industrialization, where asphalt brought huge warehouses, workshops, and the constant parade of trailers that today divide opinions among neighbors.

But nothing we step on today—from the width of our streets to the schools and markets—happened by accident. It took a full-fledged leader, a man who saw the town’s future decades before anyone else, but who unfortunately received the tragic end that Mexico usually reserves for its true heroes.

We are talking about Eusebio Hernández Medina, immortalized by collective memory as El Chicuarotas. His fighting spirit and natural intelligence live on today, reflected in several of our current neighbors who inherited that same admirable stubbornness to lead recent community causes, such as the successful renovation of our Circunvalación Park.

Thanks to the historical bridge built by Grupo Cultural Ollin and the research of Lic. Frida Alejandra Mejía Gómez, we rescued the clean, honest, and intact testimony of his own son, Don Manuel Hernández y Fragoso.

El Chicuarotas

Speaker: Mr. Cuitláhuac Manuel Hernández Monroy (Manuel Hernández y Fragoso)

“My name is Manuel Hernández y Fragoso, and as the son of Eusebio Hernández Medina, better known as El Chicuarotas, I will tell you what I managed to see and know about my father. I will speak about him as one speaks of a person and not a relative.

This gentleman was born around the 1920s and had an adventurous spirit; that’s why he left the town for adventure at the age of 13 or 14. He became a driver by trade and took many from the town on that adventure to learn the trade. That was on the adventure side; on the irresponsibility side, I judge it so because he had many children here, there, and everywhere. As the saying goes, ‘he who serves two masters will disappoint one,’ so with so many children, it wasn’t possible to give them all a career.

But he had a kind side; he had a noble heart and would take the shirt off his back to keep his neighbor from shivering. On one New Year’s Eve, he gathered several kids and asked them to bring tin pots, cans, and noisemakers to chase away the ‘Old Year’—which was my dad dressed as a little old man—and all the kids chased him through town. He was a very intelligent man, far beyond his academic degree; without formal study, he could dismantle or assemble an automotive engine and traveled the whole Republic.

He once took us to live in Salamanca, Guanajuato, where he enlisted in the secret police and twice arrested a very famous thief known as the ‘phantom captain’. After a long time wandering the Republic, at about 40 years old, he decided to leave the steering wheel and come back here to his town.

When we arrived, he asked an old man, Mr. Castillo, who was sort of a patriarch here: ‘Hey, what have you done all these years?’ ‘Nothing, boy, nothing could be done.’ ‘What an outrage!’ my father said. ‘I’m going to reactivate business here.’

He talked to a lady named Neri, who held him in great esteem. She gave him her land for free, which is what Santa Cecilia is today, and the little plaza was built. From the penitentiary, they gifted them large concrete slabs, and from the city department, they gifted a nave; with sheet metal also provided by the penitentiary, we managed to make a roof, and that was the first market.

When they started building the eight-lane Ignacio Zaragoza highway, trucks took material from around Santa Cruz for road fill, passing right through the market street and making a lot of dust. My dad and the market people stopped those men and told them that if they were going to keep passing, they had to pave the road. The department agreed, making it the first paved street from what is today Vocacional 7 to the public baths.

Then came another need: we were very poor and needed to expand the Cuauhtémoc school. He managed the reconstruction, doubling its size. Later, he started working as a sub-delegate for the Federal District department. Once, two rival neighborhoods were fighting with machetes in front of the delegation; my dad threw a blanket over himself, disconnected a microphone stand, and holding the shiny metal tube like a long gun, he shouted: ‘Hey! Go home right now!’ Seeing the shiny tube, they were intimidated, thinking it was a shotgun.

He managed the first domestic water tap for Mr. Antonio Medina’s store, starting the drinking water network. He also managed the arrival of the extra-scholastic adult school at the clock, the Vocacional 7 disguised as a technological institute, and the expansion of the graveyard.

He fought the agrarian reform office, proving the alleged owners of the ejido were fake, making the distribution of the entire Ejido of Santa Maria Aztahuacan possible.

He was killed without personal motives; it was political and out of revenge for expropriating land from people without titles. One day, under the pretext of an eviction order, he was invited for a soda at a store. As he walked out, multiple shots were fired from inside and outside the store. Gunshot wounds from three different calibers were found on my father’s body.

What more can I say about Mr. Eusebio? I believe what I’ve said is enough. Truth be told, compared to his deeds, all of us who exist today are just cowards.”

The Process of “Legendization”: Why is El Chicuarotas a Local Legend?

It is very likely that upon reading this chronicle you might ask: Why are we treating the story of Eusebio Hernández Medina under the umbrella of legends if he was a real, contemporary man? The answer is provided by the very theory of literature and oral tradition that supports the research of “La voz de las garzas”.

In communities with deep historical and ejido roots, collective memory activates a phenomenon known as the process of “legendization” or the creation of the local myth. Studies on oral literature explain that when a real character performs colossal community feats, breaks established laws, or suffers a tragic and violent death—the exact three conditions that marked the life of El Chicuarotas —the town naturally activates a mythification process.

Facts become charged with epic undertones, such as his astonishing physical build to disarm two attackers bare-handed, or the tragic, almost cinematic detail of three different calibers striking his body. Lacking a written record in official schools, the character becomes part of the community’s “archive of living histories”. El Chicuarotas is, in every sense of the word, a living legend of our identity.

Conclusion: The Legacy of the Wide Streets

The prophetic response of El Chicuarotas when questioned about the width of the ejido streets was: “For a future where this is filled with trucks”. That old driver’s vision is what today allows heavy industrial units to move through the area, but, more beautifully, it is also what allows the monumental squads of our Carnival to parade year after year with total comfort and splendor.

His tragic death reminds us of the high cost of changing a community’s destiny. In the end, the fake landowners left, but the Market, Vocacional 7, Cuauhtémoc School, and the drinking water network stayed forever. As Don Manuel says, current generations sometimes seem small before giants of that size; but the spirit of El Chicuarotas has not died; it reappears every time a group of neighbors bravely organizes to defend and beautify our environment.

Source and Cultural Rescue Note:

This testimony is part of the corpus of oral history recovered in Santa Maria Aztahuacan. Its preservation in this digital space is possible thanks to the generosity of Lic. Frida Alejandra Mejía Gómez (“La voz de las garzas”) and the Grupo Cultural Ollin, who worked shoulder to shoulder with the inhabitants to build this invaluable archive.