We had the great honor and pleasure of interviewing César Arias de la Canal, Director of the botanical garden ‘El Charco del Ingenio’, who recounted for us the following information and legends.

The Charco del Ingenio is patrimony of San Miguel. It is ecological patrimony for its bio-diversity. It is scenic patrimony for its photographic beauty. And it is historical patrimony because it has had a wealth of activity over the years. There were once built fulling-mills that were named “batanes”, as well as aqueducts, dams, and supporting vaults—all this because water flowed through El Charco permanently. There was a large spring that emptied into the San Miguel River, which is now only seen during the rainy season. Before the river used to run all year long, and since the XVI century, it was a source for hydraulic power.

Dating back to the first years of the Spanish conquest in 1570, it is registered that there was constructed the first mill or water wheel, which they called ingenios. Ingenio is not like the word used today, which only refers to sugar mills. In the XVI century it was used for whatever ingenious work of man, or any use of water with an industrial end. And El Charco del Ingenio had the first ingenio, and then another and then several more over three centuries. Much like the industrial zone of Querétaro, the industrial zone of San Miguel El Grande (as it was known back then) was El Charco del Ingenio. One can imagine the amount of work and economic activity that existed. El Charco was not considered then to be part of the territory of indigenous Indians that you found south of Correo, in the present day colonias of Valle del Maíz, Guadiana, Chorro and Ojo de Agua. North of Correo was the Spanish villa, and El Charco del Ingenio corresponded to this territory. There were various families who were owners of this area, and one family in particular, had established their manufactory here.

The Headless Horseman
The Sauto family arrived in the XVIII century from the Basque country of Spain, and bought land in this area and constructed their manufactories, which were mills for textile production, the strongest industry at the time in San Miguel. Baltasar Sauto was one of the principals at the end of the XVIII century that owned these manufactories and plants. Sauto apparently got into fights with other Spanish criollas families who also owned manufactories. And it appears that Sauto was very cruel, despotic and hard on his workers, and it seems that one day he killed two of them. This was a very heavy incident and therefore we had the first recorded strike in the New Spain at the Charco del Ingenio. Sauto’s workers revolted and the authorities came from Mexico City to intervene. Jesuit priests also came to calm the tensions and mediate between both sides. The event was well documented in the General Archives of the Nation, where there was an investigation into the incident.

As a result of this event Baltasar Sauto was transformed through the legends into a horrible person, as if he was the cruelest man in the world, and this is not so. It is only that those who accused him also happened to be his strongest competitors: the Canal and Aburto families. He was accused before the Royal Audience of Mexico, who came and held a trial. And as a result of this there began to spread an image of Baltasar Sauto as a very bad man. And that’s where the legend of the Charco del Ingenio originates, which says that on full moonlit nights, at exactly midnight, when the bells ring in the oratory, a headless horseman appears in the Charco del Ingenio, descends the stream of the obraje, passes the market and gallops through the solitary streets of San Miguel El Grande. This is the same legend that is cited by Leobino Zavala in his book “Tradiciones y Leyendas Sanmiguelenses”.

The Legend of el Chán
Many people use the word ingenio to mean ‘devil’, or ‘friend’, or the ‘ingenious one’. It was also a way of describing these textile machines. But we can’t really speak of a Judeo-Christian devil in El Charco. But we can speak of the pre-Hispanic devils. The legend of el Chán is the strongest of all the legends at El Charco del Ingenio. It describes a spirit that rules the waters of the Charco spring and corresponds to the spirits of the underworld of Mesoamerican cosmology. There were the inhabitants of the earth, the humans; the inhabitants of the heavens and the inhabitants of the underworld, beneath the earth.

And beneath the earth, there were non-human beings somewhat like fairies or goblins, much like the elves of Mesoamerica, which were called chaneques. They are very strange characters, small creatures, like chimps. They are not human, but they are related to humans and can sometimes be mischievous troublemakers that scare terribly. And the Chán is one of those characters and is the guardian of the thermal spring, the well, the caves and the entire canyon, which by its own topography is a mysterious place, which inspires these feelings.

El Chán is not limited to San Miguel. San Diego de La Unión also has a Chán. It seems to be a regional myth and it is possible that it comes from the chichimecas or the otomies. Therefore the Chán is a character that frightens, and he who gets too close can make the Chán angry, or the Chán can frighten you or take you away. And it’s possible that those who used to swim in El Charco del Ingenio, where there were once waterweeds, may have gotten tangled up in these weeds and drowned. And as a result, people may have associated death with the Chán taking them away.

The height of the water is always maintained because the natural spring is always flowing. It’s one of the last springs left in the area. There are stories claiming that no one knows the true depth of El Charco del Ingenio. We’ve never done a test, and we don’t plan on doing one, in order to maintain the mystery. It is very possible that it was once used as a sacrificial pit, perhaps like the cenotes, because there is an overhanging rock that is flat and appears as if it were polished and adjusted. And there is an entire oral tradition that has been maintained over the centuries and keeps people drawn to it. So the Chán is the spirit of the underworld, the mischievous spirit that protects and can at times be terrible.

The Cave of Chuchuy
In the beginning of the twentieth century there was a bandit named Chuchuy who held up many people around San Miguel. They said that Chuchuy would evade the perusing soldiers by entering the canyon of El Charco del Ingenio. Much to the dismay of the befuddled soldiers, he would disappear completely and then resurface on the other side of town or by the Picachos Mountains. It is said that he would enter a cave and exit in some other part of San Miguel, no one knows exactly where, perhaps in a house somewhere. There are many legends about the Bandit Chuchuy and his cave, and it is said that this is where he hid his stolen treasure of robbed gold.

Leopoldo Estrada has been one of the people who has investigated and taken care of El Charco del Ingenio the most. He entered the supposed cave of Chuchuy and concluded that you could not go any further because it had long since caved in. It has been said that over the years many have tried to recuperate Chuchuy’s gold. But those that enter the cave of Chuchuy never come out.