Hospital de Jesús Nazareno (Mexico City, 1524): the hospital named after an Indian woman's image
The hospital Hernán Cortés founded at Huitzillan appears in the city council's own books in 1524 and was still working when a government geographer surveyed the city in 1867. It was endowed and then badly run - the neglect of its patients became proverbial - and it does not carry Cortés's name: it took the name of an image of Jesus Nazareno owned by Petronila Gerónima, a wealthy Indian woman, whose bequest assigned it by lot to the hospital in 1663.
Why this wins its question: English coverage of this house repeats one sentence - the oldest continuously operating hospital in the Americas, founded by Cortés in 1524 - and almost never says what stands behind it. This entry supplies the evidence and its limits from the 1867 government survey of the city: the date rests on a mention in the cabildo books of 1524, and the survival claim rests on a four-word sentence, "Se conserva todavía el hospital", written in 1867. It then puts on the record the three things the tourist version leaves out - that the endowment was lost by the mayordomos who administered it until "la mala asistencia que se daba á los enfermos" became proverbial; that the church housed a confraternity of newly arrived Africans from 1570 and sheltered the Jesuits in 1572-73; and that the hospital does not bear its founder's name at all but that of an image owned by Petronila Gerónima, "india rica", which her will assigned to one of five churches by lot and which reached this one on 3 March 1663, bringing with it the alms that finished a church the contractor of 1601 had abandoned. It also marks where its single source is partisan, quoting the writer's own "el héroe" and "gentes zizañeras" rather than passing them off as fact.
Claims
Every assertion below is bound to registered sources and carries its own confidence. Weight them; do not treat the page as uniformly authoritative.
The foundation is dated by a municipal record, not by a later tradition. Orozco y Berra's 1867 survey of Mexico City opens its section on the house with: "La iglesia y el hospital de la Purísima Concepcion fueron fundados por D. Hernando Cortés, en el paraje de la ciudad llamado por los indios Huitzillan: el primero en México, pues ya se hace mencion de él en los libros de cabildo de 1524, merece nuestro aprecio y es digno de conservar su recuerdo." The evidence offered for the date is that the city council's books already mention it in 1524; the cabildo books themselves were not opened here.
The endowment survived the founder and the care did not. The same paragraph continues: "Al morir D. Hernando dejó fincados bienes para el sosten del hospital, que administrado por mayordomos los fué perdiendo, haciéndose provervial la mala asistencia que se daba á los enfermos." A hospital that outlasts every other foundation of its century is here reported as one whose patients were proverbially badly attended, by a source with no hostility to its founder.
Its church served people the hospital was not built for. A confraternity of "los negros bozales" - Africans recently arrived and not yet Spanish-speaking - was established in the church in 1570; from 1572 to 1573 the building sheltered the newly arrived Jesuits; and on 22 January 1577 the congregation of San Pedro was set up there by Br. Pedro Gutiérrez Piza, from where it moved to the convent of Balvanera and then to La Santísima.
The church was contracted for and then left unfinished for two generations. With Martín de Santa Cruz governor of the Estado del Valle and Cristóbal de Rivagorda Montoya administrator of the hospital, the work was contracted with the master mason Alonso Pérez de Castañeda for 43,000 pesos by deed of 26 November 1601; "y aunque el contratista recibió á cuenta parte del dinero, la obra permaneció sin concluir, y largos años se mantuvo en esta forma."
The name the hospital still carries came from an Indian woman's bequest and was settled by drawing lots. "Dos personas vinieron á terminarla; fué la una Petronila Gerónima, india rica, quien poseia una imágen de Jesus Nazareno, y al morir dejó dispuesto que se entregara á una de las cinco iglesias que nombraba, á la que tocara por sorteo. Cayó la suerte en el hospital, siendo trasladada la imágen con gran pompa el 3 de Marzo de 1663; esto produjo el cambio de nombre del establecimiento que por entonces comenzó á llamarse de Jesus Nazareno, y trajo ademas gandes limosnas con que la iglesia pudo quedar concluida en 1665." The alms that finished the building followed the image, and the image came from a testatrix the source identifies only as a rich Indian woman.
A chaplain and the devout finished what the contractor had not. Antonio Calderón Benavides, named chaplain on 22 May 1662, "con sus relaciones y empeño, secundado por los devotos, pudo finalizar la obra, y mejorarla aún, cubriéndola de bóvedas en 1688, pues antes estaba techada de artesonado"; further works followed, with large repairs to the church completed in 1835.
The founder's body was moved five times and the hospital church was one of its stations. Cortés directed in his will that his corpse be brought from Spain and buried in a Concepción convent he had ordered founded at Coyoacán; the monastery was never founded and the remains were deposited at San Francisco de Tetzcoco. When his grandson Pedro died on 30 January 1629, extinguishing the male line, the viceroy and archbishop ordered both buried together at San Francisco de México: the bones were brought secretly, exposed for nine days in the casa del Estado, and buried with great pomp on 24 February 1629. On 2 July 1794 they were moved to a marble sepulchre built in the presbytery of the church of Jesús at the instigation of the viceroy conde de Revillagigedo; they were exhumed and hidden inside the church on the night of 15 September 1823 and the mausoleum was demolished soon after, the remains being sent to Italy.
This source is not neutral about the man and should be read as partisan on that point. It calls the agitation of 1823 the work of "gentes zizañeras" who "alzaron el grito contra la memoria del capitan, que si defectos tuvo, alcanzó la gloria de ser el conquistador de México", and speaks of "las cenizas errantes del héroe". Its factual sequence of dates and places is used here; its verdict on Cortés is reported as the writer's own and is not adopted.
What the source actually says about survival is narrower than the claim usually made for the house today. After the account of the burials it records, in four words, "Se conserva todavía el hospital." That is a statement that the hospital was still standing and working in 1867, three hundred and forty-three years after the cabildo books first mention it. It is not a statement of uninterrupted operation, and nothing in this source measures the beds, the admissions or the patients of any single year.
The limits of this entry are severe and stand in front of it. Everything above comes from one section of one Mexican compilation of 1867, written for the Ministerio de Fomento by a geographer working three centuries after the foundation and citing nothing at the point of use. No cabildo book, no foundation deed, no will and no hospital register was opened here. There is no bed count, no admission figure, no statement of who was admitted or refused, and no independent confirmation of the 1524 mention.