400-year-old Church Resurfaces in a Mexico Water Reservoir

The recent drought in Mexico has given way to a remarkable occurrent in a water reservoir in Chiapas, southern Mexico. The water level has gone down by as much as 25 meters or 82 feet, but instead of causing panic and anxiety, the place was in a festive atmosphere and people, to the contrary, were coming out in droves to celebrate.

A 400-year-old church has revealed itself from underneath the Nezahualcoyotl dam amid the continuous drop-off in its water level, according to a Mashable report.

"The people celebrated. They came to eat, to hang out, to do business. I sold them fried fish. They did processions around the church," recounts Leonel Mendoza in an interview. He is one of the local boatmen who transport tourists onto the spot where the church re-emerged. Prior to this, Leonel comes to the reservoir everyday to go fishing.

This is not the first time the age-old structure has come out to the fore. This unusual event is already the "second coming" of the church and was preceded in 2002, when the water level receded for the first time since the completion of the reservoir back in the 1960's. At that time, tourists can, actually, ramble around the interior of the church on foot.

The ruins is from a church named the Temple of Santiago, or the Temple of Quechula for some locals because it is located near a town called Nueva Quechula, notes Buzzfeed. The structure has a dimension of 61 meters (183 feet) in length, 14 meters (42 feet) in width, and with a height of 10 meters (30 feet). The bell tower reaches 16 meters (48 feet) above the ground.

According to a government report, the Temple of Santiago also has a cinerarium that houses numerous urns containing cremated bodies of the church's deceased parishioners during that time. Most of whom perished from a deadly plague that besieged the region between 1773 and 1776. The church was left forsaken from then on, says Architect Carlos Navarrete, who has official information regarding the structure.

The church was built by a group of monks who accompanied Friar Bartolome de las Casas from Spain, according to an article by the Independent.co.uk. He was the first ever bishop in Chiapas and was instrumental in the colonization of the Indian natives in the area. The monks started construction believing that the area would soon be a hub of civilization. The theory fell through.