The Virgins of Mexico

    I met up with my wife who was already at one of the pre christmas moving street rosaries. Each night a large processio marches on a different route within the city reciting a rosary. Each person carries a candle, their faces bronzed and changing from the flickering tapers. Residents on the streets along which the rosary passes decorated their houses with blue and white cut paper banners.

This was the second of nine consecutive evening rosaries called a novenario. The christmas rosaries honor La Virgen de Los Dolores, the Virgin of Tenancingo. 

                                                     
        La Virgen de Los Dolores Tenancingo in a mid 1800 era , like a collage- painting with a silver dagger positioned over the silver heart of Mary who sports a real silver halo,, and above the halo a solid gold crown. A patron is painted into the lower left hand corner. In early june 2018 there was a robbery. The story goes as follows: thieves hid within the basilica San Clemente coming out after all was locked up and stole the golden crown. It was considered a national treasure.


     There are many more churches dedicated to Virgins than to Jesus. Jesus just may be God yet Mary as his mother, trancends his accomplishments and suffering. Her figure has been molded to fit each catholic culture. Her images are everywhere in the catholic world and even if all are slightly different we are capable of distilling the essence of motherhood from each and every one. I guess Mom is a more mysterious and more powerful character than her Son-Dad. First of all she is more acessible because she is not a diety. She is often seen cradling her son. If one casts aside the invented myth of a virgin birth, meant to elevate her to an incongrous and remote level of cleanliness, her figure returns to us,, emotionally closer,, and more well defined than her son. It is easy to see how the faithful appeal to this universal icon of motherhood to heal the soul and body.  
     In Mexico there are many statues honoring the Virgin Mary,, most usually old and made of wood except of course the Virgen de Guadalupe who is painted on a sheepskin robe. They can range from small, like the Virgen de Zapopan or human sized like the Virgen de Xico,, or supernatural,, like some Virgenes de Carmen. 
    In Xico, Veracruz for example the raiments for their Virgin, Santa Maria Magdalena, are changed each year, and meticuously hand made. It is an honor to be chosen to make one of her garments. In Xico,  Santa Maria Magdalena even has a museum that houses her many wadrobes going back hundreds of years. 


                               
                           The wardrobe museum of Santa Maria Magdalena Xico, Veracruz

                                             
          Let me speak briefly about The Virgen de Guadalupe. Mexicans are Guadalupanos and La Virgen de Guadalupe, who is accessible to all, is the most revered of all mexican icons. The Mother of Jesus is represented in various forms in all mexican pueblos but the Virgin Of Guadalupe is a national image that transcends all others. She is the patron saint of  all Mexico. She is MOM  times 10 to the minus ten. The most popular pilgramages in the country are to Tepayac in Mexico City to her image painted on a sheepskin robe. Jesus comes in second. Chalma near Tenancingo, which honors El Señor,  is the second most popular pilgramage site.
     Gauadalupe is tatooed on arms and chests and silkscreened on taxis waiting at intersections.  I have a picture of her in my room, her head slightly cocked in a humble gaze, dark skinned and approachable pasted onto her bed of sunbeams. Mexicans love Jesus but they worship the Virgin. Every Mexican has at least one image of her in the house. She swings from the taxi rear view morrors glued onto old CDs, she is the focal point of countless altars and candle offerings, she is enshrined in myriads of little roadside cement arks decorated with miniature flags and christmas lights and chintzy electronic music,,,,,,she is everything to Mexico. The Indian to whom she appeared, now San Juan Diego was cannonized by Pope John Paul on his last visit to Mexico before his death. Diego was given the papal imprimatur which  with the same edict super canonized Mexico's indigenous version of Mary.

      

    La Señora, La Virgen de Guadalupe

                                                 
                               A Restaurant in Guadalajara with and image of La Virgen de Guadalupe

                                                          
                               A young man holding a statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe in Chalma


                                       
                                        The Virgin of Guadalupe on her way to be blessed in Chalma

         

Pilgrimage leaving Tenancingo for Tepeyac in February

          

San Diego

       

     First stage of the 110 kilometer long Pilgramage from Tenancingo to Tepeyac in Mexico City. Mexico is a land of pilgrammages.Thousands of people from the towns around Tenancingo walk to the Mexico City to honor their National Virgin at the Basilica in Tepayac which houses the famous robe of San Juan Diego. A young friend, Sonia, who I call Soniarisa ( a bastardization of sonrisa or smile) because she is always smiling, walked to Mexico City a few years ago with thousands of others, like atrip to Mecca. It took her 4 days. The group walks together, accepts food from households along the way, sleeps in churches, on the ground, or in private homes when offered. This counted as one of the foremost experiences in her life. It is something that appeals I think to the bit of Chaucer that remains in all of us. It seems the farther we voyage from that tight far off universe of movement coupled with simple human contact the more we pine for its return.

       The Rosary procession started at San Clemente. Two hundred people, women children, and men with candles marched. They bore icons of the Virgin. It is good, I believe, to bear a burden a distance. All the images of Mary are borne upon heavy wooden tables sprinkled with flower petals. Some children in front carried a wooden table with a framed picture of the Virgin from the church. They took turns lifting the wooden arms that ran through holes in the desks and were placed upon little shoulders. She was lit with a thin gooseneck tensor lamp that curled from the top of the framed image like an antenna. They bobbed and bumped as children will do, unkempt in their pace,, but kept well the chants and songs. Other older youth bore a larger photo of her. The men, in the rear, ferried the heaviest weight. Upon their shoulders was the recently discovered newly restored painting,,,a different version of Mary,,,set into a thick gold leafed frame. It is a type of collage surprising in its subtlety. The painting at first seems black. There are objects that startingly stand out upon the apparent black surface. A real gold crown, a small silver heart pierced by a dagger, and two strings of delicate small pearls, one about her neck and another encircling her wrist. All these float upon the blackness seeming to outline a yet invisible person. Closer inspection, however, reveals a kneeling Mary. She appears in parts if you stare intently into its blackness. A hint of the folds of her red under robe,,then her face set in the sliver halo....her wrist outlined by the pearl bracelet,,,and when as you try to sift for more she disappears. She comes and goes and cannot be apprehended as a whole being,,,, just ghostly parts.

The weight of the painting and support was great for the six men who conveyed her.The wood creaked as the procession slowly marched chanting the rosary. Other men carried heavy branches with crotches at the top to support her when the men´s shoulders need a short rest. With a word they moved in and position their sticks under the bastons. Still other men wheeled the heavy batteries that illuminated the painting on a handtruck.

From the basilica down Leon Guzman, across Benito Juarez, up Carlos Estrada, across Moctezuma, and back to the basilica. The route had been cleaned and decorated by neighbors. These same people stood outside their houses praying with us as we passed. The procession paced, candles and prayers flickered up into the cool night air. Hands were fringed in pearly strands of wax from the melting tapers. I recited the prayers in English. The prayers, etched into my brain rolled off the tongue but did not did not distract from observation. A little doe eyed baby doll of a mexican child held tight her sister's hand moving in a child's bow legged gait on too short feet.

The rosary parade finally entered the basilica to applause. After a brief talk we disbanded. My wife and I went to the front where the Virgins bourne during the march had been collected. I stared up intently at the surface of the painting by Monroy. Adults and children would advance towards Her in a respectful way. Some touched the surface and made the sign of the cross with a clutched hand as if they had swiped some precious invisible thing. Some gently grasped a few flower petals gazed up, and left as if they had taken away some invisible charm. I find myself being drawn into the warm bath of faith and touch and voodoo which perhaps is not a fair description. Maybe I have more faith than I am willing to admit,,,but I doubt that. Perhaps I tender skepticism for an arrogant science which thinks it can know everything or cool pragmatism which is constantly at odds with that chip placed in each human body that yearns for mystery and comforting fairy tales. Heaven knows I'll never eat a steady diet of this but once in a while out of respect for those who eat at this flowery altar I soften in the presence of the faithful. What a simple exercise,,,this evening was, to fill the street with people unified by a common thread. I felt I knew them and their faith even though I knew soon it would all wear off.

I live in a fervently religious country, devoutly catholic and intensely pagan that is changing rapidly. In Mexico there is an abundance of supersttion and faith,,,it is a vatican dream. Many people still heal by examining how a black hen dies over a patient, or create luck (there's an expression) by blending water and garlic and dispersing it in front of their business. They strike the body with a bundle of fragrant leaves from the Pirule tree to cleanse and "purify" the soul or by rolling an egg over the skin to attract the accumulated dark residues. The egg is broken into a jar of water where the negative energy remains. The egg acts like a spiritual shop vac sucking the accumulated dirt from a soul. Seven machos alchohol is rubbed over the body and blown into the face to "cleanse" people of their bad energy. Mal de ojo or an evil eye is most common and occurs when a weak person, or an infant or a child, is intently gazed by a jealous person. The stare is said to make the victim's spirit sick and cause headaches, high fever, irritability, and in the case of young children, crying and a refusal to eat or sleep. They put envelopes of sugar in their wallets to bring fortune and believe the saliva of a pregnant woman has healing powers. They buy soaps whose herb content and mix promote sexual prowess, wealth, health etc.

I remember an incident a year before my father died when we were sitting down to eat christmas dinner. My father sat aloof at the head of the table in the grips of a senile fog when my cousin came in with a loaf of italian bread fresh out of the oven and hastily put it on the table. My father half mumbled to her, "Turn the bread over." She looked in surprise. He continued, "Don't leave the bread upside down it brings bad luck". It must have been some superstition from his italian upbringing, who knows how old and why but it added some character to an otherwise predictable evening. These and many more customs and superstitions are employed, not just because now it is fashionable to look elsewhere for cures. Mexicans have been repeating these flights of imagination for thousands of years. The street rosary got my ass out of the house on a night when I might have just gone to bed early. It provoked me to think about the culture in which I live.

   
       Here is a list of SOME of the Virgins in Mexico. 
     La Virgen de Guadalupe, La Virgen de Xicotepec, La Virgen de La Imaculata Concepcion de Chignahuapan, Puebla, Virgen del Carmen, Virgen de La Milagrosa, Nuestra Señora del Perpetuo Socoro, Virgen del Buen Suceso Tianguistenco, Nuestra Virgen de La Asuncion  Cuaco, Nuestra Señora de La Soledad y Santa Cruz, Nuestra Señora de La Soledad Acapulco, Nuestra Señora de Tonatico, and Santa Maria Magdalena Xico. There is even a Virgen de La Masacre de Acteal, Chiapas.

 

Santa Maria Magdelena Xico, Veracruz

 

La Virgen de Tonatico near Tenancingo. It is said her head once faced downward but a fire darkened her skin and affected the cedar from which she is made to change he gaze skyward. 

  La Virgen de Zapopan who is moved each year from her shrine in the cathedral of Zapopan to visit some surrounding pueblos. It is estimated that a million people attend her departure and return. 

 

La Virgen de La Soledad

 

La Virgen del Carmen

 

La Virgen de Juquila, Oaxaca

 

La Virgen del Socoro Taxco

 

The Virgin de La Masacre de Acteal Chiapas

  

The Bones

    

     I used to collect money at the church called San Francisco on Sundays. These collections were organized by a local man named Beto, a political hopeful,with the aim of restoring each of the 32 churches in Tenancingo Center one at a time. 
     During and after The Mexican Revolution church property was expropriated. The churches themselves were looted and the buildings ignored. The catholic church was not held in high esteem by the new post revolutuionary political stewards of Mexico. Most viewed the church as a plague upon the people,, and a competitive force with which to be reckoned. In 1926 President Plutarco Elías Calles, a particulary rabid hater of the church, launched a decree called "Ley de Calles", where many of the church's rights were taken away. The Calles Law was meant to supress and limit Catholic worship in Mexico. Laws against religion are like laws against bowel movements.They don't work. Humans seem to have a genetic spiritual "chip" installed in their hearts. Calles's attempt to curtail religion led to The Cristero War which sought the annulment of the law. Eighty years has passed and the catholic religion is held dear by 90% of Mexicans.  
     When I arrived in Tenancingo sixteen years ago The Parroquia or San Franciso, on one side of the zocalo was in rough shape and looked like a dreadful collage on the inside,,, the synthesis of a country priest's colorful lust for God perhaps encountering a donation from a wealthy parishoner.  My muster of money on those sundays in 2004 , were  meant to help with restoring 75 years of neglect. In 2009, when Tenancingo became a dioses and received a bishop, The Parroquia was given a tasteful remake. Then came the sept 19th 2017 earthquake rattling up from the restive bowels of the earth that brought everything back to zero.
      Each sunday, 14 years ago I arrived before the 8:00 AM mass and was assigned a door where I would wait for people to exit after the service. I was given a little brown box with a slot on top. I had prepared and practiced my lines in spanish. 
     "¿Te gustaría cooperar con la reastauración? ¡Cooperemos con la restauración! ¡Ahora estamos cooperando!" 
     More often than not I was sent to the smaller market side entrance of the church. I was a "lesser soldier". During the mass I had my routine which was based on biding my time and wondering. I would march towards the huge Ahuehuete near the entrance and then back again wondering if God does exist often thinking about how lazy and uninvolved this fellow is. We do all the work building His network and maintaining it,,, and He is just somewhere way out there in the stardust. Jesus says we must "cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness". Was he talking about his father, the deadbeat dad, or is it all a neatly tied bundle of contradictions. Perhaps I am just a bundle of contradictions as well. 
     My curiosity at times waivered from religious questions and focused on the construction of the church. San Francisco is not a huge church but it took some doing to erect it. The oldest part of the church dates from 1640. I imagined a cacaphony of sounds, hammering, chiseling, and scraping. There would have been heavy wooden staging, donkeys, and men,,, most likely indigenous men. I often tried to decipher the spanish on an old sand stone baptismal font left outside like an after thought on the grass. The style of the carved letters were in a Greek font, a kind of geometric format. 
     One morning between the nine and ten o'clock mass while killing time I noticed something new. There, on the lawn space in front of my entrance was a 10 foot tall 10,000 liter blue plastic water cistern rising up from the dirt and casting a big shadow. There it stood, waiting for enterrment. I thought at first that the shadow would be good protection for my ever balding pate baking in the sun. During the week the workers had begun a cylindrical hole that was about 2.5 meters deep and in typical Mexican left open to the world, a gaping unprotected chasm inviting curious little boys and presenting an obstacle to wobbly footed older ladies. This is Mexico however and I can still ride in the back of a pickup truck so who cares if we lose a couple of little unruly brats or a few grannies in the pit. It is the price we pay for our freedom from the shackles of insurance.
     Being male and genetically prone to explore holes I walked over to take a look. I peered in. My eyes traced the path down. There was some rubble visible in the upper layer, beginning about 50 centimeters down and ending at about a meter into the hole. Below that beautiful dark fine soil lead into the darkness. My eyes wandered around the rim and the rubble. It hadn't registered yet what I was seeing. There where the rim met the corner of the wall was a pile of gray bones mixed with the dirt excavated from the hole.. What is this I thought? They seemed to be too big for animals and too small for,,,,heavens,,,humans? I was freshly curious and went to see Beto, the person coordinating the restoration, to ask about these mysterious shards. He was disoriented at first. His first reaction was ,,"those damn people who come onto church grounds at night and leave their trash". I told him that this was not the refuse from a mini bar-b-cue by delinquents but something much older.
     "Show me these, Beto said".
     We walked over, he hunched over leaning on his cane taking baby steps as he edged nearer the rim .We talked, He told me there are rumors that there is a secret tunnel under the church that was used during the bloody mexican revolution. This, I could see was going to evolve into pure guy talk about holes. He gingerly extended his cane and rolled over some of the discarded bones with the rubber tip staring down expressionless.
     "They are the bones of pigs from the market", Beto affirmed.
     I said half joking, " or goats maybe"? However I was thinking these are not pigs or goats", these are human femurs".
     I took note of how many femurs there were and their length. The diameter of the hole was perhaps a meter and a half and starting within the thickness of 50 to 1 meter there was a layer of hundreds of bones like a layer of sediment.  These were indeed very short people. Pygmies perhaps?,,the true first visitors to the continent,,, before the land bridge? Babies? No. These were fully developed. Indigenous people? A massacre,,, a plague? Questions were arriving like taxi's at the close of a musical event.
     An older gent, Raimundo, known as Mundo, who aided with the restoration entered the scene. He is a retired school teacher, nearly deaf, and a devout catholic. He hollers, as he always does,, "Oh yeah we found a skull in the soil during the dig and when we put it in the Sun it just fell apart". His loud voice only amplified the absurdity. I was beginning to feel aloof when Mundo insists as does Beto that this just has no historical value. 
     "It is just an old graveyard. This was sanctified ground."
      Beto transforms into Francisco Pissaro before my eyes and Mundo starts to resemble Hernan Cortez seeing only the glitter of gold and eliminating everything human. Their disinterest was foreign to me. Beto, who sees himself as the town historian, commented that when the Spanish arrived 500 years ago all the Indians lived in Teotla or Acatzingo,,,not here. I often feel this agitation rising within me when people are sure of something when all records have been destroyed. Teotla is only five blocks away so I don't consider that a grand distance for an Indian. Also I have seen the soil in Teotla and Acatzingo and it's all rocks. These Indians in this region were food producers, not hunter gatherers so they would have sought out better soil. Ancient people were close to the soil. They would have exploited this option. I was fishing for defense against Beto's surety however I had no answers only questions.

     Beto and Mundo added that many churches here had cemeteries about them. This was familiar enough to me but why was there no pieces of clothes, or baubles, and why were all so short? Why was there only femurs I thought. When I told my wife  later that day she theorized that these were the remains of the babies of nuns.  

    With a half angry tone I said to Beto and Mundo, "How do you know for sure, are you  paleontologists? Whomever they are,,,they are part of the history of Tenancingo, and the church,,, and their muteness should be heard." 

     Beto and Mundo maintained their disinterest and returned to the main entrance of the church. The only one to express interest was Virginia, an expat, who was also helping with the restoration. We went over with some plastic bags to collect some samples finding a jawbone and trying to separate teeth from legs and pot shards. Then we went back with Beto to try to convince him that this begs further investigation. 

     Mundo shouts,,,"Come on over tomorrow, and if we find another skull,,I'll save it for you".      There is very little of value in the streets of Mexico because the gleaners have scoured anything usable. This is not like the states where "good" garbage abounds for the free picking. You would have trouble finding a few pieces of wood to rub together to make a fire here. And Mundo is offering me a skull of unknown origin as if it were worthless. Alas poor Yorick, I knew him well. In this case no one wants to know Yorick or Citlalli or anything. This could have been  Mundo's great great great great great great x 10 to the minus ten grandparents.
     That night I couldn't sleep well. I was haunted by short people trying to sell me memories, chanting, "memorias memorias cuatro por diez, cuatro por diez". Virginia e-mailed me that morning with the information that Beto had placed the bones we had bagged in the Camerine fo safe keeping and had changed his attitude.They will be studied. I doubted all she said, thinking he just strolled over to the nearest garbage can and tossed Atahualpa into the can.