Semante Santa is Holy Week in Mexico. That was where I was attempting to spend my vacation. I have a hard time relaxing. It was nice to escape to a completely different world, not so far in miles, but impossibly distant in the way we live.
For the important days, my husband and I rattled an ancient rental car up the mountainside to Taxco, a small village famous for its silver and its remarkable rituals sandwiched between Good Friday and Easter. The altitude is high in the Taxco Sierra, and the air is thin, as it always seems to be in the rooftops of the world like Lhasa – the capital of Tibet, where my dear friends live, two men, one white, one not, celebrate their eighteenth year of love this week and the mouth of the Ganges, the places where worship is the way of life, as if proximity to God were directly related to actual closeness to Him.
Taxco is one of these heavenly locations. It’s an evening affair, beginning Maundy Thursday, with penitents walking in the streets, in pointed black hoods with slits for eyes, horsehair belts and chains around their ankles, dragging bare feet for miles on cobblestone. Old women walk cautiously in front of them, picking up pieces of debris so as to not cut their feet. It is tetanus waiting to happen, and I get lockjaw just thinking about it. Little girls in white lace wave frankincense burners in the air, and teams of young, strong men carry icons of Jesus in all the stations of the cross heavily on their backs.
They are such cute boys, about 17 to 24, my demographic, apparently in this part of the country. There aren’t many Asian women. Actually, I am the only one. Their faces are bright and proud, brown eyes huge and luminous, and they are trying to be all sly, but they steal glances at me and say “China” to themselves, then move on, but not before registering my dirty mid-thirties womanly reaction. I kind of wish I’d come alone, but then I remember this is a religious affair, and I have no intention of making anyone lose theirs. Besides, my darling husband is taking photographs with the mad joy of Jimmy Olsen. We share stale pastries and mangoes, and realize this is our honeymoon, and nothing could be more romantic. Candles light the night, the Virgin floats above, the choking smoking air tastes of blood. The Passion Play carries on.
Looking up the steep stone causeways, I see a procession of possibly a hundred Jesii or even more. Some are most elaborate, tricked out with rims, electric lights and mahogany altars and are proudly flanked by countless penitents, flogging themselves with small ropes with nails embedded into the ends. Others are lackluster, with cardboard crucifixes and blood that is too-orange tempura paint, and attract fewer repentant souls.
I am alarmed at the size of the crowd and their silence. It is apparent revelry, the time of night and the kind of audience that should by all rights be unruly and drunk, but that is not the case here. It is quiet and oddly ominous, for the Christ is to be crucified all over again, and the tension is thick as the crush of bodies. It is hard to breathe, and everyone feels it. There are few lookie-loo types in the crowd, people come here to worship, not to gawk, and that quiet dignity keeps me from being traumatized by the blood I see coming off the backs of the hooded men. Thorny rolls of wooden sticks are hewn together and supported by the necks of the penitents.
I wonder what it takes to get that job. If it is a scary Shirley Jackson “The Lottery” type selection process, or if the positions are hotly contested, as to who gets to wear the itchiest horsehair belt, the heaviest load of prickly logs, who is the holiest of all, kind of like Catholic Latin American Idol.
All I know, is that this messiah stuff is really not for me. I am no James Cavaziel. It looks like it really hurts, and I love God and everything, but there is a point where I must absolutely use a safeword, even with the Lord Himself.
At times I welcome pain, and can enjoy many varieties, but I said “Yellow!” and He just has to honor that. I am a big bottom and everything, but there are limits. I am just kidding. Simply put, I am awestruck by the display of devotion to the Christ, and therein lies a bloody salvation that is absolute and sincere, and I have no business at all, a foreign presence, not unwelcome, yet not asked in any way to participate, making light of their faith, nor do I desire to minimize what it means to the legions of blessed participants.
But Good Friday is worse. There is an endless parade of black hooded men, wearing the hundred pound load of thorns on their bare backs. They march through the town, and there is no end to them. They are tireless and many. My empathy is taking over. My heart and my feet hurt. I cannot take it anymore, but it has become inescapable. Even from the expensively converted mission we have rented at the top of the village, we are forced to look down to see them from the balcony because sometimes, even when you want to, you can’t stop looking, for we can still hear the clatter of the chains on their ankles, and they make a procession that seems to go on for miles and miles.
I want to wash their feet with my hair, ease the bloody sores away with Bactine, put them all to bed with expensive ointment and clean gauze on their wounds. They bring out the Mary in me. I love them, I love them all. I adore, admire and revere their faith, their endurance, their agonizing love for God. I respect the ritual, the silence, the ancient stoicism that owes much to the native Indian Gods who once ruled these mountains, and the people who worshipped them, the mighty Mayans and Aztecs, possibly more than the conquistadors who brought this Version 5.0 of God to the Americas.
Ava says that the Passion Play is much more intense in Spain, and bloodier still in the Phillipines. It isn’t a contest. The point is people love the God they love and they are going to love Him the way they will. The spectacle of it is tremendous, overwhelming, tragic, beautiful, poetic, happy and sad, and it shows me, even though I think the Lord is truly phat and all that, I don’t do much for Him. Fuck the Easter Bunny. This is the shit.