#99 / 2009 Tour 4 Spring: Good Friday

CHIMAYO PILGRIMMAGE

#99

Passion Play Crucifiction Reenactment at Chimayo

Today is Good Friday and Joe and I set out a religious pilgrimage To El Sacntuario de Chimayo. It is my third one since moving to New Mexico . I have observed the early December “Our Lady of Guadalupe” trek up A Mountain in Las Cruces and two Easters ago I climbed Mount Christo Rey in El Paso .

Many people believe miracles happen at the Chimayo sanctuary. The pilgrims or “peregrinos” often make petitions to El Senor de Esquipulas, an image of Christ discovered by Don Bernardo Abeyta in the early 1800s, now kept in a historic shrine in Chimayo.

The town is 24 miles northeast of Santa Fe and about ten miles east of Espanola in the Sangre de Cristo mountains . We took Highway 76 out of Hispanola known as the “High Road to Taos .” It meanders through scenic old Spanish villages and landscapes reminiscent of Georgia Okeefe.

The narrow two-lane highway was almost bumper to bumper at times with cars competing with the pilgrims on both sides of the road. Someone in a car in front of us was blowing bubbles out of the window and the glistening orbs floated past men and women pushing baby strollers, adolescent boys shirtless in the warm sun exposing their heavily tattooed torsos, and all the rest.

We parked our vehicle about two miles from Chimayo and set out walking. Many people carried small decorated crosses or wore t-shirst with the images of diseased loved ones. Old men and women leaned on their walking sticks as they paused for bottles of water and other amenities passed out at comfort stations along the way. Some had been walking for days.

In front of one church a band was set up under a tent and the music lent an air of festivity to the atmosphere. The low rider cars that Hispanola is so well know for drove by creating a veritable car show parade. Trucks full of young people who were returning from the shrine waved and called out to friends like a float in the Easter Parade.

After a while the line filed off of the street and we entered a little community of dirt roads and ancient adobe buildings and homes. We passed back yards full of adobe bricks drying in the sun, cows and donkeys in the fields as we got closer and closer to the shrine and church. Soon it looked like the state fair. Traffic was almost at a standstill and the aroma from the food vendors stands filled the air.

Vendors of religious trinkets, holy water, corn on the cob, ice cream paletas, and snow cones all competed along the tiny road as the cars, trucks, campers, and RVs all inched along.

We finally turned off the road and into an adobe village full of artists galleries and more food vendors. It was identical to any Mexican town. By the time we got to the church and shrine there were many hundreds of people all milling around the church waiting to go inside to make petitions to El Senor or to collect some holy dirt within. I didn’t have the patience to wait all that time so I will quote reporter Sandra Baltazar Martinez from the Santa Fe “New Mexican” regarding the interior:

The historic shrine sits next to the church. The devotion to El Senor de Esquipulas has grown over the years. Hundreds of rosaries are strung all over the santuario and shrines, with nearly 100 crutches and walkers sitting in an adjacent room, and an infinite number of pictures of soldiers, infants, and families plastered on the walls, and the countless framed holy images that decorate the room’s walls from the top down. Women and men pray silently and others walk to the posito, or well, to gather what is believed to be holy dirt.

I had intended to get some of that dirt, brought two plastic baggies with me, but just didn’t want to wait for what would have been at least three hours. What I wasn’t prepared for was the reenactment of the crucifixion. I have never seen a passion play before and I was truly traumatized by the reenactment of Christ being beaten and nailed to the cross.

In a much more sober mood we headed back to the highway, contemplative, yet grateful for the experience.