Leaving Queretero late at night, I headed north on another bus to Arizona. It is funny, but Mexico, up to now, has been nothing that I expected. It has been green rolling hills, good roads, and high level of economic development. It has only been on the northern bus route through Mexico that I began to see the deserts and cactus that I formerly believed made up Mexico. After a day of journeying in the bus, the sun begins to set to the West, and I can once again see the Pacific Ocean. I’ve gone back and forth seeing the Pacific, then the Atlantic, then the Pacific, then the Atlantic. Now I see the Pacific for the last time, as this journey is quickly coming to a close.
I’m getting closer and closer to the border of the United States and Mexico, a place of political turmoil at this current moment in history. As I have traveled through Mexico, I have encountered many people who have family who have migrated to the United States, or have migrated themselves and come back. I noticed from the time I entered Mexico that I was treated a little more harshly than I had been in other parts of Central and South America, but I was still treated as a friend, a brother. The more and more I have moved north, I found the tension continue to rise. There is more hostility, more aggression, and more suspicion about my presence as a citizen of the United States of America. I feel it in the form of more hardened looks, and less patience if I don’t understand the Spanish spoken to me the first embittered mutterings of a casual passerby. I am reminded that the United States and Mexico are neighbors, and as neighbors, know each other’s faults a little to well.
But the sun is setting, and as it sets on another day, it sets for me on another country, the last country of my journey, the last country of my time in Latin America. If you have downloaded Google Earth onto your computer, you can view all the pictures I took of churches in Mexico by clicking here. If you would like to see the complete set of pictures that I took throughout Latin America, click here.
I’m going to group my summary of Mexico into my summary of Latin America because my departure from both coincides on the same day, but also because I want to say the same thing about both. As with any summary, it is unfair to make sweeping generalizations. Latin America speaks the same language, but shows enormous diversity in culture, levels of development, attitude, politics, etc. I admit that I used to think that all Latin America was the same, and I could never understand why people from Latin America didn’t get along with each other. They all speak the same language. Right?
Even if I don’t understand the reasons for all the differences, I became very aware that the differences exist. Latinos are not all the same, and resent being treated the same. Each country has a unique culture.
Before I entered Latin America, I made the observation that Europe and the United States were the “head” of the Church, Asia was the “heart,” and Africa was the “soul.” This corresponded to the scripture which states that a person ought to love the Lord with all his/her heart, mind, and soul. It is a description of the characteristics of the Church which I believe fits well, but it left me with a problem. Where do the Latinos fit in?
After four months of being in Latin America, I would have to say that my impression of the Latin American Church is that it is the “passion” of the Church. Latinos are passionate people, not only because of the connotation that comes with the elaborate system of motels that exists within Latin America, but because Latinos are passionate about everything. They are the blood of the Church, the fire. They remind us that life cannot just be thought about, or meditated upon. There is more than recognizing the depth of a person’s soul. There has to be an outward expression of life that give a person a reason to live.
For the country! For the wine! For Jesus! For the Virgincita!
But mostly for the Virgincita.
“Viva la Virgen!” chants frequently can be heard coming from any crowd. The chorus resounds in almost every public gathering. There is great pride in the images of Mary that are representative of a particular country. There is so much pride, that there is very little recognition that there is a larger Catholic Church beyond the boundaries of that particular country. A few nights ago on the television, I listened to a Paraguayan say the following.
“Mexico has Our Lady of Guadalupe, but in Paraguay we have Our Lady of Cuacupe who we celebrate on December 8th.”
I spoke back to the television. “No. The Church has a feast day on December 8th called the feast of the Immaculate Conception! You celebrate the feast in Paraguay the same as the rest of the Church does! The only difference is that you honor the image that you have in Cuaccupe, because that is the image of Mary that most of your churches have.”
I suspect if the woman was in front of me, she would have given me a dumbfounded look that read “What is this ‘Church’ thing that you are talking about?”
I acknowledge. My reaction is a response that comes from my over-developed intellectual understanding of what it means to be “Church.” That is my culture. We enjoy being the “brains” of the Church, which is OK, as long as the “brains” of the Church do not develop a superiority complex, and diminish the giftedness of the other members of the Church.
The Church, the world for that matter, is a diverse body, and we need each other’s gifts. The Church in the United States and Europe could use some of the passion that the Latin American members of the Church possess. Such an infusion could move the European and American Church out of our self-righteous, stuck-up, stiffness and get our blood flowing a little bit. At the same time, the passionate longing for… well, for any-and-everything, that the Latin American Church possesses needs to be tempered by the even keel rationality of their Northern brothers and sisters.
We need each other. That’s the point of awakening the implicit solidarity that exists within the Christian family, and within the human family as well. That is the point of moving “toward solidarity.” We share in a common mystery, and are identified by our giftedness, but this giftedness also implies limitations which represent the beginings of other’s giftedness.
Thus we enter into a great mystery that will define religiosity in the era of the global village. How we share who we are with one another as gift? How we learn to love our neighbors?