Because they ao entwined with people's lives, capillas and churches here in our area are as familiar to the people who live here as the rooms in their houses. Alive. And the streets serve as pasillos, or hallways (I almost want to say veins and arteries, but it doesn't sound poetic). On special days -- holy days, fiesta days, Independence Day, school celebrations, people pour through them in procession, sometimes joyfully, sometimes solemnly, often walking to the beat of drums. On Independence Day (also concluded with a celebration in the local church) the drums were real, the boys dressed in school uniform. On other days, adolescent boys marching alongside the crowd mark solemn rhythms on large, empty buckets. The fact of the poverty which makes fancy drums unattainable does nothing to diminish the dignity of community occasions.
In newer communities like ours, the churches, built as part of their planned development , are ugly affairs, concrete slab buildings painted in dreary institutional colors: maroons or beiges or sickly greens. Though the altars within are alive with statuary and flowers and all kinds of images, little else is. On the other hand, the capillas, sometimes tiny churches, sometimes as small as cartons for fruits or vegetables were built by ordinary people as acts of faith. These cling to the sides of roads and sit on top of hills or nestle in the center of a town. Sometimes a bus stop is a capilla. A capilla can be the center of worship for a village or it can be a sacred place open only for holy occasions or it can just be a place to stop outside of to offer a quick prayer. There are often the remains of candles lined in a waxy row. I thought the ones along roads marked where people had been killed in auto accidents, but Jero tells me that’s often not so. Sometimes people just put them where they feel the need for comfort or protection or to show devotion: for instance, near where they work, or for special groups, like fishermen. Sometimes there’s a capilla so La Virgén can watch over you at a dangerous curve in the road. Younger men as well as older women, children and mothers, most people cross themselves when they go by one.
Often – I’m tempted to say always – homes themselves have elaborate shrines, in which the Virgén de Guadalupe generally, but not always, holds center stage. When it’s not La Virgén de Guadalupe, though, it’s La Virgén de Carmen or another of her manifestations, or maybe several of them. Or else María Magdalena. Jesus is there, too, but generally he’s a bit too high up to see straight on. Often he's smaller than La Virgén. The shrines, both in homes and along the way, are ever changing, with mementos of sad and joyous occasions added as time unfolds. New images of La Virgén and other holy figures are layered on the old. Mementos are tucked into bouquets of artificial flowers, sometimes photos of people who’ve recently died. Now there are portraits of the new saint, Bishop Rafael Guizar Valencia, the much-beloved Bishop of Xalapa remembered for his bravery in tending the wounded during the Revolution and for being a truly holy and loving man. There are candles and flowers, real and fake, and silvery paper and paper chains and bells made from foil covered egg carton segments strung together with straws.
Jehovah’s Witnesses are actively proselytizing in our area. Mexican and American, they walk the streets in pairs and trios, always polite and neat. They have some success. Unfortunately, they encourage their followers to remove the small capillas: suddenly a familiar and comforting stop along the road is gone.
A few days ago, we drove with hero and her sister-in-law all of ten miles from home on a two hour journey to visit some of Jero’s husband’s relatives up en el campo, their rancho folded into the same hills as Guillermo’s family’s. (See our neighbor John Calypso’s blog, www.vivaveracruz.com/blog for more information about Jero and family). On the way back, we stopped to visit an old couple, family friends of Jero’s. The husband is a courtly man named Luz, his wife, a tiny whirlwind of a woman, high voiced, who chattered on and on, laughing with and at us. They lived in a traditional country house with walls of vertical wooden slats and a packed dirt floor. There were no windows, but the spaces between the slats let in some light, and they had one hanging fixture. A beautiful shrine stretched along the length of the the front room from table height to ceiling. Luz invited Jim and me to sit on the blue velvet-covered couch to rest and look at it. Familiar images of saints and virgenes looked down at us. Jesus, too. It was hard not to feel embraced in its peaceful holiness. Luz said that Jesus filled Jim and Mary me when we sat there. Luz said, "I have never lacked for anything."
At the highest point in our Colonia sits La Capilla Azul, opened only once a year in December for La Virgén de Guadalupe´s feast day. Jim and I climb the hundred or so steps several times a week for exercise, passing the houses, among the poorer ones in the colonia, stacked higgledy piggledy along side. There is an outdoor communal sink for washing clothes and brushing teeth. In the morning, we often pass a young girl rinsing clothes there, or a young boy dragging a bucket of water up to his house, just below the capilla. Last week, the capilla was open for a cleaning. An older woman, long gray hair pulled back as is common, pinafore apron on, paused in her sweeping to greet us and chat. Maintaining the chapel is her job. She does not do it for money, but for love. She had not been able to clean the capilla for some time because, a diabetic, she had had to have three toes removed and it had been a long recuperation. But she wanted us to know she was fine now. “Gracias a Dios,” I said. “No,” she said. “Gracias a la Virgén.” It is La Virgén de Guadalupe who looks over her and protects her. She showed us a tiny tracing on the front door of the Capilla. “The shadow of La Virgén,” she said, smiling.
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Below are some pictures of several capillas. Remember, you can click on th photos for larger versions.
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THe first set of photosare of the capilla at the bottom of the street where Noe's garage, the place we get our cars fixed, is. This is in San Marcos which is on the main road between Coátepec and Xico and maybe 3/4 mile from our house.
The first pictures are of the chapel. THe next picture is looking down from Noe's garage towards the chapel. The road actually ends at a little bridge to the left of which is the chapel. The next picture is looking up the street from Noe's and the last is the car getting its oil changed at Noe's with Jim watching.
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Here are some photos of the capilla in the little village where up a way into the hills where our water is to come from. This capilla, I believe, serves as the community's chuch. It sits among several houses.
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We came across the capilla illustrated below driving along a very narrow road that branches off the main (dirt) road from Xico to Xico Viejo.
The first one is the picture I took leaning over the bridge just past the capilla. Unfortunately, you cannot tell how far down the little river is. I suspect the Capilla may have many purposes here: perhaps to commemorate someone who might have died in an accident as well as to offer safe passage to travellers about to curve around the road to cross the narrow bridge.
The exterior of the capilla:
Some interior shots:
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