Chatino family at the clinic during surgical campaign last yearIt was an interesting adventure driving through the mountains from the coast to Oaxaca City, and then to Puebla. Wednesday morning we headed out, Dan and Angelica and their baby Jacob in their Explorer, and us carrying the big items in our Toyota pickup. It was a long, winding, road to Oaxaca City made tolerable by anti-nausea drugs and dry toast, and made enjoyable by the lush jungle and sermons on CD of the book of Romans by our old pastor Bruce.
Two hours into the 7-hour trip the cars in front of us stopped. What first appeared to be construction work turned out to be something very different! Eddie and Dan got out and walked up the road to discover that a large group of Chatino men had barricaded the road with cars, a pile of dirt and a discarded refrigerator. They came back with the news that the protestors were waiting for government authorities to arrive to negotiate with them.
A sheet of paper explained their demands. The people of San Juan Lachao had in the previous year been promised that the dirt road to their village would be paved, that they would be given a Central Salud, and subsidies to buy farm equipment. We were told that $13,000,000 pesos had been allocated for the projects, but now the money had “disappeared.”
After 4 hours we were told, “Hurry, hurry! get in your cars, they are going to let 30 cars pass through!” Fortunately many cars had turned around and returned to Puerto Escondido so we made it through. As we passed the protesters, I looked at their faces. They were solemn as we passed; I raised the back of my open hand to them, which is a Mexican gesture for “thank you”. Some nodded and made small smiles. I told Eddie I wished I could take a picture, he said, “don’t.” Sorry I don't have pictures.
All through those 4 hours of waiting, wondering if we too should turn around, we found ourselves relaxed, calm….and in sympathy with the people who had changed out travel schedule. I thought, “What can the powerless do?” Year after year, decade after decade, corruption and fraud handicap even the educated, modern Mexican. How much harder for the mountain people, the indigenous, the bottom rung of the ladder in Mexican society, those who are just trying to live and raise their family. As we waited we prayed, not just that the road would open up and that we could be on our way, but also that justice would be done.
Struggling in the darkness
We encountered the barricade at the turnoff for the town called Juquila. If you lived in Oaxaca you would be very familiar with the Virgin of Juquila. You see pilgrims all over Puerto Escondido and on the coastal highway from Acapulco to Huatulco (they are in the cars and buses displaying a picture of a statue adorned with flowers, usually gladiolus, on the front of the vehicle.)
As we drove this winding road to Oaxaca we passed bicycle after bicycle with riders wearing t-shirts identifying themselves as pilgrims to the shrine at Juquila. Then after we passed the barricade we saw more. It got darker and darker. We began to pass bicycles in the dark some with blinking lights, other not. Up and down the mountainous roads, mile after strenuous mile on the narrow dangerous road they pushed on, in the dark.
I began thinking “Why?” What were they trying to achieve. What were they trying to earn? Although I knew the answer, face to face with the reality, the danger and the difficulty of the task, it scarcely seemed believable.
When we finally arrived in Oaxaca Pastor Jorge and his wife Margloria met us. After a night’s rest and hot shower our hosts fed us a wonderful Oaxacan breakfast of Mexican hot chocolate, pan dulce and tlayudas.
As we talked with our hosts I had to return to what I had seen of the pilgrims of Juquila. I have lived and traveled in Mexico for a long time and am familiar with the people’s devotion to their local idols, but somehow the toll that that devotion extracts from their lives had never impressed me quite so deeply as the bicyclists struggling in the darkness.
When I told our host what we had seen, Margloria agreed that the pilgrims were trying to earn points to gain heaven. She then said, “It is all out of ignorance!” She maintained that they didn’t know any other way. Pastor Jorge gave examples of how when people hear the good news of the gospel they rejoice that a better way has been provided through faith in Jesus Christ.
Dan explained to me later that several years ago Margloria’s family had had a terrible car accident on the same road we had traveled. The family was either en route, or returning from a pilgrimage to Juquila. Margloria’s first husband had been killed, her daughter Jossana badly injured. Dr. Angelica had had the opportunity to care for Margloria in her depression after her husband’s death, and share the gospel of Jesus Christ with her.
As a history teacher Margloria explained to us that the worship of the idols go back for centuries long before the Spanish brought Catholicism to the new world. She affirmed that Catholic identity had been applied to the ancient deities and the devotion had gone on as before. This is called syncretism. All the way back home, every time we passed a shrine to either Our Lady of Soledad, or Our Lady of Guadalupe, I saw that these were not Catholic expressions, but something much older.
image of Oaxaca City
After delivering Dan and Angelica's things in Puebla, we got up early and enjoyed a nice afternoon in one of our favorite cities, Oaxaca. The trip back to the coast was amazing. We traveled along the ridge of the moutains and enjoyed the most dramatic views of small houses hugging the mountainsides, and little villages clinging to the sides of mountains across steep valleys.
Tacos, literally on the side of the road!
Is it really Christmas?
Tomorrow is Noche Buena, or as we call it in the U.S., Christmas Eve. (Noche Buena is also the flower we know as poinsettia, which grows as large shrubs everywhere in Mexico where we have visited.) We will be picking up the medications that we will distribute to patients at Festival, and then going home with Berna and Angie to celebrate in San Jose de Progreso, as we did last year.
Christmas Day we have meetings scheduled for 8:00 A.M. and 5:00 P.M. as we prepare for Festival Victoria. Somewhere in between I will have to make sure all my supplies are ready. The following morning we will set up the clinic outside under tents and start seeing patients.
We have been listening to a little Christmas music; right now it is Bing Crosby. I have some lights up in our room, and a wreath up on our door…and a tiny Christmas tree about 8 inches tall. I think I will make some tea and we can eat some cookies our daughter-in-law sent with us when we left Washington.
You can imagine that it is difficult to be away from our children at Christmas, and Thanksgiving, and Easter (and Sarah and Grace’s birthdays). I have already shed a few tears, and will likely shed more tomorrow or Christmas Day, but…
People like Eddie and I who have so much to be thankful for: wonderful children who are faithful to our God, precious grandchildren, friends whom we love, and who love us dearly, really should not begrudge God of anything. It has been our determination to spend our live on things that last forever. That is what we taught our children, and now WE get to live it!
Those of you that have your family around you enjoy them and be grateful. Recognize that the baby in the manger was the Eternal God, the First and the Last, and the One who gave His life as the price for our sin….and who gave us the right to call God our Father.
Merry Christmas
Love Eddie and Leeann
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