No votes for Gorgeous
Patrick Marn ham
Chichicastenango, Guatemala On the steps of the Cathedral in Man- agua, a building which was ruined by the 1972 earthquake, the Sandinista govern- ment has erected an enormous hoarding which carries a colour painting of Cesar Augusto Sandino, the patron saint of the Sandinista party. The hoarding is about thirty feet high, and Sandino is dressed as a cowboy; perhaps this was the outfit he was togged up in when the Somoza family in- vited him to dinner to discuss his plans for land reform in February 1934, and then poisoned him. Land holding remained unreformed and Nicaragua remained safe for the Somozas for the next 40 years.
It makes a remarkable contrast, the crumbling facade of the Spanish colonial Cathedral, underpinned as it were by this garish totalitarian emblem. Behind the hoarding the Cathedral is open to the sky. The marble floor is crumbled and plants and saplings have sprung up along the nave, waist-high. Doves nest in the galleries, and in the centre of the sanctuary the swollen grey bodies of rats excite the flies. The statue of Our Lady of Perpetual Succour has disappeared, although the lighthouse painted behind her plinth continues to cast its beam across the rain-stained wall. The pillars of the nave are riddled with deep cracks. On the high altar the steel door of the tabernacle has been wrenched off, and someone has scrawled 'J. Christo viene pro- nto'. On the altar itself another, or perhaps the same, hand has written Viva la Revolu- cion' . The people of Managua no longer use this Cathedral, but they have not
forgotten it, and they say that one day it will be repaired and reconsecrated.
The Catholic Church is more obviously divided in Nicaragua than it is anywhere else in Central America. The Catholic hierarchy, which originally supported the Sandinista revolution, has now become part of the unofficial opposition. But many Catholic priests, notably the Jesuits who run the university, remain firm supporters of the Marxist faction in the government. And two priests have defied the archbishop and taken up junior ministerial posts. The Sandinistas did not create this division of opinion within the Church but they have proved to be skilful exploiters of it.
It was formerly the right of the arch- bishop to say a televised mass every Sun- day and to preach a sermon, in effect to the whole nation. The Sandinistas have now banned this ceremony on the grounds that his mass was 'boring'; that is it was said in a traditional form. Instead they televised a mass said by the Pope. Subsequently they invited various foreign missionary priests who employ the zippier liturgy, and who tend to be government supporters, to say the mass. It is always gratifying when godless men take this close interest in the wide range of Catholic liturgical forms and choose one which will, get the people see some joyful masses'. But it can hardly have escaped the Sandinistas' attention that the archbishop was thereby effectively silenced on both religious and political questions. Surprisingly many of the foreign missionary priests in the country do not object to this censorship either. The distinction between religious and political matters is rather dubious in any case. The Christian missionary movement has been one of the great political forces in the world for over 300 years. Columbus would never have received permission to sail for America if he had not enjoyed the backing of the Franciscan and Dominican missionary orders of Spain. Missionary religion is no more outside politics than is international commerce. But in the past the Church has enjoyed a single political view- point. Today its internal disagreements have reached the stage where its integrity as a world religion is threatened. In Europe, and particularly in England, the political power of the Christian religion has been dis- counted for centuries. In Central America its power is visible everywhere. That is one reason why missionary work attracts so many European priests. The fact that that power, through internal divisions, is no longer exercised under a central interna- tional authority will eventually have impor- tant consequences for both the Church and for the people of Latin America. If the pre- sent trend is confirmed and the power of the Catholic Church in Latin America con- tinues to dwindle, it will be asif the British trade union movement spent its daily strength in destroying itself; a political monolith will have been washed away.
If that were to happen the religious life of Central America would undoubtedly con- tinue under a different name, just as it does in twentieth-century Europe, disguised as astrology or social work or the Lord's Day Observance Society. But in Central America the successor religion is likely to adopt a pre-Christian rather than a post- Christian form. In many places the religious life of the sub-continent even now hurries along, harnessed by threads to the system which was imposed by imperial Spain in the seventeenth century.
The popular religion of Central America is termed by the missionary priests who are charged with directing it as 'popular religiosity'. The word 'religiosity' in the mouth of a European missionary priest bears about the same relationship to 'religion' as the word 'scientology' does to 'science' when spoken at the high table of King's College, Cambridge. Ever since their arrival the missionaries have been trying to turn the people of Central America away from their pagan enthusiams and towards a knowledge of God, with mixed and possibly diminishing success. In Guatemala I drove into the hills to the town of Chichicastenango to see the Indian people of whom Aldous Huxley once wrote that there were 'no better Catholics and pro- bably no better pagans in Guatemala'.
In the plaza two whitewashed churches face each other, raised on flights of stone steps above the market, which is now empty of tourists thanks to the occasional political violence. The larger of these churches, Santo Tomas, has a fire burning outside its doors. In Chichicastenango the Indians worship Christ with fire. An old woman was moun- ting the steps on her knees, swinging a thurible made from a perforated can of Nestle's milk powder suspended from a loop of string. The rusty iron nineteenth century wind vane which veered above the heads of those stooped figures in their faded print dresses, their grey hair hanging to their waists, struck a glaringly modern note. Inside the church the normal furnishings had been removed. There are no benches, few statues or pictures, and the altars are bare. Instead there is a line of bare wooden slats laid out on the stone floor. On these, dozens of candles are lit and holy water is sprinkled. Beside the boards Indians kneel and mutter their demands for good health, or a fair price or a fertile wife. Between the candles, offer- ings of corn on the cob and black beans rest for a time, before being removed by the 'vergers' or native priests.
There is no parish priest resident in Chichicastenango, and the reason for his absence provides a cautionary tale for the twentieth-century Catholic Church. Twelve years ago Padre CasaIs arrived from Spain. He was horrified by the use of pagan fires and immediately ordered the fireplaces to be dismantled. He awoke next morning to find an angry mob of Indians on the church steps. They were armed with clubs, and they chased him through the church, through the cloisters and then through the convent of Santo Tomas, and Padre CasaIs only escaped with his life by climbing out of a window and hiding in the hut of a mer- ciful Indian. Six months later he came back to the town and started anew. This time he opened a school and a social centre and devoted himself to the political interests of 'his parishoners. Last year he was chased out again, this time by a warning that if he did not leave the country within twenty-four hours he would become the victim of one of Guatemala's right-wing death squads. Poor Padre CasaIs must have wondered what a conscientious missionary is supposed to do with himself.
Faced with this resurgence of local political vigour the Church has taken refuge in various unfamiliar roles. But whether these are of a 'fight-wing' and religious character, or a left-wing' and political one, there is no question that their success or failure will have a considerable effect on the lives of the people of this region. To the European observer it remains surprising to find an entire society according ChristianitY this respect in the last years of the twentieth century. The contrast was made perfectly by a television programme which I saw in Panama City and which was transmitted by those reponsible for enter- taining that country's considerable North American population.
The star of the show was Father Torn Smith, a priest from Pennsylvania, who bore a mild physical resemblance to Bob Hope. For half-an-hour this pitiable wreck of a man pranced before an invited au- dience, dressed in a black suit and dog col- lar. 'Let's celebrate life,' he howled over the noise of a piano. 'Get off your butt, gel out of that rut', all the while wiggling his hips in a grotesque imitation of the Twist. `I want you all to go home, look in the mirror and say "Hi Gorgeous". That's what the Gospel's all about.' Then he became con- fidential: 'I used to belong to the old- fashioned Church. And We did you in. We thought we knew everything. But it turned out You knew everything.' Why shouldn't I dance?' he then yelped. David danced before the Ark of the Covenant.'
On the charitable assumption that he had been brain-damaged at birth one longed for someone to pull the plug out of his life sup- port system. It is priests such as Father Toni Smith who are sent out by the wealthY parishes of the West to instruct the Indians of Central America in their religious faith.
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