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Historic Churches of New Mexico Today
Historic Churches
of New Mexico Today
Frank Graziano
3
3
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America.
© Oxford University Press 2019
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction
rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above.
You must not circulate this work in any other form

and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.
CIP data is on file at the Library of Congress

ISBN 978–0–19–066348–3 (pbk.)
ISBN 978–0–19–066347–6 (hbk.)
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Paperback printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America

Hardback printed by Bridgeport National Bindery, Inc., United States of America
COVER PHOTO CREDIT:

Cover photograph by Carol M. Highsmith. San José de Gracia Church in Las Trampas,
New Mexico. Courtesy of Photographs in the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library
of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division
In memory of truth.
† 2017
PREFACE
I had in mind a book that would focus less on church buildings than
on people in relation to churches— parishioners, caretakers, priest,
restorers—and on what is happening at historic churches today. The themes
that emerged as I pursued this concept included the interactions of past and
present, the decline of traditions, a sense of place and attachment to place,
the church as a cultural legacy, the church in relation to native traditions, re-
sistance to Catholicism, tensions between priests and congregations, mainte-
nance and restoration of historic buildings, and, in general, how the church
as a place and devotion as a practice are important (or not) to the identities
and everyday lives of individuals and communities.
My original intent was to write ten chapters in a standardized format, with
each chapter devoted to a single church. As the project developed, however,
I realized that a limited sample would inadequately represent the scope of
New Mexican church communities and the complexity of the themes that
they evoke. Interrelations and regional clusters of churches also made the
original approach seem unviable. Rather than forcing a consistency that the
project was resisting, I decided finally to allow the nature of the material to
determine the structure of each chapter. Five of the chapters follow the orig-
inal single-church format and include a visiting guide and “present past” sec-
tion that summarizes a historical event of current relevance. Two chapters
provide interpretive tours of chains of churches, one along the High Road
to Taos and the other along the southern Río Grande, with historical con-
text as necessary. One chapter, on Mora County, treats a group of regional
churches collectively. Late in the project I also added an appendix so that
churches not treated elsewhere in the book could be included at least briefly.
ix
The principal historic churches in Albuquerque and Santa Fe are mentioned
in that selection but are otherwise excluded, in part because information on
these churches is widely available elsewhere. I also confess a rural bias.
My focus is on the “today” of the book’s title, but during the research it
became clear that a measure of history would be necessary to inform and
enhance what we see presently. Consequently I integrated historical nar-
rative as it seemed useful to current understanding, or to clarify matters
that are undertreated or unclear in other sources. I also included a chapter
that summarizes deculturation policies during the Spanish, Mexican, and
American governance of New Mexico and then details conflicts with the
Archdiocese of Santa Fe at Santo Domingo (Kewa) and Isleta Pueblos.
Throughout the book I have avoided the boilerplate history that seems to
me more a baggage of knowledge than a contribution to true understanding.
The range of topics treated in the book required a corresponding range of
discourse—narrative, descriptive, interpretive, guidebook—as the occasion
warranted. I allowed myself shifts of register accordingly and tried to keep
the transitions from being too abrupt. At some moments I wanted to capture
experiential qualities and to reproduce their feelings in language.
Unlike my previous books, which each had several hundred endnotes,
in this work I kept the scholarly apparatus to a minimum. The intent of the
brief notes is to acknowledge the sources that contributed to my interpreta-
tion rather than to reinforce an argument or facilitate subsequent scholar-
ship. Eventually I reduced the bibliography to include only works cited in the
notes so that the page space could be used to better purpose.
My approach throughout the research was to read with depth and breadth
in order to establish a context, and then to base the chapters primarily on
interviews with people active at the churches. These informants are identified
by first names only. Rather than guiding the interviews with imposed themes
from the readings or from my own thoughts, I introduced ideas and then
allowed local interests and concerns—what was important to people at a
given church—to emerge in the discussions. Once I found a thread I would
pursue it during later interviews, and as new ideas emerged I would pursue
them similarly. My intent for the book as a whole was diversity in content as
well as format, with each chapter treating different themes. Many themes
were common to multiple sites, however, so I consolidated treatment where
it seemed most appropriate and then allowed echoes in other chapters to re-
call and reinforce a given theme.
The book that resulted from this method is largely about the people
I interviewed and the experience of being among them. The research was a
moving opportunity to interact with lives remarkably different from my own.
x | Preface
Ethnography is to a certain degree duplicity—who you are and who you are
outside your culture—until ultimately the doubling collapses and you wonder
where that leaves you. I spied on myself within the mysterious sphere where
differences meet and negotiate a relation, and where I saw myself through
others, learned from that, and formed friendships. Mostly I admired people’s
certainty—their confidence in being who they are—and I was also moved by
their commitment, humility, and generosity delivered with a human warmth
that I had almost forgotten. I also admired the informants’ insightfulness,
which shamed the empty academic verbiage to which I had assimilated. This
book, more so than any of my others, is written in the point of view of the
people I interviewed.
The churches in the title and throughout the book refer to Catholic
churches. “Pueblo” in the lower case refers to a native village, and in the
upper case to the people, the Pueblo Indians. I use “Indian” as opposed to
“Native American” following local usage at the pueblos, in New Mexico more
broadly, and in the titles of major institutions, such as the Museum of Indian
Arts and Culture and the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center. Racial and ethnic
adjectives—black, hispanic, native, white—are used in lower case. Once a
context has been established, I generally refer to Penitentes—members of la
Fraternidad Piadosa de Nuestro Padre Jesús Nazareno—as “hermanos” (which
means brothers—a fraternidad is a brotherhood) or for clarity as “hermanos
penitentes.” These are used in the lower case, as is “penitente” as an adjec-
tive. All roads are designated as “route” to simplify the multiple variations—
state road, county road, tribal road, forest service road.
The word “mission” has two distinct meanings. One refers to the
Franciscan missions and their churches to convert the Pueblos beginning in
the late sixteenth century. The other meaning is a parish designation for affil-
iate churches: Each parish has a pastor (the priest responsible for the parish)
at a main or mother church, and this pastor is also responsible for one or
more additional churches, known as missions or mission churches, located
elsewhere. I use “mission” in both of these senses, which are clear in context.
Iglesia means church, capilla means chapel, santo and santa mean saint
and are also used in reference to images of saints, and san is an abbreviation
before the names of some saints (San Francisco, San Isidro). To avoid the
unfortunate word reredos, which seems plural in the singular and is awkward
in the plural (reredoses), I use “altar screen” for the painted panels that are
behind altars and sometimes positioned laterally along naves. New Mexican
altar screens are usually comprised of retablos, here meaning images of
saints painted on wood. Bultos are carvings of saints in wood. Santeros and
santeras are people who paint retablos and carve bultos, which is to say make
Preface | xi
images of saints. An encuentro (literally “meeting”) occurs when two saint
images are brought in procession to meet one another, or in another use
when people from a local church come out to meet an arriving pilgrimage or
procession. A mayordomo or mayordoma is a person (or in the plural often a
married couple) designated as church caretaker; the Pueblos also use church
mayor, fiscal, and gaugashti to designate this role. A función is technically the
annual installation of new mayordomos, although the same mayordomos
often continue, and the corresponding mass and celebration are usually on
or near the patron’s feast day. A convento, unlike the English cognate, refers
to the friary or priest’s residence at a mission church. I use “apse” as the ex-
terior rear of the church, “chancel” as the altar area, and “atrium” as the open
area, often walled, in front of a church. There are regional differences in the
use of luminaria and farolito, and the words are sometimes used interchange-
ably. I use luminaria in reference to the (often piñón) bonfires at many night
events, and farolito in reference to the votive candles inside paper bags that
are used as decoration at Christmastime.
It was difficult to standardize accents in the Spanish names of people and
places, because in New Mexico accents are used inconsistently. In the end
I privileged the Spanish to the anglicized spelling and put accents every-
where that Spanish required, with exceptions to follow standard usage or an
individual’s personal preference.
The churches described in this book are predominantly active places of
worship. Visitors are expected to be respectful and abide by posted rules.
Protocols for visiting Indian pueblos are widely available in print and on-
line and are strictly enforced. Many of the religious events that I describe
are not frequented by tourists, and in some cases a visitor might be the
only person present from outside the community. In these circumstances
appropriate behavior is generally reciprocated with a warm welcome. The
dates and times of masses, feast-day celebrations, openings, and other
events change frequently, and at many village churches masses and feast-
day events are irregular or being discontinued. Parish and pueblo offices
(and sometimes websites) have current information. Churches at other
times are usually locked, but parish office personnel will sometimes un-
lock a church for visits upon request. At some places a donation or pur-
chase of a raffle ticket is expected in return, and at all historic churches
contributions are needed and appreciated. Often there is a collection box
for this purpose.
In the visitor sections of this book I have excluded all information
that might change periodically, such as phone numbers, event times,
and sources of food and lodging. Simple directions are provided where
xii | Preface
GPS guidance might be insufficient or inaccessible. Dirt roads should be
avoided when wet, because in many areas of New Mexico the clay content
of dirt clogs tire treads and makes driving feel similar to sledding. Many
dirt (and paved) roads also cross arroyos or dry stream beds that are prone
to flash flooding during upstream storms. It is always best to inquire lo-
cally regarding road conditions.
Preface | xiii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
M y greatest debt is to Allison Colborne, director of the Laboratory of

Anthropology Library at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture in
Santa Fe, for her help and solidarity from the beginning and throughout
the project. Diane Bird, the archivist at the same institution, generously
facilitated contacts and guided me as I found my way. I am also most grateful
to Nicole Kliebert, formerly of Cornerstones Community Partnerships, to
Father Jack Clark Robinson, OFM, provincial minister of Our Lady of
Guadalupe Province, and to photographer John A. Benigno, all of whom
kindly provided help and guidance at various stages of the project.
In Chimayó and along the High Road my research was greatly enhanced
by the help of Father Julio González, Angelo Sandoval, Lorrie García, Ben
and Annette Smiley, my friends and neighbors Clodie François and Barbara
and Weto Malisow, and especially Frank López.
At Laguna Pueblo I gratefully acknowledge Governor Virgil Siow and Tribal
Historic Preservation Officer Gaylord Siow, whose support of the project
made research at the pueblo possible and pleasurable. I am also grateful for
the help and guidance of Antonio Trujillo and Father Gerry Steinmetz, OFM.
At Acoma Pueblo I am very grateful to Second Lieutenant Governor Chris
Garcia and Tribal Secretary Marcus Leno, who kindly guided my navigation
through the procedures for requesting research permission from the tribal
council.
At St. Joseph Apache Mission Father Mike Williams warmly welcomed my
research, and I am especially grateful to Harry Vasile for his friendship and
help throughout my stay in Mescalero.
xv
In Mora County, Veronica Serna introduced me to the community of
mayordomos and thereafter helped to arrange interviews. Rebecca Montoya
was a great friend throughout my Mora research and thereafter during
many meals and excursions. I am also grateful to Father Dennis Dolter,
who endorsed the project, and for kind assistance along the way from Pete
Warzel, Mac and Kristin Watson, and Gabriel Meléndez.
In Golden, Desiri and Allen Pielhau, of the Henderson Store, very kindly
provided documents, news articles, digital files, and photographs that were
critical to my research. Tom Chávez also generously shared information
based on research he had done in the 1970s. Ron Cooper and the Franciscan
Archives of the Province of St. John the Baptist, in Cincinnati, graciously
provided documents and photographs.
The many people who took the time to talk with me, share their
experiences, and show me their churches have each been thanked person-
ally, but I reiterate my gratitude here formally and for the collective.
I do so likewise for the archivists and librarians who assisted my textual
research, especially Patricia Hewitt, formerly of the Fray Angélico Chávez
History Library. Other collections and institutions that were essential during
the research (in addition to the Laboratory of Anthropology mentioned above)
include the University of New Mexico’s Center for Southwest Research and
Special Collections; the New Mexico State Records Center and Archives;
the New Mexico State Library; the New Mexico State University Library
Archives and Special Collections; the Southwest collections at Taos Public
Library and Santa Fe Public Library; the Ben Lujan Library at Northern New
Mexico College; Our Lady of Guadalupe Province Archives; the Palace of
the Governors Photo Archive; and the Bartlett Library and Archives at the
Museum of International Folk Art.
The sources of photographs are acknowledged in the captions; those
without attribution were taken by me.
I acknowledge an aesthetic debt to the works of Cormac McCarthy, Bruno
Schultz, Gustaw Herling, and Fernando Pessoa.
And finally, to Cynthia Read, my editor at Oxford University Press since
1998, I express again my enduring gratitude.
xvi | Acknowledgments
1 Santuario de Chimayó
Life is a journey and you choose to be a pilgrim or a tourist.
—Father Julio
S
ome come wounded by disease, by addiction, by broken hearts or
even simply besieged by the malaise of emptiness and loss of hope
and by human frailty in quest of some durable meaning. I’m not sure
why I’m here. Maybe in repair from the normalized insanity that makes your
footing wobble and your background recede until you stand alone stranded
with hands on your ears but still feel the tremble inside your body.
An old man with a red cap in his hand limps with a cane toward the Santo
Niño de Atocha. He drops some coins in the box, looks at the kneeler to cal-
culate the challenge, and kneels slowly, favoring one leg, really more of a
genuflect, and after a wince of pain and gravitational surrender he settles and
signs himself with the cross. The Santo Niño is enshrined in a nineteenth-
century confessional booth painted white, with holes drilled more or less
in pattern to form an imperfect circle on the sides. The front, at the top,
above the praying man’s head, has a disproportionate pilgrim’s shell carved
in wood. As the man prays a family passes behind him to gather holy dirt in
the room just beyond. Through the doorway you can see a circular hole in
the floor and trowels at angles in dirt toplit to dramatic effect. The mother
shovels a heavy load into a Walmart bag and the family leaves—there didn’t
seem to be prayer involved—just as bus tourists wearing nametags approach
behind a guide with an umbrella. Hats, backpacks, and phone cameras
mobilized by new sneakers bought for the trip.
Chimayó, where the santuario (the Spanish word for shrine) is located,
is a composite of several settlements, historically known as plazas. The
santuario was built in the Plaza del Potrero, which consequently evolved to
Historic Churches of New Mexico Today. Frank Graziano, Oxford University Press (2019).
© Frank Graziano. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190663476.003.0001
become the epicenter of Chimayó as it is known today. The nearby Plaza
del Cerro is one of the few remaining remnants of the fortified plazas that
were built to settle rural New Mexico. Chimayó is in a valley at the base of
one of four regional hills that were sacred to the Tewa prior to conquest. In
Tewa the hill is known as Tsi Mayo, from which the hispanicized place name
was derived. There are several native ruins in the area, and many residents
believe that what is now holy dirt was once curative water (or mud) used by
the Tewa. Such Christianization of a native healing site or medium occurred
frequently in colonial Mexico, to which New Mexico belonged, usually after
a miraculous apparition. During a smallpox epidemic in Tlaxcala, the Virgin
of Ocotlán led natives from their traditional curative water to a more effective
Christian alternative. That spring is now inside a chapel connected to this
Virgin’s basilica by a walkway.
The Santuario de Chimayó was built after a painted wooden sculpture of
the Christ of Esquipulas appeared miraculously at the site where the holy
dirt is now gathered. This crucifix was discovered around 1810 by Bernardo
Abeyta (1771–1856), a regional leader of the Penitentes. Construction of the
chapel began around 1813 and was completed in 1816. An 1818 inventory
describes the church’s adjacent rooms as warehouses for local woven goods,
probably stocked there for sale to visitors. The two rooms at the entry—now
the priests’ office on the left and the Blessed Sacrament Chapel on the right—
were recorded in a 1934 Historic American Building Survey as “storage” and
“unused,” respectively.
At the time of the santuario’s construction and well into the twentieth
century, the houses in the Plaza del Potrero were residences inhabited by
families that had settled the area. Today many of the houses are shops or
abandoned. Dennis remembered that even some fifty years ago, when he
married into the community, “the houses were occupied, there were kids
playing, dogs. You walk out there today and this is a ghost town.” Originally
the shrine and holy dirt were used by local and then regional residents who
came to seek miracles related primarily to health. As described in a Works
Progress Administration (WPA) report in the 1930s, “Crippled and suffering
men, women and children, sometimes as many as one hundred in a single
day, come to the santuario on foot, horseback, in carriages, wagons or astride
burros.”
Tourists with cars began to arrive early in the twentieth century too, but
the volume was moderated by the difficulty of access. One woman traveled
to the santuario with her husband in the mid-1930s and later wrote about
the experience. After turning from Española onto what is now Route 76, she
wrote, we “traveled something more akin to a trail, twisting to the right, then
2 | Historic Churches of New Mexico Today

to the left, and with plenty of curves up and down . . . . Sometimes the road
seemed to disappear entirely; there were dips so abrupt that the up-coming
sensation was breath-taking; rocks were abundant and once, for a consider-
able stretch, our way apparently lay straight up the dry bed of a creek.” This
stretch of Route 76 from Española through Santa Cruz was later paved and
recently designated the Father Casimiro Roca Memorial Highway, after the
pastor who was largely responsible for the santuario’s initial development.
Father Roca was intermittently a pastor and priest at the santuario from
1959 until his death in 2015. “When I first arrived,” he wrote, “I found the
structure of the church in danger of crumbling into ruins.” In September,
2017, a statue of Father Roca, sculpted by Marco Oviedo, was installed on the
santuario grounds.
Route 98 was another dirt lane across difficult terrain until it was paved
around 1964 through the advocacy of a former county commissioner, Juan
Medina. His son, Leroy, later petitioned successfully to have Route 98 named
Juan Medina Road. The paving of that road greatly facilitated access to the
santuario, because the road intersects on one side with Route 76, which leads
to Española, and on the other side with Route 503, which leads to Pojoaque
and Santa Fe. The paving of Route 98 also contributed to development of
Pat shares a laugh with Father Julio and others during the unveiling ceremony for the
Father Roca statue.
Santuario de Chimayó | 3
the scenic route known as the High Road to Taos, on which the santuario
became a principal stop.
Shortly after these transportation improvements, in 1970, the santuario
was designated a National Historic Landmark. The paved routes, the honor-
ific historic designation, and the growing national reputation as a pilgrimage
shrine dramatically increased visits to the santuario in subsequent decades.
Father Roca and the current pastor, Father Julio, have faced the challenge
of managing a world-class destination of religious, heritage, and ethnicity
tourism while at once preserving the santuario’s integrity as a center of
devotion.
Many locals lament the erosion of traditional culture that results from de-
velopment and tourism, but times have also changed well beyond Chimayó,
nationally and globally, for better or worse, and insulating a community may
no longer be feasible. Older northern New Mexicans also feel a sense of de-
spair because traditions that have endured for centuries and that seemed
inviolable are now depreciating or are disregarded. Leroy said that religious
values used to hold people back from transgression, as a kind of checking
mechanism, but many young people disrespect these values and feel free
to do as they please. Drug addiction, crime, and incarceration are common
consequences.
Ruben, who like Leroy grew up in Chimayó, made similar points: “They’ve
lost their respect for God,” “there’s no sense of moral values,” “the respect
for one another is no longer there.” He then explained that in his youth “if
you did something bad in school the principal would give you a spanking
with the board of education, and if your parents knew about it you’d get an-
other one. So in a sense you would live with a sense of fear, respect. People
no longer show respect for elders.” Dennis took these concerns in a different
direction when he focused on the secularization of everyday life. “Every
morning my mother-in-law and my wife, they’d go to the 7:00 mass, and
all the people around here would go too. But nowadays, my daughters, they
don’t have time to go to church, they have to get the kids ready for school and
go to work.”
The angst of change and cultural insecurity in Chimayó was already ap-
parent to the author of a 1935 report. He wrote that “the people are deathly
afraid for the future. They are certain that something (they are not sure what)
is going to happen to them—that they are going to lose their land or their
water—that the Anglos will displace them.” Those feelings were amplified
by relocation to New Mexico of artists, hippies, wannabes, and other youth—
supplemented later by retirees—who were distinct in ethnicity, culture, and
values from the original hispanic settlers. As described in a book published

in 1969, an initial culture shock gradually relaxed to acquiescence. “Artists
sitting on a camp stool here and there sketching the santuario is not an un-
common sight, and people of Chimayó have long ceased looking upon them
as odd balls with their long hair, beards, funny clothes for the most part,
and have long since ceased consigning the woman to the home where she
belongs, rearing a family as every good Christian woman should instead of
tramping all over the countryside in men’s clothes and painting pictures.”
There are also regrets for the bucolic past undermined in part by the very
roads that connected Chimayó to the world. As summarized in a Historic
American Landscapes Survey, an older resident who lived along Route 76
before it was paved “used to enjoy watching the herds of sheep that passed
by his house as they were moved from mountain ranches to the market
in Española.” He especially loved “watching the Penitente Brotherhood
file down the road between their moradas through the darkness of Lenten
night.” And “he expressed a deep loss and sorrow that his home is near the
road now. He detests the roar of automobile traffic.”
Esquipulas
The crucifix behind the santuario’s altar is known as Nuestro Señor de

Esquipulas (Our Lord of Esquipulas) or the Christ of Esquipulas. This iden-
tity is derived from a Guatemalan miraculous image, the Black Christ of
Esquipulas, which is named for the town where the statue is located. The
Guatemalan image was sculpted in 1595 and is one of many Black Christs in
the region. Notable others include the Señor de Otatitlán near Veracruz and
the Señor de Tila in Chiapas, both Mexican miraculous images that attract
huge annual pilgrimages. These Christ figures are usually black because of
the dark wood used to sculpt them. Some have been darkened by candle
smoke. Many of these images are crucified on what is known as a living
cross, or tree of life, often green in color and with vines and leaves, to repre-
sent Christ’s triumph over death through resurrection.
As is common in devotion to miraculous images, the cult of Guatemala’s
Black Christ of Esquipulas spread nationally and abroad as pilgrims, travelers,
peddlers, and missionaries reported miracles. Throughout history migrants
have also taken devotions with them to their new places of residence.
Replicas—presumed miraculous by virtue of their relation to the original—
are made and new centers of devotion emerge where these replicas are
enshrined. Today devotions to images of the Black Christ of Esquipulas are
in the Mexican states of Aguascalientes, Durango, Guanajuato, Jalisco, and
Oaxaca, among others, as well as at several sites in Guatemala, Honduras,
El Salvador, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Panama, Venezuela, and Ecuador. In the
United States devotions to the Guatemalan Esquipulas are in San Antonio,
Phoenix, and Los Angeles. Unlike the Christ of Esquipulas in Chimayó, these
other US images are in the likeness of the Guatemalan original. Chimayó’s
Christ of Esquipulas holds in common with the Guatemalan original the
name (but not appearance), crucifixion on a tree of life, and the use of holy
dirt (known as tierra bendita or tierra santa) in relation to devotion. There is
another New Mexican chapel dedicated to the Christ of Esquipulas in Los
LeFebres, near Ocaté in Mora County.
Chimayó’s Christ of Esquipulas is one of many not- made- by-
hands
images, as they are called in translation of a Greek term. The idea is that
these images are of divine rather than natural origin, sent by God to open a
local, culturally consonant channel to his grace. There are many such images
in Mexico, notably the Christ of Chalma, who appeared miraculously in a
cave to displace a native deity; and the Virgin of Guadalupe, who appeared
miraculously as a painting on Juan Diego’s tilma. Chimayó’s Esquipulas
shares the supernatural origin of these images but not the attributes of alive-
ness and personhood with which miraculous Christs in Spanish America
are commonly endowed. These attributes include corporal vitality and move-
ment, expression of emotion, facial changes, sweating and bleeding, com-
munication with devotees, and acts of volition (such as rewarding devotion
and punishing transgression).
Holy Dirt
A couple of tourists bow their heads as they walk through the low doorway
from the chancel, and when the man’s head rises on the other side he looks
to his right and says, “There’s the dirt. I wonder if there’s bags or some-
thing.” He pulls a tissue from his pocket and the woman finds a holy-dirt
informational flyer and folds it to a kind of envelope. As they leave happy
with their dirt, a curious—astonished—girl follows them with her eyes but
the couple doesn’t notice because their own eyes are in deep reconnaissance
of the photos on the wall, the crutches, the saint images that don’t look back.
Then a family of five approaches and gathers around the hole. The father
makes the sign of the cross with dirt on the children’s foreheads but the
family leaves when a couple of urban bicycle tourists enter, look around
briefly, and then leave too. Another couple in bicycle attire enters behind

them. “That’s the holy dirt—should we get some?” the woman asks, and the
man responds, “It couldn’t hurt.”
Everyone then turns toward the exterior door because an older couple is en-
tering with an even older woman in a wheelchair that the man pushes. After
stopping at the Santo Niño de Atocha they maneuver through two Mexican
families, some sitting on the benches and others praying on kneelers before
saints on a table. The man pivots the wheelchair to back into the little room
with the dirt. He takes some dirt and makes the sign of the cross on the older
woman’s forehead. When the wheelchair is moved slightly I can no longer
see her but in something like shaky slow motion her bony hand and its wrist
reach into the space framed by the doorway and the fingers open for dirt that
mostly sifts through to the floor as the man scoops and then pours with his
hand. When they wheel her out her hand is rubbing dirt inside her shirt,
over the heart, and her lips are moving in prayer.
Visitors carry away the holy dirt in ziplock bags, grocery bags, paper cups,
water bottles, little plastic containers sold in the gift shops, and whatever else
they might have at hand. A photograph taken on Good Friday in 2003 shows
dirt and trowels in a trough on the altar rail to expedite collection by devotees
on a line that stretches out to the road. In anticipation of Holy Week today,
young volunteers package the dirt in small plastic bags, like those used for
jewelry, thousands of them, which are then distributed among pilgrims and
visitors. People who cannot visit the santuario in person acquire dirt through
friends, relatives, and coworkers, or request it from the santuario by phone
or online and receive it in the mail. Many visitors take more dirt than they
would seem to need. Frances, a mayordoma in the 1980s, joked that “maybe
they are going to make adobes.”
As visits to the santuario increased, particularly beginning in the 1970s,
a corner of the church was nearly undermined by people digging for holy
dirt. Even decades earlier, in 1938, a WPA report noted that the hole was “al-
ready six feet deep.” To remedy the problem, around 1980 Father Roca had
the holy-dirt room (and the rest of the church) paved with flagstone, forming
the round hole that is seen today and known as the pocito. (Pozo in Spanish
means well, perhaps in allusion to the spring of healing waters traditionally
attributed to the site. Pocito is the diminutive of pozo, literally meaning small
or little well, but the diminutive is also used to express affection.) Visitors
today sometimes ask the priests how such a large crucifix—the Christ of
Esquipulas—could have been found in such a small hole. The priests ex-
plain that when the crucifix appeared at that site there was no pocito, or
church, but only earth. Some devotees believe that the apparition image was
the small crucifix now in the pocito room and not the Christ of Esquipulas
behind the altar.
A high demand for holy dirt has also jeopardized structures at other devo-
tional sites. In Mexico, during a government assault on the Catholic Church
after 1926, soldiers broke into the church in Otatitlán and stole the Black
Christ there. They took the statue to the banks of the Papaloapan River and
tried to burn it but, that failing, sawed off its head. In folk belief the earth
was infused with Christ’s blood and power where the statue was decapitated.
The site of this abduction and murder, as devotees describe the profana-
tion, was later marked by a tomb-like monument. On feast days multitudes
of pilgrims collect this sacred dirt for curative purposes, as pilgrims do at
Chimayó, and eventually the monument was undermined to near collapse.
A cement slab was added to protect the monument from falling, and now the
digging continues as close as possible to the spilled blood, at the edge of the
slab and sometimes beneath it.
Visitors to Chimayó also ask if the pocito dirt replenishes itself miracu-
lously, as is commonly believed. “I tell them,” Father Julio said, “that God has
better things to do than have the pocito filled with dirt.” He then explained
that the santuario staff—“in front of people, we don’t hide it from them”—
fills the pocito as needed, which is quite often, with dirt from a nearby hill-
side. He blesses this trucked-in dirt, in the same way that a priest would bless
the water that becomes holy water. But the dirt is already blessed, Father Julio
said, because it is taken from this same region and from the same earth in
which the Christ of Esquipulas was discovered. Pat held a related view: “I
think all of the dirt in this area is sacred. I look for the presence of God in
everything, so it’s not in the dirt in a little hole, it’s in the dirt here all around
us.” Pat then told the story of a man from Colorado who delivered hay to her
ranch. “I wish I had time to go to the santuario and get some dirt,” the man
said, and Pat replied, “Let me give you some dirt from here.”
Leroy had a similar story. I didn’t understand it well on the first narration,
so I returned later to ask him what he meant. “Holy water is blessed by a
priest,” he said, “but in fact water came to be because God provided it, so the
water that runs in the river and the water that we get from our well—it’s all
holy water. And that’s what I meant.” He then reiterated that some visitors
to Chimayó “came by while we were having dinner and they knocked at the
door. They wanted to find out if we had the keys to the church because that’s
what the custom was in the past.” Access is now controlled by the parish,
and Leroy told the family he didn’t have keys. “They said, ‘If we can’t get in
the church, we’d at least like to get holy dirt.’ I told them, ‘You’re welcome
to get dirt from outside’ and they wondered what my thoughts were. And

I said, ‘Well, the priest and I in the past have made trips to an area where the
land is not worked, or just virgin land that’s out there, and he would bless it
and I would load it in my pickup and deliver it to the pocito. So in fact, my
thoughts are all the land is holy. So you’re welcome to get some land and take
it with you—it’s from this area.’ And they were satisfied with that; they did
take some and they left.”
The idea that all earth is sacred acquires new meanings and is ritualized
during the hundred-mile Pilgrimages for Vocations made annually in June.
En route from cardinal points in the state the pilgrims gather dirt at the
villages and Indian pueblos through which they pass, and sometimes at
penitente moradas. The pilgrims refer to all of this earth as sacred dirt or
sacred soil. When I asked Gabriel why, he said, “It’s our earth, for one, and
every town has their blood, sweat, and tears on their soil,” so that the people
and their history are in some sense present in their land. For Adriano, the
dirt was especially sacred because it was taken from churchyards. He had
noticed during a recent pilgrimage, his first, that “in the small towns the
church is in the center of town,” and he explained that this was “because
their life was based on religion, their faith in God. That was the center of
everybody’s life.” Dirt from these places at the center is collected by locals
and given to pilgrims during gatherings known as encuentros. A bag that
gradually fills with the dirt from these various sites is carried on each of the
pilgrim routes, which then converge at the santuario.
Shortly after arrival of these pilgrimages there is a service at the santuario’s
outdoor mass area. The leader of each pilgrim group presents the dirt to the
archbishop while reciting a prayer that includes, “Accept this sacred soil as
a symbol of the unity of the people of God.” As each bag is presented, the
archbishop empties the dirt on the ground to form a circle, with a cross
on top of it. This intermingling symbolizes the unification of peoples and
cultures represented by dirt brought in pilgrimage from their lands. Father
Ed, the spiritual director of the pilgrimages, described the dirt as the soul
of the communities through which the pilgrims passed. Another pilgrim,
Daniel, referred to the ritual as representative of “the mixture of the cultures,
to bring them all together, to unite them as one”; and Adriano said that the
ritual of intermingling is “bringing everybody together from that place where
the dirt was taken. So if it was from the church in Questa, once it was blessed
in Chimayó by the archbishop, then everybody in Questa was blessed.”
The miraculous attributes of the dirt at Chimayó preceded the santuario
and contributed to permission for its construction. In 1813, the pastor of Santa
Cruz de la Cañada parish, which included Chimayó, supported Bernardo
Abeyta’s petition to build a chapel. The pastor, Fray Sebastián Álvarez, wrote
to the Bishop of Durango (who had jurisdiction over Mexico’s northern fron-
tier) that Chimayó “is frequented by many people” who come from great
distances “to experience relief and healing of their ailments.” The source
of the curative power was ambiguously attributed to the dirt and what Fray
Sebastián’s called “the miraculous image of the Lord of Esquipulas,” which
was venerated in Abeyta’s private chapel for the years prior to construction of
the santuario. Sometime thereafter, as Father Julio explained, “People began
to relate the healing not to the crucifix, but rather to the earth, to the earth
where the crucifix had been.”
In the United States the use of holy dirt for healing might seem unique,
but such use has many antecedents in Spanish America and especially in
Mexico. (White and red dirt are eaten—a practice known as geophagy—for
nonreligious reasons in the American South.) At the Esquipulas shrine in
Guatemala, the miraculous dirt is sometimes processed into tablets or small
cakes stamped in relief with an image of Christ, the Virgin, or a saint. The
earth is mined at a cave near the shrine, then pounded, sifted through a fine
sieve, moistened, rolled into coils, sliced, stamped, sun dried, and packaged.
Technically the substance is not dirt but rather a naturally occurring white,
soft, chalky, claylike rock called kaolin. A very similar white earth was
used for tablets stamped with the likeness of the Virgen de San Juan de
Los Lagos in Jalisco, Mexico, and blessed by contact with this miraculous
image. Elsewhere, in Mexico state, unprocessed white earth is eaten at the
shrine in Chalma. In Oaxaca, at a shrine of the Virgen de Juquila, peti-
tionary offerings are made with the clay dirt there and some devotees take
dirt home for curative and other purposes, or make signs of the cross on
their foreheads.
The dirt in Chimayó is unprocessed, with the exception of screening
when necessary and blessing. In 1929 a Santa Fe Transportation Company
bulletin recommended a stop at Chimayó to acquire some holy dirt. “The
usual method employed to obtain the benefit desired was to take a small
amount of the earth and make of it a sort of tea, or drink. Those who came
from a distance usually took back with them a small quantity of the earth as
a safe-guard against possible illness in the future.” A few years later a WPA
report explained that “the earth is dissolved in water for internal use or con-
verted into a mud wash which is applied to the body,” which are the most
prominent uses today, together with a dry rub. Some people add a pinch to
boost the potency of medicines. The report also quoted a 1915 study: “The
custom was, when a storm became fierce, to throw a few grains of earth into
the blazing fire and when the smoke reached the top of the chimney the
fury of the elements abated, and if there was lightning, its magic influence

changed its course to another direction.” Pieces of Palm Sunday fronds were
likewise sent skyward through fireplaces and woodstoves for these purposes.
The holy dirt was—and is—also used in fields and gardens to improve crop
production.
Testimonies today report alleviation of joint and muscle pain, skin
ailments, and injuries, together with beneficial effects for disease of all
kinds, including cancer. Some people use the dirt to treat pets and livestock.
Father Julio has met couples who were struggling with infertility and then
conceived unexpectedly after visits to the santuario for other purposes. Leroy
applies holy dirt for hip pain, and I asked him why the dirt has healing power.
“My thinking is, the dirt is in a holy sanctuary, and while it’s there hopefully
it gains some kind of communicative power that can be transferred to an in-
dividual. So for that reason I use it.”
Leroy is describing what is sometimes called a contact relic, which is to
say an object or substance that has absorbed sacred power through contact
with or proximity to a sacred site or miraculous image. In addition to dirt
and tomb dust, contact relics often include water, flowers, and, in previous
centuries, lamp oil, all of which give intangible sacred power a material me-
dium. In Chimayó, as elsewhere in Spanish America, pilgrims and others
acquire contact relics because they make sacred power tangible, portable,
and transferrable, so that the benefits can continue far from the shrine and
long after the visit. Many visitors, particularly tourists, acquire dirt and other
contact relics simply as souvenirs.
The renown of dirt with curative properties is conducive to placebo effects,
belief in magical cures, and even scams. In 1992 an enterprising Los Angeles
mail-order operation sold a small “miracle cross” featuring a center bubble
filled with Chimayó dirt. Ads in supermarket tabloids promised “you will be
blessed with love, luck, and financial security” and “your money problems
will fade as your savings grow.” A full-page ad in the National Examiner in
April 1992 assured that for $18.95 (plus $1 shipping) “the Miracle Cross of
Chimayó will immediately and permanently change your life for the better
or you may return it for a full, complete refund—at any time! No questions
asked.” The santuario asked some questions and sale of the miracle cross
was discontinued.
Recent pastors at Chimayó, first Father Roca and now Father Julio, have
made it clear that the dirt in itself has no curative power. Beliefs neverthe-
less persist. Ruben, who was once an altar boy and is now a Protestant,
had a clearer understanding that the santuario priests and many informed
Catholics would share. “The dirt has no healing power,” Ruben said. “The
healing power comes from God and your faith.” Angelo developed this idea.
“It’s not a magic potion. It’s going to heal you because you believe in the
power of God, not the power of the dirt.”
Angelo then added a comment that rescued something of the dirt’s utility
and helped to explain the high demand. “The dirt is the vehicle. It’s not
the actual grace, it’s the vehicle to the grace. But I think the dirt is impor-
tant. Because as humans sometimes we just need that tangible substance
[he gestures as though rubbing dirt on his forearm] to say, ‘This is God’s
blessing on me.’ ” Along these lines a text posted at the santuario explains
that the holy dirt is “a kind of sacramental sign, in the same manner that
holy water or ashes for Ash Wednesday are effective signs of God’s grace.”
A flyer in the pocito room guides visitors to address their petitions to God
with fervent faith and prayer rather than expecting that holy dirt alone will
solve their problems.
Proliferation of holy-dirt miracles depends largely on what constitutes a
miracle, and what variables (medical interventions, emotions, expectations,
cognitive bias) are recognized as contributing causes of an effect. Everyday
miracles are not events in themselves but rather are religious interpretations
of events. In most medical miracles nothing is seen but an improvement
of health that likely had multiple causes, sometimes including surgery and
chemotherapy. The events regarded as holy-dirt miracles are unlikely to meet
the Congregation of Rites’ standard of a complete, permanent, and instanta-
neous cure or the Congregation for the Causes of Saints’ current criterion of
scientifically inexplicable complete recovery.
The attribution of miracles in the broader sense—the miracles of everyday
life—requires a certain flexibility and willingness to acknowledge lower-order
blessings. A miracle concerning cancer might entail not full remission but
rather alleviation of suffering, positive emotions conducive to convalescence,
reinforcement of the will to live, and unexpected years of healthy life. One of
the santuario’s most celebrated miracles is precisely in this lower-order reg-
ister. George had lost his central vision and eighty percent of his peripheral
vision at the age of fifteen. In 1974, when he was nineteen, he hitchhiked to
Chimayó in a state of desperation after a friend was killed in a motorcycle
accident. Near the end of his visit, while sitting in the first pew and looking
up at the Christ of Esquipulas, George had a vision that jump-started his mo-
tivation, changed his life, and contributed to his many and diverse successes,
notably as a world-class runner, an author, and an artist.
But George remained nearly blind. “I didn’t get my sight back, but I got
my will to live back,” George said later. “To me that’s a miracle.” In an inter-
view he added, “It didn’t heal me physically, but I don’t think we should look
for physical healings all the time.” When asked what advice he would give to

others, he said, “I would say don’t expect a miracle the way you think a mir-
acle is: getting your sight back, walking out of a wheelchair, being cured of
cancer, etc. But rather, they should seek to find inner peace.”
Aesthetic and Spiritual Emotions
Entering the santuario imbues some visitors with a subtle sense of awe,
of being gently overwhelmed by the charisma that certain places seem to
exude. Some others probably feel nothing, and still others are overtaken by
emotions that are strong and ambivalent. “As I stepped over the threshold
of the entrance, tears sprang to my eyes,” one woman wrote in a testimony,
and “I didn’t understand why I was crying.” Another woman similarly wrote,
“I didn’t understand why I was crying. I didn’t feel sadness, only deep rever-
ence for this place that had given so much hope to so many.”
Father Julio said that over the course of his fifteen years as pastor several
people have come to the santuario office experiencing emotions they could
not explain. The first time, he said, a woman “entered with tears in her eyes.
She said to me, ‘I just want to tell you that when I went into the chapel I felt
like crying. I’m not sad or anything, and this never happens to me, so I came
to tell you.’ ” At first Father Julio thought, “maybe she needs a psychiatrist.
But as time passed it happened to me with other people, and not from here,
people who come, enter the chapel, and begin to cry, and they don’t know
why. And some of them have told me, ‘Father, I’m not Catholic, but I was so
moved that I began to cry.’ And these very people are surprised by what has
happened to them.”
Father Jim also spoke of visitors who “found themselves touched in ways
they hadn’t expected,” and Dennis remembered a time when priests weren’t
available at the santuario and his now deceased wife, Leona, who ran the res-
taurant that still bears her name, graciously received people who were moved
to tears and needed to express their feelings.
The santuario chapel has one of those rare interiors that inspires—
reawakens—an emotional sensitivity, and suddenly people feel themselves
feeling. In trying to understand this sensation, and more broadly how am-
bience contributes to a sense of divine presence, my first inclination was
to aesthetic emotions. By this I mean visceral reactions to the chapel’s raw
beauty, in the same way that one might be moved, even to tears, by a par-
ticular work of music, literature, or visual art. Such works provide fleeting
insight to a quality of feeling that is richer and more nuanced than our eve-
ryday flatlined emotional sameness, if not numbness, and they consequently
Santuario de Chimayó.
inspire a longing to preserve that awareness and to prolong or recuperate

that intensity.
The chapel’s emotive effect is partially generated by the imprecision and
unpretentiousness that are characteristic of folk art. A composite impact
accumulates through dark wood on white walls out of level and out of plumb,
an altar rail polished by the sweat of praying hands, the cool adobe air and
the warmth of retablos that exude softness of color and authenticity and cul-
tural confidence in being simply what they are.
Many people also mentioned the size of the chapel when I asked them
to contrast the feel of the santuario with that of a cathedral. When you walk
into a cathedral there is a sense of grandeur, Julia said at Laguna Pueblo, but
it’s “harder to reach the Lord, the spirit world, whereas in a smaller church
you’re almost face to face with it.” Father Julio said that cathedrals were built
to accommodate multitudes, so naturally “the emotional and spiritual expe-
rience is very different.” But he also pointed out that those same cathedrals
have lateral chapels, which provide the immediacy that most people prefer
for prayer outside of mass time. Father Dale, a Franciscan in Tohatchi on the

Navajo reservation, stressed the stillness and silence of Chimayó’s chapel.
For contrast he compared it with St. Peter’s Basilica, where peacefulness is
disrupted by the constant talk and movement of tourists. At the santuario,
conversely, fewer visits and more enforceable protocols oblige silence, in-
cluding one’s own, and this facilitates feelings difficult to access through
noise or even conversation.
“It is all about intimacy,” said Antonio, a former Franciscan now in San
Fidel, when I asked him about the difference between chapel and cathedral
experiences. He then explained by analogy. If you’re invited to a rich person’s
house “you kind of know not to touch too many things” and “you try to be
like other people using their silverware at the table.” And “even though you
are welcome and honored to be part of somebody’s blessing in what they’ve
gotten, you’re just a little careful of where you stand and where you sit and
you’re more proper and formal. Cathedrals are very much that way. Those
cathedrals were made to express the grandeur of God—just expansive.”
“But God is also in the incarnation of humility and humbleness,” Antonio
continued, and “when you go to a humble church it’s no different than going
to a humble home.” “It’s authentic” and “you can be yourself, you don’t have
to put on a pretense” and “there is no formality, people can let their hearts
open.” As opposed to the grandeur of God represented in cathedrals, “at
Chimayó you meet the incarnation—here’s Jesus in the manger.”
Pat made similar points. Northern New Mexicans feel at home in the
santuario and “lower their guard” because “they don’t have to be anything,
they can be themselves.” The adobe church fosters a sense of cultural conso-
nance, of belonging, because in this homelike ambience cultural identity is
comfortable and reinforced. Angelo explained that the art also contributes to
the relaxed sense of familiarity, because “everything was created by everyday
people here,” meaning that the santeros were “one of us. You knew those
people, those people were part of the community.”
The santuario chapel is also made of dirt, the sacred dirt of the region,
and by the same construction techniques—adobe and vigas—as the tradi-
tional homes and the native pueblos. These natural building materials and
their colors and irregular contours integrate the homes and churches into
the landscape from which they seemed to have emerged, thereby creating
an organic unity that further contributes to the sense of authenticity, conso-
nance, and belonging.
For many visitors, including many empathetic tourists, familiarity with
the santuario’s history enhances the emotional impact and sense of di-
vine presence. Most common are knowledge of the holy dirt, of the Christ
of Esquipulas, and of the miracles represented by votive offerings, but in
addition many New Mexicans have personal and family histories at the
santuario. Frank, from the nearby village of Las Trampas, said that his expe-
rience at the santuario is enriched by “knowing that this is a holy place, that
miracles have happened in this very spot,” and that “this is where God asked
the people to make his church.” “It’s a place where God has consistently re-
vealed himself to people,” Frank added, “and I can make that journey over
there and know that God’s going to be there.” Gabriel similarly attributed the
subtle, sacred feeling at the santuario not to the chapel itself, but rather to
Christ’s grace in response to one’s prayers—“It brings you to tears.” He then
broadened the perspective: “It doesn’t really need to be the santuario, in my
opinion. It can happen just about anywhere. You just have to be willing to
ask God for help.”
When I asked Deacon Steve in Rio Rancho why the santuario felt so
moving, he mentioned the apparition of the Christ of Esquipulas and sub-
sequent founding of the santuario, the age and simple beauty of the church,
the love invested in the building, the votive offerings, and the thousands of
people who come on pilgrimage. “The intimacy draws you in,” he concluded,
but the emotional impact is the result of “all those different elements working
simultaneously.”
Intangible factors like the love mentioned by Deacon Steve make signifi-
cant contributions to emotional experiences at the santuario. Knowing why a
church was built or—as Frank pointed out—the history of God’s presence at
a church contributes enormously to what people feel there. This knowledge
and history are not accessible to human senses, and yet the power of past
occurrences seems present in what we perceive.
Emotion is thereby generated by perception interacting with ideas we
project onto what we perceive. That is not any crucifix; it is the Christ of
Esquipulas that appeared miraculously. That is not any dirt; it is the mirac-
ulous dirt where the crucifix was found. This is not any chapel; it is the
santuario where countless miracles occurred and thousands of pilgrims ar-
rive annually. History is present in interactive enhancement with the ma-
terial culture that represents it. Many devotees also sense the presence of
other intangibles—spirit, devotion, pain, sacrifice, tradition, joy—that seem
to have been absorbed and now to emanate from the chapel. Angelo gave an
example. The traditional Penitentes from previous centuries never entered
the modern Holy Family Church in Chimayó, so there is no sense of their
presence there. They were devout in the santuario and in Córdova’s morada,
however, and at these places one feels a sacred intensity because “that spirit
is very much alive” and “you feel what they left behind.”

There is a similar presence in their art. “Penitentes would try to imagine
and reenact what Jesus went through in his Passion,” Pat said, and “they
reflected that in the icons that they made.” Angelo made similar comments,
especially in regard to how works of art are invested with a santero’s de-
votional presence. “In their creation there was always prayer, always devo-
tion, so when you hold that santo you’re not just holding a piece of wood
painting, you’re holding someone’s prayer in your hand, and you’re walking
in the midst of their prayers.” Gabriel, who is a current and very talented
santero, echoed these ideas when he said that his retablos and bultos are
too personal to sell. He gives them instead to family members, churches,
and moradas.
Emotions are also affected by one’s state of mind and reasons for vis-
iting the santuario. Many people travel to Chimayó, as to other pilgrimage
sites, precisely because they are in need, and sometimes desperate need.
“People come here every day, every day, with emotional, spiritual, and phys-
ical problems that are very, very serious,” Father Julio said, and “with so
much sadness, so much doubt.” Father Jim stressed the welcome and sense
of worth that people feel at the santuario. He mentioned heroin addicts “who
are on the fringes of society and who find themselves belonging to this place,
relating to God in this place as if they were the most important people in
God’s world.” Frank added to these insights the idea of faithful determina-
tion. “When people go to the santuario they go with such intention,” he said,
“they believe that they can be cured, they go with such intense feelings.” By
virtue of faith, together with a sense of belonging and of God’s presence, this
intensity can transition from desperation to positive emotions conducive to
an anticipated miracle.
The awe that people feel at the santuario is also attributed to a supernat-
ural concentration in the region. Pat and many others regard the Chimayó
area as in some sense sacred, or as a vortex of energy or spiritual power. As
Father Jim and Father Julio put it in a santuario booklet, “Something about
this place helps people experience their God, and that has been true since the
days when only Native Americans lived here.” I tried to convince Frank that
the chapel’s emotional impact was an aesthetic reaction, but he wouldn’t go
for it. “It wasn’t built to be impressive,” Frank said, “It was built for worship.”
Then he added, “It’s spirit that walls have been built around. It’s just spirit
that has four walls to keep it dry.”
People enter the chapel, feel something, and then interpret what they
feel by applying their knowledge and beliefs from various points of view.
Some argue more for charm, or the better Spanish word for that concept,
Frank. “And there you are, standing before God and saying, ‘I did this for you.’ ”
encanto. Some attribute the feeling to spiritual or divine presence. Some

find encanto and presence to be compatible and mutually enhancing. And
some don’t understand what they are feeling and, overwhelmed, cry in
confusion.
Good Friday
On the night of Holy Thursday, after a difficult day at Acoma and a long drive
home, I slept badly and woke startled from uneasy sleep. It must have been
around 3:00. The darkness still had a flannel density and the room seemed
infused with a disquieting quiet until I listened outside for the river. In a
dreamscape, half asleep, I remember seeing water streaming over rockbed
in surrender to the suction of narrows lined steeply with bleak moonless
granite bluffs. The river then whitewatered over falls giving cloudmist with
the faint smell of rain before one fork widened to a barge-slow flow through
cottonwood and pasture and finally, flattened, rippleless, became a supple
mirror across which a rowboat drifted with its spooky loose oars trailing.

The scene had an ethereal quality, at once strangely beautiful and disturbing,
surreal, and I had the idea that something was drowning and the reflections
concealed subsurface longing.
A few hours later I was in my truck heading for the santuario, because
Annabelle, who ran the office there, had invited me to participate in the
Good Friday procession. On approach I got stuck in pedestrian traffic and
arrived to the santuario in haste, tired and off-balance. The participants had
already gathered and I was assigned a processional lantern, unlit and about
as tall as I was. Others had volunteered earlier to carry the saints on litters
with poles that rest on shoulders, which required men of more or less the
same height. One of these volunteers didn’t show up and the moment to
begin was approaching, so Father Julio glanced at the others to make a quick
height assessment, scanned the crowd nearby, and returned promptly with
a Vietnamese visitor, who was suited up in a friar’s habit. His backward-
walking wife followed beside us, taking pictures.
A few minutes after the procession had begun some combination of fa-
tigue, heat, nerves, and a sense of inauthenticity began conspiring against
me. A gyroscope feeling, like I had just gotten off a tilt-a-whirl. I started to
fear that I wasn’t going to make it, that I was going to faint, and that people
would wonder who’s that gringo who swooned and ruined everything.
I thought of pilgrims who walk a hundred miles and I hadn’t yet walked a
hundred feet. I thought the procession would never end because we stopped
for songs, we stopped so Mary could face the crucified Jesus while the heat
got denser and the deep voices of hermanos got confused with a news heli-
copter overhead. We approached and then passed a thousand endeared de-
votional faces and people taking pictures and there was heat, mostly, trapped
under my shirt, I was thinking that somehow the heat had gotten trapped
and that I was in those pictures but they weren’t of me, that my presence
was incidental and replaceable. And then I wondered if the cameras could
detect my inauthenticity, the inside-outsider duplicity of the ethnographer,
the participant-observer who observes even himself, maybe mostly himself,
in the mirror of others.
That’s when a coolish breeze came out of a shadow and brought a waft
of flowers growing on a tree. The sensation gave more relief and reprieve
than it objectively merited. Then I heard a voice singing behind me—it
was Pat’s son. He was carrying one quarter of the crucifixion litter on his
shoulder and was wearing a polyester Franciscan habit over his clothes and
hadn’t yet fainted, which more or less shamed me to compliance. And he
was singing the chorus along with the hermanos, who were alternating in
call and response.
Pues padeciste, por amor nuestro,
Jesús bendito, sed mi remedio.
(The first line states that Jesus suffered because he loves us, and the second
line in literal translation asks Jesus to “be my remedy,” which in this context
also suggests “be my savior.” Sed is the old Spanish command form of the
verb ser, to be. In current Spanish the conjugation is sé.)
I listened for the chorus lyrics and then began to sing along. We were
walking in procession pace, with one foot stepping out and the other
catching up beside it, which gives a rhythmic movement especially to the
litters. And suddenly I discovered that I could lose myself in the song and
the rhythm and become part of the procession, a part of this whole, my voice
with the others’, my pace in sync, and by these sounds and steps and sense
of common endeavor my stress dissipated and was replaced by a strange
peaceful pleasure.
Eventually the procession stopped for a second song, sung by a woman
elevated on the pedestal of a statue representing a pilgrim. She was singing a
poem by Antonio Machado, “El Cristo de los gitanos” (Christ of the Gypsies),
which had been set to music by Joan Manuel Serrat. This performance was
in the tradition of the religious songs known as saetas, which are often sung
during Holy Week processions in Spain. Father Julio explained that the in-
tent of such highly emotional songs is “to help those who are watching the
procession to unite even a little more with the suffering of Mother Mary who
mourns the death of her son or of God the Father who from paradise sees
that his son is being killed.”
Angelo made a similar point regarding the penitente devotional hymns
known as alabados (from the verb alabar, to praise, in this context to praise
God). “In Córdova we don’t sing alabados,” Angelo said, “We pray them, in
song form. And when we pray the alabado what we’re trying to do is give a
lesson not only in words but also in feeling. What were they feeling?” The
alabado must be prayed “with heart, with faith,” and its effect is powerful
because the intonation—like the sad wailing that conveys Mary’s suffering—
“portrays what is going on” and “makes the event come alive.”
After the procession I told Pat about my experience with the singing, and
how it seemed to me that the emotional impact of the procession was greatly
enhanced by the hermanos’ involvement. I also commented that the his-
torical ostracization of the hermanos by the archdiocese had been reversed
to the degree that the hermanos now seemed an essential, integrated part
of santuario processions and services. “I think that’s changed recently,” Pat
responded. “Because even when Father Roca came, at first he wasn’t that

into the Penitentes. In fact he formed his own society for men called the
Holy Name Society [a local charter of the national Dominican confrater-
nity]. So he tried to gentrify it, and the Penitentes didn’t really like that.”
Angelo similarly commented that “Father Roca had a difficult few years” in
his early interactions with the Penitentes. Father Roca’s own perspective is
suggested by an allusion to the Penitentes in his autobiography: “The first
Franciscan missionaries imprinted a peculiar character upon these isolated
communities.” By the time Father Roca died in 2015, however, the situation
was very different, and prayer at his wake service at Holy Family church was
led by Penitentes.
The Penitentes are referred to affectionately as hermanos (brothers) or
collectively as the hermandad (brotherhood) and are known officially as Los
Hermanos de la Fraternidad Piadosa de Nuestro Padre Jesús Nazareno (The
Brothers of the Pious Brotherhood of Our Father Jesus of Nazareth). They
flourished in the nineteenth century when an isolated northern New Mexico
was administered by the Diocese of Durango, Mexico, the seat of which was
a thousand miles away. Mexico’s northern frontier lacked priests and the
hermanos filled the void in their manner to maintain Catholic traditions in
the villages. They were known especially for their Holy Week processions and
penitential exercises. When a bishop from Durango, José Antonio Laureano
de Zubiría, discovered the Penitentes during his first visit to New Mexico in
1833, he quickly condemned the brotherhood as unauthorized and in viola-
tion of Catholic doctrine, and he directed parish pastors to eradicate it. These
mandates were unenforced and unenforceable, but they established the tone
of an official position that endured for over a century.
Church authority was closer, and more zealous, when the diocese of Santa
Fe was established in 1853. Its first bishop, the French-born Jean-Baptiste
Lamy, who was later the first archbishop, was intolerant of the Penitentes but
more pragmatic than Zubiría in his efforts to control them. He issued rules
in 1856 and 1857 with the intent of isolating and containing the Penitentes—
keeping them from public view—which contributed to development of the
brotherhood as a secret society. “All brothers must keep secret all matters
that may be transacted at the meetings to be had,” Lamy mandated in 1856,
and the following year, “The Penance must be done as hidden as possible.”
Lamy’s successor as archbishop, Jean- Baptiste Salpointe, who was also
French, had little appreciation of hispanic (or native) culture. After interim
measures that failed, notably restrictions established by a first circular on
Penitentes in 1886, Salpointe ordered the dissolution of the Penitentes in a
second circular in 1889.
The Penitentes were not formally recognized and accepted by the Church
until 1947, just seven years before the arrival to New Mexico of Father Roca
(first to Truchas in 1954 and then to Chimayó in 1959). In 1947 Archbishop
Edwin V. Byrne issued a statement in defense of the brotherhood, including
that “the Association of Hermanos de Nuestro Señor Jesús Nazareno is not a
fanatical sect apart from the church, as some seem to think, but an associa-
tion of Catholic men united together in love for the passion and death of our
blessed Lord and Savior.” Byrne’s successor, Archbishop Robert F. Sanchez,
appointed in 1974, was also an advocate of the Penitentes.
At the santuario today, Father Julio actively seeks the integration of
hermanos into feast-day celebrations. Official letters of invitation to par-
ticipate are sent by the santuario to moradas in the region on at least two
annual occasions, the feast of the Christ of Esquipulas in January and the
feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross in September. The hermanos also
lead processions and rosary services during Holy Week. “I would like the
santuario to be a place where the hermanos penitentes know that this also
belongs to them,” Father Julio said, “because the spirituality of the chapel of
the Christ of Esquipulas is the spirituality of the Passion, of suffering, of ex-
piatory pain as a blessing, not as a condemnation. That is also the spirituality
of the Penitentes.”
Father Julio would also like to increase hermano participation on Good
Friday, but has encountered resistance. “Sometimes it’s hard to get them to
come to the parish, because during Holy Week the services and penances
that they do in their morada coincide with the services and penances of the
Santuario de Chimayó.” Gabriel, a leader of the hermanos in the Peñasco
area, said, “For Good Friday we’re tied up. We go on a retreat to the morada
and we don’t come back until Saturday afternoon.” Angelo, who is an
hermano at the morada in Córdova, said that “when you have a priest like
Father Julio, it’s very conflicting. Because you want to support him, but then
you have an obligation that’s long standing for decades.”
Angelo is referring to the services on Holy Thursday evening and on Good
Friday that the hermanos lead in the Córdova church for members of their
community. These services date back to times when there was no pastoral
presence in the region. The hermanos, together with community members
with strong village-based identities, are reluctant to jeopardize or forfeit their
penitente traditions in order to participate in parish services. In addition,
some hermanos still resent the century of inimical relations with the archdi-
ocese and maintain an instinctive distrust and avoidance.

Pilgrimage
Religious pilgrimages are made for many reasons. These include to peti-
tion a miracle for oneself or a loved one; to fulfill a promise in gratitude for
a granted miracle (known in Spanish as pagar una manda); and to offer a
sacrifice—the exertion and pain endured en route—as a means of purging
sin, expressing deep devotion, benefitting a living or dead loved one, and
expressing gratitude for blessings received. Deacon Steve described pil-
grimage as a spiritual journey—“the physical part just helps us to get there”—
and a time when people “renew their faith and put their trust in God for the
challenges that they’re facing.” By separating from their everyday lives and
pushing their bodies, people access thoughts and feelings and more focused
perceptions that bring a clarity of reflection, sense of mission, and cathartic
release. Adriano said that pilgrimage puts you “in a different state of mind”
where “you become more sensitive” and learn “to accept that discomfort,
accept that pain, and generate it toward something else, make it productive
by praying for others, offering it up for others.” Group pilgrimage enhances
these experiences by fostering bonds of camaraderie and solidarity among
mutual confidants with common faith and purpose.
Pilgrimage to Chimayó also has many secular motives, which may coin-
cide with religious intentions and similarly seek benefits gained through an
intensity of experience. These include physical challenge and related themes
(fitness, endurance testing, accomplishment); breaking routine to self-seek
on a personal journey; mourning a tragic death; and advocating a cause (such
as protection for abused children).
Also apparent, especially on Good Friday, are pilgrimages motivated by
tradition or cultural precedent, particularly among the young. The implicit
discourse is something like, This is how someone in my culture celebrates this
holiday. The walk might initially be simply a fun adventure with family or
peers, but in the process children and teens acquire knowledge of a religious
resource to which they might appeal later when they find themselves in need.
There are also Good Friday pilgrims inclined to theatrics—an exaggerated
cultural spectacle—that seems double-directional, on one side to God and on
the other to the audience that parts like the seas as the fake penitent passes
with his cross. The convergence of these various pilgrim and visitor types
creates a fiesta-like ambience at the santuario on Good Friday, with a devo-
tional core surrounded by others who have come for the festivities. These
circumstances are common at Mexican shrines as well.
Ruben, like many older Chimayó residents, feels that pilgrimage began
to lose its integrity in the 1970s, when the roads opened and media cov-
erage changed the demographics of Good Friday. He remembered the better
times of pilgrimage this way: “When I was young, the walking then had a
purpose—it was like a sacrifice that you made. I remember people from Ojo
Sarco would gather, they would walk to Truchas and meet with the people
from the parish of Truchas, and they would walk and meet with the people
from Córdova, and walk all the way to the santuario. Some of the people here
from Santa Cruz would walk, meet with our church here, and people would
all gather at the church, and it was a sacrifice, and reverence for the Lord.”
Pilgrims to the santuario arrive at all times during and around Holy Week,
and also at other times of the year, but the greatest pilgrimage is on Holy
Thursday (for long and overnight journeys) and on the morning of Good
Friday. Many pilgrimages begin at regional churches—in Santa Cruz and
Pojoaque, for example—or pilgrims park near the Nambé turnoff for a ten-
mile walk to the santuario. The longer routes are primarily from Albuquerque
and Santa Fe, although pilgrims have walked from as far away as Denver. For
these pilgrimages of significant length the santuario issues a passport and
certificate of completion, like those associated with the pilgrimage to Santiago
de Compostela in northwestern Spain. In high-traffic areas the New Mexico
Department of Transportation prepares for pilgrimage with lane closures,
orange barrels, temporary stop signs to facilitate crossings, electronic mes-
sage boards (“Watch for Walkers”), trash receptacles, cattle-guard covers, ad-
ditional lighting, and signs to divert walkers to on/off ramps at interchanges.
Law enforcement officers distribute glow sticks to night walkers and set up
sobriety checkpoints on routes approaching Chimayó.
In addition to individual walkers and groups of families and friends, there
are many organized pilgrimages. Their noteworthy precedent occurred after
World War II. Following a defeat in the Philippines in April 1942, thousands
of American and Filipino troops were forced by the Japanese military to walk
some sixty-six miles under extreme conditions to a prisoner-of-war camp. The
event is known as the Bataan Death March. By the end of the war only half of
the eighteen hundred men from New Mexico’s 200th Air Artillery Regiment
had survived the internment. One of these survivors, from Taos, later wrote
that “we were soon burying from 50 to 100 men a day” due to malnutrition,
overcrowding, unsanitary conditions (including pit latrines breeding flies
that overwhelmed the camp), and diseases, especially dysentery and malaria.
While in captivity many men had petitioned the intercession of the Santo
Niño de Atocha and vowed a pilgrimage in gratitude for protection and sur-
vival. In 1946 and subsequent years, hundreds of surviving soldiers and their

families made the pilgrimage to Chimayó. They also made news, which ad-
vanced national awareness of the santuario.
The Santo Niño de Atocha (an advocation of the Christ child) is himself
represented as a pilgrim. On his cloak he wears the shell of Saint James,
which is the symbol of pilgrims to Santiago de Compostela and also now of
some pilgrims to Chimayó. In the context of the Bataan Death March, how-
ever, the Santo Niño’s identity as the patron of prisoners is more relevant.
According to the legend, Christian men were imprisoned in Spain during
the medieval Moorish occupation. The nourishment of these prisoners was
the responsibility of their families, and to avoid insurrection the Moors
permitted only children to deliver food. Those prisoners without family sup-
port mediated by these children were destined for starvation, but the Santo
Niño de Atocha provided for them. It was told then, as it is now, that the
Santo Niño dirtied and wore out his shoes during excursions to provide for
those who need him. For this reason children’s shoes and sneakers are the
most common votive offerings to the Santo Niño and are abundant at his
shrine in Chimayó. Severiano Medina built the Santo Niño de Atocha chapel
there in 1857, and later it passed to other family members. It is now owned
by the Archdiocese of Santa Fe. As mentioned earlier, there is also an image
of the Santo Niño de Atocha in the votive room of the santuario chapel. The
image’s principal shrine is in Plateros, Mexico, near Fresnillo in Zacatecas.
Organized pilgrimages to— and from— the santuario today are made
with religious and secular purposes. They have included the forty-eight-mile
Pilgrimage for Unity, made in September from Ghost Ranch in Abiquiú to
promote interfaith trust and understanding; and the Prayer Pilgrimage for
Peace, which in protest of nuclear proliferation carries a “peace flame” and
holy dirt from Chimayó to Los Alamos, where the first atomic bomb was
built. There have also been several youth pilgrimages, including the Youth
Pilgrimage Against Drugs, during which treatment providers, law enforce-
ment officers, local youth, and others walk from Ohkay Owingeh to the
santuario.
Pilgrimages for Vocations
Most outstanding among the organized pilgrimages are the hundred-mile

Pilgrimages for Vocations, which are made annually in June. Pilgrimages for
Vocations were founded in 1973 in the context of a declining priesthood, with
the intent of offering prayer and sacrifice for those considering vocations
to religious life. The idea of vocation today is interpreted more broadly
to include marriage and other life-goal commitments. While discussing
vocations with Adriano I suggested, “Whatever you’re dedicated to?” and he
corrected me, “Whatever the will of God wants you to do.” Pilgrims also walk
for personal reasons, some of which are related to an illness or crisis con-
cerning a loved one.
The first Pilgrimage for Vocations was from Estancia, south of Moriarity,
and subsequently four additional routes were added—from Albuquerque,
Bernal, Chama, and Costilla—to cover the cardinal points and form a cross.
(There are two southern routes, Estancia and Albuquerque. The latter is re-
ferred to as southwest.) “So it’s the four directions,” Frank said, “and if you
complete the four directions you’ve completed your cross. You have walked
the state of New Mexico, blessed it with your two feet.” Many pilgrims
have completed their crosses multiple times. Male pilgrims (known as
peregrinos, the Spanish word for pilgrims) and female pilgrims (known as
Guadalupanas, after the Virgin of Guadalupe) travel separate routes. They
sleep in parish halls or school gyms and are received by local church groups
that provide meals.
For most pilgrims, the regimen of about twenty miles a day is painful.
The common ailments include blisters and thigh chafing; knee, leg, and foot
pain; and exhaustion. These are compounded by heat and cold, insufficient
sleep, and multiple hills, many of them steep. Pilgrims interpret the pain
as a sacrifice they make for their own spiritual growth and for the benefit of
the others for whom they are praying. The sacrifice is also a means of giving
back to God in gratitude. Frank said that people ask “why I would put myself
through a week of torture. Well, they don’t get it. In my heart, in my mind,
it’s such a little thing to do for what’s been done for us.”
Extended pilgrimage, physical challenge, and separation from everyday
life are also conducive to bonding and mutual support among others who
have made the same commitment. “You know that there is someone there
who is going to help you if you fall—they’re going to stand you up,” Daniel
said. “They’re going through the same pain and suffering as you are, but
they’re going to be there for you.” Gabriel took the next step: “you put their
needs before yours.” At times this support comes symbolically, or textually,
in a letter of encouragement known as a palanca (literally a lever, something
used for leverage, to assist with weights beyond our strength). These letters
are often written by pilgrims on other routes, who are sometimes family
members, and delivered by Father Ed and others who move between the si-
multaneous pilgrimages. “They see somebody struggling, and that’s when
a palanca makes it to your bed that night,” Frank said. “A lot of times that
support comes at moments of weakness, and you’ll see grown men just cry.”

Some pilgrims are young and athletic, and others are over sixty and un-
accustomed to exertion. Frank gave an example of how solidarity mobilizes
when a pilgrim is in need of support. Near Questa on the Costilla route
“there’s a big dip before you rise to the mesa, and it’s challenging. We had
an old gentleman, he must have been about seventy, and he fell behind,
dropped off from the group, not too far but there was a significant gap. And
he said he had nothing left in him any more, he just could not complete it.
Well all of a sudden a couple of guys show up and came up behind him, a
couple more in front,” and they handed him a rosary. One gently pulled the
rosary while others supported from behind, and the group chanted “Jesus
push, Mary pull” until everyone reached the top of the hill. Adriano, who had
helped another pilgrim make that climb, said the mood at the summit was
triumphant.
“He made it,” Frank said of the older man, “he completed the pilgrimage,”
which was his first. “When you witness something like that it’s hard not
to know that you’re doing the right thing. It’s beautiful to witness, to im-
agine what it feels like to experience that kind of love.” Frank then added,
“Sometimes I will just lay back at the end of the day and I will watch people,
and some of my fond memories are seeing how everybody is there to take
care of each other. You don’t see that so often—it’s a beautiful thing to see
how people are helping selflessly. To be able to express love freely, openly, and
strongly, I think it’s an essence of our humanity that we don’t do enough.”
In retrospect many pilgrims see their sufferings as incidental to—or con-
ducive to—the sense of elation that they earned through the experience.
Despite the pain and exhaustion, Daniel described pilgrimage as “a kind of
renewal” and an “amazing feeling.” He has made the pilgrimage for seven
consecutive years. “My first walk was not what I expected,” he said. “It was
ten times more than what I expected it to be. I guess that’s what got me
hooked.” Adriano also described a sense of elation, but in more spiritual
terms. “You’re in a state of grace the whole time,” “the spirit takes over—you
become like superman, strong,” and “with the spirit so strong the whole
time you’re on fire.”
Daniel got a similar feeling when he was carrying the guía (literally guide),
meaning the crucifix that leads the procession. Subgroups of five to seven
people within a pilgrimage of thirty or forty participants take turns carrying
the guía and other processional items, which include an image of the Virgin
of Guadalupe, a puzzle piece that is reintegrated to a heart-in-hands upon ar-
rival, a bag of sacred dirt gathered en route, and a bag that fills with petitions
likewise gathered en route. “When I’m carrying the guía I get this amazing
feeling that there’s no one else around me,” Daniel said, and “it energizes
Adriano, holding the guía, meets his cousin Joey at the santuario after a hundred-mile
pilgrimage.
you, you just want to go go go.” Gabriel had the same experience—“you get
a second wind, your pace picks up, your spirit picks up”—and explained that
pilgrims who fall behind are sometimes brought to the front and revitalized
by carrying the guía.
Pilgrimage also entails cultural affirmation. Daniel, who has been a teacher
and an hermano for decades, affectionately described his interactions with
fellow pilgrims as he taught them, on request, to pray the rosary the way it’s
done in the moradas, in Spanish. Their desire to learn, their pride in having
learned, and Daniel’s joy in teaching them all attest to cultural bonding and
the mutual reinforcement—recuperation—of ethnic identity and the knowl
edge that sustains it. In this perspective pilgrimage is a learning experience
in spirituality and culture.
At the conclusion of the pilgrimages the four groups—two male and two
female—arrive at intervals from routes to the north, east, west, and south-
west (there was no southern-route pilgrimage when I attended the arrival in
2017). Friends and families, some with a rose or bouquet of flowers, await

the arrival. The pilgrims enter in single file, singing the hymn “Vienen con
alegría” (“They Come with Joy”) to cheers and high fives and general en-
thusiasm among the crowd. One at a time the pilgrims pass through the
arch, enter the atrium, and approach an image of the Virgin known as La
Peregrina (the procession replica of La Conquistadora), brought from Santa
Fe and flanked on both sides by members of the Caballeros de Vargas. Each
pilgrim stops before the Virgin, kneels, and then continues into the church.
This is the moment of arrival, after nearly a week and a hundred miles of
sacrifice, and you can see on their faces a range of emotions—humility, re-
lief, pride, reverence—together with a sense of euphoria released in tears
and hugs.
Daniel described the feeling in the chapel as overwhelming. “We were the
first group to walk in this year. So we walked in the chapel, it was quiet, it was
just us and then the next group comes in so it gets a little louder, and then
the next group came in and it’s a little louder, the louder it gets the more you
get energized. When the last group came in it was just amazing to feel the
energy that was in there.”
Eventually the chapel fills with all the pilgrims in a joyful, adrenalized,
songful, communal finale. The archbishop on the altar places a cross around
the neck of each pilgrim as they enter, the heat is dense and the mood is elated,
and when all the crosses are placed and images of the Virgin of Guadalupe
are brought forth on the altar, one from each route, held high overhead, the
music intensifies and everyone in their white shirts with red lanyards and
pilgrim shells sings a prayer to La Morena, the dark Virgin. Gabriel, who has
walked the pilgrimage sixteen times, said, “It feels like you’re going to sing
the roof off the santuario. You usually don’t see so much joy in one place at
one time. Hurting joy.”
“It’s one of those moments where there’s a profound sense of solidarity,”
Father Graham said. “It’s like you’re being reunited with people you never
knew, but somehow you find this instant connection with because you’ve all
had the same experience, though you’re coming from different directions
and didn’t see them this whole time, and they’re all there, so it’s almost like
you’re being reassembled. Now we’re complete, everyone’s come. And that
sense of arrival—you’ve made it.”
“And there you are,” Frank concluded, “standing before God and saying,
‘I did this for you.’ I’ve cried watching these people coming in, so happy
for them, you become a family at that point, you’re a family.” He described
everyone as “just elated with the spirit, the presence of all those voices just
making your body hum. Being that fatigued puts you in a different place,
much more in tune with everything, you’re kind of out of your body at that
point. But the music, and then being in that tight space too, it just resonates
in there, but there’s a sense of accomplishment, there’s a sense of purpose,
there’s a sense of camaraderie, there’s just this overwhelming feeling of
love.” Frank paused, thought for a moment, and then added, “You’re really
just humming from the inside out. It’s an awesome, awesome feeling, when
we get there and we’re all inside the church singing at the top of our lungs
with just pure love, a real heightened, unselfish love. And maybe pride in a
sense—we did this together. All of us in it together.”
The Present Past: Ricky and Karen
On Good Friday, 2000, Ricky and Karen left before dawn for a pilgrimage
to the santuario. They were both seventeen-year-old juniors at Los Alamos
High school; Ricky from La Villita, near Alcalde, and Karen from Arroyo
Seco, near La Puebla. Ricky made the pilgrimage to prepare himself spir-
itually for confirmation the following month, and Karen with the hope of
healing a back injury sustained while cheerleading. Ricky was scheduled to
play the role of Jesus that evening in his confirmation class’s passion play at
San Juan Bautista in Ohkay Owingeh.
At 5:15 a.m. a state police officer driving on Route 76 west of Chimayó
encountered a pilgrim giving CPR to a wounded boy on the roadway. Ricky
had been shot in the chest with a .22 caliber rifle by Carlos, a nineteen-year-
old from Española. Carlos had spent the previous night partying and had
consumed excessive amounts of vodka, whiskey, beer, and cocaine. When he
encountered Ricky and Karen, he had been driving aimlessly back and forth
between Española and Chimayó. “I just remember driving and turning and
turning around again and I seen them and that’s all,” Carlos told the state po-
lice interrogators after his arrest. He described his mental state as “flipping
out,” and when pressed for a motive said, “I probably just pointed the gun
out the window for the dumbest fuckin’ reason. I don’t know why.”
After shooting Ricky, Carlos took Karen in his truck and drove her to an
isolated arroyo a few miles away. His original intent was to leave her stranded
there, giving himself time to escape, but he ultimately decided to eliminate
the crime’s only witness. Carlos told Karen to get out of the truck, and as
she walked away he shot her in the back. “I didn’t even look to see if she
had fallen or anything,” Carlos told the interrogators. “I just took off. I was
fuckin’ freaked.” Both Karen and Ricky eventually died of blood loss.
Carlos attempted to escape after shooting Karen but his truck got stuck
in the sand. He walked to the home of a friend, Andy, to get help, and Andy

later towed the truck out of the arroyo. Carlos also gave Andy the gun used in
the crime. Karen’s body was found accidentally later that morning by a driver
making an improvised detour around the road blockaded at Ricky’s crime
scene. Later an unidentified person reported the truck stuck in the arroyo
near the location of Karen’s body, and this tip eventually led police to Carlos.
He was arrested about two days after the murders, at the house of a friend in
Alcalde. Police also seized the rifle that Carlos had given to Andy. The rifle
had Carlos’s first name and social security number engraved on the barrel
and was a ballistic match with bullets from the murders.
Carlos accepted a plea agreement—two counts of first-degree murder—to
avoid the possibility of the death penalty at trial. He received two consecutive
thirty-year sentences. Twelve years after the crime, when he was thirty-two,
Carlos died of cancer while serving his sentence at the Central New Mexico
Correctional Facility in Los Lunas.
Karen and Ricky had been high school sweethearts since their freshman
year, and the families stressed this relation in their public statements. It is
also represented at the grave that the couple shares in La Villita cemetery.
The headstone inscription refers to their pure, everlasting love and together-
ness in and beyond the grave, and a cement slab over the grave has a heart-
shaped flower bed at the center.
A few months after the murders, in October 2000, hundreds of family
members, friends, classmates, and acquaintances completed Ricky and
Karen’s interrupted pilgrimage. The group began in Arroyo Seco and took
turns carrying two white crosses bearing the victims’ names. At the site of
Ricky’s murder they set the crosses in the ground as a roadside memorial
known as a descanso, and after prayer and rituals the group continued to the
santuario, singing hymns and praying the rosary. (Descanso—from descansar,
to rest—suggests a final resting place, but these memorials mark the site
of tragic deaths, usually fatal highway accidents, and not the graves of the
victims. Many hispanic Catholics believe that a descanso marks the place
where a victim’s soul left the body. One of Ricky’s great aunts told a reporter
that Karen’s cross was placed next to Ricky’s because her soul left her body
when she witnessed his murder.) Ricky and Karen’s original descanso was
replaced in 2017 with a new one, made of metal and comprised of two crosses
superimposed over a heart with the victims’ names.
On the day of the murder police officers detoured pilgrims through a field
to protect the crime scene on Route 76. “The body was right in the middle
of the road,” a pilgrim told Associated Press in reference to Ricky. “You
could see that police were doing all they could to keep this from affecting the
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the window to look at them when they went out, and rejoicing over the
handsome couple.
‘I always said as our Miss Cara was one as would settle directly,’ her
faithful attendant said. ‘Seventeen! it’s too young, that is, for anything.’
‘But he haven’t got a penny,’ said Cook, who was more prudent, ‘and he
don’t do nothing. I’d like a man as could work for me, if I was Miss Cara.’
‘I’d like him better if he hadn’t no call to work,’ said Nurse, with true
patrician feeling.
But the chief parties knew nothing of these remarks. They were very
cheerful and full of mutual confidences. Oswald confiding to Cara his
doubts and difficulties, his aspirations (which were chiefly in verse) and
light-hearted anticipations, not going so far as to be called hopes, of sitting
one day on the woolsack. Cara, though she had a great respect for Oswald,
did not think much about the woolsack. But it was astonishing how she got
used to him, how she liked him, and, notwithstanding the occasional dull
evenings, how much more variety seemed to have come into her life.
Sometimes Mrs. Meredith herself would talk to the girl about her son.
‘If he would work more steadily I should be happier, Cara,’ she would
say; ‘and perhaps if he had a strong inducement he would work. He is so
clever, and able to do what he likes.’
Cara did not know about this; but she liked his lively company. They
were the best of friends; they talked to each other of every foolish thing that
comes into the heads of young people; but she had a vague idea that he did
not talk to her as the others thought he did. He was not like Roger even;
though Roger was no more like him than night was like day. Roger was—
different. She could not have told how, and nobody knew of this difference
nor spoke to her on the subject. And thus life floated on very pleasantly,
with more excitement than had existed in that placid schoolgirl life at the
Hill. Miss Cherry came two or three times on a day’s visit to her darling,
and observed what was going on and was puzzled; but Aunt Charity had her
first attack of bronchitis that year, and it was winter weather, not good for
travelling.
‘Yes, I think she’s happy on the whole,’ was Miss Cherry’s report to the
elder aunt when she went home—which, as may be supposed, was not a
clear enough deliverance for Aunt Charity.
‘Is the young man in love with her?’ said the old lady; ‘is she in love
with him? James should not be such a fool as to let them be constantly
together, unless it is a match that would please him.’
‘James is not thinking of anything of the kind,’ said Miss Cherry,
impatiently. ‘James is taken up with his own affairs, and he thinks Cara a
little girl still.’
‘To be sure he does—that is where men always go wrong,’ said Aunt
Charity, ‘and James will always be a fool to the end of the chapter.’
Cherry winced at this, for she was the model of a good sister, and never
had seen any man who was so much her ideal as James—though in some
things he was foolish, she was obliged to allow. Perhaps, as Aunt Charity
was ill, and the house, as it were, shut up and given over to invalidism for
the winter, it was as well that Cara should be away, getting some enjoyment
of her young life. Had she been at home it would have been dull for her, for
Miss Cherry was in almost constant attendance upon the old lady. Thus
things had turned out very well, as they so often do, even when they look
least promising. Had Cara been at the Hill, Miss Cherry would not have
been so free to devote herself to Aunt Charity, and both the child and the
old lady would have suffered. True, Miss Cherry’s own life might have had
a little additional brightness, but who thought of that? She did not herself,
and you may be sure no one else did. It was altogether a fortunate
arrangement, as things had turned out, and as for Cara, why, was there not
Providence to watch over her, if her father was remiss? Miss Cherry felt
that there was something like infidelity in the anxious desire she felt
sometimes to go and help Providence in this delicate task.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE OLD PEOPLE.
When Mrs. Beresford died, as has been described, there was a great flutter
of talk and private discussion among all who knew her about the particulars
of her death. It was ‘so sudden at the last,’ after giving every indication of
turning out a lingering and slow malady, that public curiosity was very
greatly excited on the subject. True, the talk was suppressed peremptorily
by Mr. Maxwell whenever he came across it, charitably by other less
authoritative judges; but it lingered, as was natural, and perhaps the
bereaved husband did not have all that fulness of sympathy which generally
attends so great a loss. There were many people, indeed, to whom it
appeared that such a loss was worse even than a more simple and less
mysterious one, and that the survivor was entitled to more instead of less
pity; but mysterious circumstances always damp the public sympathy more
or less, and people do not like to compromise themselves by kindness
which might seem complicity or guilty knowledge if, in the course of time,
anything not known at the moment should be found out. Thus James
Beresford, though much pitied, did not meet with that warmth of personal
sympathy which circumstances like his so often call forth. He was not
himself sensible of it indeed, being too miserable to take any notice of what
was going on around him; but most of his friends were fully sensible of this
fact, and aware that but few overtures of active kindness were made to the
melancholy man, whose very abandonment of his home and life made
another item in the mysterious indictment against him, of which everybody
felt the burden yet nobody knew the rights. It was in these painful
circumstances that Mrs. Meredith first formed the link which now
associated her with her next door neighbour. The first time he had come
home after his wife’s death, which was only for a week or two, the kind
woman had met him, indeed had laid her simple, tender-hearted plan to
meet him—going listlessly into his forsaken house. She had gone up to him,
holding out her hand, her features all moved and quivering with feeling.
‘Won’t you come in and sit with me in the evening?’ she said. ‘It is the time
one feels one’s loneliness most—and my boys are away, Mr. Beresford.’
Her soft eyes, as she raised them to him, were full of tears; her look so
pitiful, so full of fellow-feeling, that his heart was as much touched for her
as hers seemed to be for him. Of all ways of consolation, is there any so
effective as that of leading those whom you grieve for to grieve also a little
for you, as a fellow-sufferer? His heart was touched. He could not persuade
himself to go the very first evening, but he came soon, and when he had
come once returned again and again. It was the first new habit he formed
after that mournful breaking-up of all his habits. He could not bear much at
a time of the dismal place which he still called home; but now and then he
was forced to be there, and when he came this new sweet habit gave him a
little strength to meet the chaos into which his life otherwise was thrown.
Did not Dante, too, get a little comfort from the sweet looks of that
sympathising woman who used to glance at him from her window after the
lady of his heart was carried by the angels to heaven? There was no wrong
to his Annie in that refuge which kindness made for him from the miseries
of the world. Eventually it became a matter of course that he should seek
that shelter. He went out of his own house and knocked at her door
mechanically, and would sit by her, content only to be there, often saying
little, getting himself softly healed and soothed, and made capable of taking
up again the burden of his life. She was not the same kind of woman as his
wife—her habits of mind were different. The variety, the fluctuating charm,
the constant movement and change that were in Mrs. Beresford did not exist
in this other. She would sit and work by the lamplight, looking up sweetly
to answer, but happy to be silent if her companion liked it. She made herself
always the second and not the first, responding, not leading; her gift was to
divine what was in others, to follow where they went. It was this that made
her so popular with all her friends. When they came to her for advice she
would give it without that doubt and fear of responsibility which restrains
so many people. For why? she had a rule which was infallible, and which
made her safe from responsibility, although she was not herself aware how
closely she acted upon it. Her infallible guide was a faculty of seeing what
people themselves wished, how their own judgments were tending, and
what individually they wanted to do. This she followed sometimes
consciously, but often quite unconsciously, as habit led her, and she was
never afraid of saying Do this, or Do that. It was one of her great
attractions. She might be wise or she might be less than wise, in her
decisions, her friends said, but she never shilly-shallied, never was afraid of
saying to you with sweet frankness and boldness what she thought it would
be good to do.
The consequence of this simple rule was that good advice from Mrs.
Meredith’s lips was ever so much more popular than good advice had ever
been known to be before. It is not a commodity which is generally admired,
however admirable it may be; but those whom she advised were not only
edified but flattered and brightened. It made themselves feel more wise. It
was sweet at once to the giver and to the receiver, and kindled an increased
warmth of sympathy between them. Now and then, to be sure, the course of
action she recommended might not be a successful one, but is not that the
case with all human counsel? This, which was the secret of her power with
all her other friends, subjugated James Beresford too. As there is nothing so
dear to a man as his own way, so there is no individual so dear as that friend
who will recommend and glorify his own way to him, and help him to
enjoyment of it. This she did with a gentle patience and constancy which
was wonderful. It was natural to her, like all great gifts, and the great charm
of it all was that few people suspected the reflection from their own feelings
and sentiments which coloured Mrs. Meredith’s mind, nor was she at all
invariably aware of it herself. Sometimes she believed implicitly in her own
advice as the natural growth of her own thoughts and experiences, and
believed herself to have an independent judgment. And it is to be supposed
that she had opinions and ideas—certainly she had ways of her own, the
brightest, and kindest, and most caressing that could be conceived.
This was the secret of those absences which had left Cara so lonely.
They had become now the confirmed and constant habit of her father’s life.
And it would be vain to say that this had been done without remark. While
he was at home for a week or two only in a year no one said anything about
his frequent visits to the kind neighbour who was not even a widow; but
lately he had stayed longer when he came back to the Square, sometimes
remaining a month instead of a week, and now it was understood that he
had returned ‘for good.’ Both Mrs. Meredith and Mr. Beresford had, it may
be supposed, friends who took the responsibility of their conduct, and
thought it necessary to supervise them in their innocent but unusual
intimacy, and these excellent persons were in the attitude of suspended
judgment waiting to see what difference Cara’s presence would make, and
that of Oswald, in the one house and the other. But it had not as yet made
any very apparent difference. At nine o’clock, or thereabouts, the door
would shut in the one house, and Cook and John would exchange glances;
while in the other the bell would tinkle, and the two maids, who divided
John’s duties between them, would say, ‘There is Mr. Beresford, as usual!’
and shrug their shoulders. He came in, and they did not take the trouble
now even to announce the habitual visitor, who had his special chair and his
special corner, as if he belonged to the house. Sometimes the two friends
would talk long and much, sometimes they scarcely talked at all. They
knew each other like brother and sister, and yet there was between them a
delicate separation such as does not exist between relations. In the warm
room, softly lighted and friendly, the man who had been wounded found a
refuge which was more like the old blessedness of home than anything else
could be, and yet was not that blessedness. It did not occur to him that
because his daughter had come back to him he was to be banished from this
other shelter. Cara’s coming, indeed, had scarcely been her father’s doing.
Many discussions on the point had taken place among all his friends, and
Mrs. Meredith had been spurred up by everybody to represent his duty to
him. She had done it with a faint sense in her mind that it would affect
herself in some undesirable way, and with a certainty that she was departing
altogether from her usual rule of argument with the personal wishes of her
clients. Mr. Beresford had no personal wish on the subject. He preferred
rather that Cara should stay where she was happy. ‘If she comes here what
can I do for her?’ he said. ‘My society is not what a girl will like. I cannot
take her to the dances and gaieties which will please her.’
‘Why not?’ Mrs. Meredith had said.
‘Why not!’ He was petrified by her want of perception. ‘What could I do
in such places? And she is happy where she is. She has women about her
who know how to manage her. Her coming would derange my life
altogether. You, who feel everybody’s difficulties, you must feel this. What
am I to do with a girl of seventeen? It would be wretched for her, and it
could not be any addition to my happiness.’
‘Don’t you think too much of that,’ said Mrs. Meredith, faltering; for
indeed this was not at all her way. And it was hard for her to go against
those feelings on the part of her companion which, on ordinary occasions,
she followed implicitly. Even for herself Cara’s presence would complicate
the relations generally; but when she saw her duty, she did it, though with
faltering. Everybody else had spurred and goaded her up to this duty, and
she would not shrink. ‘If you are going to settle, you ought to have your
child with you.’
‘That you should dwell like this upon abstract oughts!’ said Mr.
Beresford; ‘you, who are so full of understanding of personal difficulties. It
is not like you. If I feel that Cara is better where she is—happier, more
suitably cared for——’
‘Still, you know when the father is settled at home his only child should
be with him,’ Mrs. Meredith reiterated. She was faithful to her consigne. If
she did not see it, other people did for whom she was the mouthpiece. But it
will be perceived that those persons were right who said she was not clever.
When she was not following her favourite and congenial pursuit of divining
others and reflecting them in her own person, she was reduced to this
helpless play of reiteration, and stuck to her one point till everybody was
tired of it. Beresford was so impatient that he got up from his chair and
began to pace up and down the room.
‘There is reason in all things,’ he said. ‘My house now is emphatically a
bachelor house, my servants suit me, my life is arranged as I like it, or at
least as I can support it best. Cara would make a revolution in everything.
What should I do with her? How should I amuse her? for, of course, she
would want amusement. And she is happy, quite happy, where she is;
nowhere could she be so well as she is now. My aunt and my sister are
wrapt up in her. Yes, yes, of course I am fond of my poor little girl; but
what could I do with her? You are always so reasonable—but not here.’
‘She should be with her father,’ said Mrs. Meredith, sticking to her
consigne; and of course he thought it was perversity and opposition, and
never divined what it cost her to maintain, against all her habits of mind, the
opposite side. When, however, it appeared by the Sunninghill letters that the
ladies there took the same view, Mr. Beresford had no more to say. He
yielded, but not with a good grace. ‘You shall have your will,’ he said; ‘but
Cara will not be happy.’ He did not take Oswald Meredith into
consideration, or any such strange influence; and as for changing his own
habits, how was that to be thought of? Life was hard enough anyhow, with
all the alleviations which fate permitted. Did anyone suppose that a girl of
seventeen, whom he scarcely knew, could be made into a companion for
him by the mere fact that she was his daughter? No; his mornings, which
were occupied with what he called hard work; his afternoons, which he
spent among his serious friends in his clubs and learned societies; and that
evening hour, most refreshing to his soul of any, in which the truest
sympathy, the tenderest kindness proved a cordial which kept him alive—
which of these, was it to be supposed, he would give up for the society of
little Cara? He was very glad to give her all that was wanted for her comfort
—a good careful attendant, plenty of dresses and pocket-money, and so
forth; but he could not devote himself, surely (who could expect it?), to the
society of a child. That anyone should expect this gave him even a little
repulsion from, a half-prejudice against her. When she appeared, with that
serious, half-disapproving look of hers, and when he realised her, seated
upstairs in that drawing-room which he had never entered since her
mother’s death, among all her mother’s relics, recalling to him at once a
poignant sense of his loss, and a sharp thrill of conscious pain, in having so
far surmounted that loss and put it behind him, the impulse of separation
came still more strongly upon him. He shut himself up in his study more
determinedly in the morning, and in the evening had more need than ever of
the consoling visits which wound him up and kept his moral being in
harmony. He had to ask Mrs. Meredith her advice and her opinion, and to
ask even her guidance in respect to Cara. Who could tell him so well what
to do with a girl as the kindest and best of women? Oswald, who had been
at home for some time, did not like these visits so well as his mother did.
No one ever suggested to the young man that he was de trop; but to be sure
there were pauses in their conversation when this third person was present,
and allusions would be made which he did not understand. So that latterly
he had been out or in the library downstairs when Mr. Beresford came; very
often out, which Mrs. Meredith did not like, but did not know how to
prevent, for to be sure she felt the embarrassment also of her son’s slight
disapproval, and of the restraint his presence produced. Why should he
cause a restraint? her boy! but she felt that he did so, and it made her
unhappy. It was pleasanter in the former evenings, when Mr. Beresford
came home only now and then, and there was neither a Cara nor an Oswald
to perplex the simple state of affairs.
‘How is she to amuse herself!’ Mr. Beresford said to her. ‘Yes, yes, I
know you will do what you can—when was there ever a time when you did
not do what you could and more?—but I cannot take her about, I cannot
have anyone in the house to keep her company, and how is she to live there,
a young girl, alone?’
‘I think Cara will do very well,’ said Mrs. Meredith. ‘She can always
come to me. I have told her so; and the people we know are all beginning to
call. She will soon have plenty of friends. People will invite her, and you
must go with her here and there.’
‘I go with her? You know how I hate going out!’
‘Once at least—say only once. You must do that, and then you will find
Cara will have her own friends; she will not be a difficulty any longer. I am
glad you trust in me to do what I can for her—and Oswald.’
‘Of course I trust in you,’ he said; ‘but it will break up everything. I
know it will—after coming to a kind of calm, after feeling that I can settle
down again, and that life is not utterly distasteful to me—you will not
wonder that I should be frightened for everything. And you, who have done
so much for me.’
‘I have not done anything,’ said Mrs. Meredith, looking up smiling from
her book.
‘You say so; but it is you who have done everything; and if I am to be
plucked from my refuge now, and pitched forth upon the world—— I
believe I am a coward. I shrink from mere outside intercourse, from being
knocked up against one and another, and shut out from what I prize most.’
‘How can that be?’ she said; ‘you get fretful, you men, when everything
does not go as you wish. Have a little patience. When Oswald came home,
it seemed at first, as if he, dear boy, was going to upset all my habits; but it
was a vain fear. The first little strangeness is over, and he has settled down,
and we are happy—happier than ever. It will be the same with Cara and
you.’
Beresford gave a half-groan of dissent. I fear Mrs. Meredith saw that it
had a double meaning, and that it expressed a certain impatience of her son
as well as of his daughter; but this was one of the things which she would
not see.
‘Yes,’ she said, with a little nod of her head, ‘I will answer for it, it will
be just the same with Cara and you.’
Mr. Beresford gave a little snort at this of absolute dissatisfaction. ‘I
don’t like changes of any kind,’ he said; ‘when we have got to be tolerably
well in this dismal world, why not be content with it, and stop there! Le
mieux est l’ennemi du bien. How true that is! and yet what can be better
than well? I dislike changes, and this almost more than any other. I foresee
it will bring me a thousand troubles—not to you, I hope,’ he said, his voice
slightly faltering; ‘it would be unbearable indeed if it brought any trouble to
you.’
‘Cara cannot bring any trouble to me,’ she said brightly; ‘of that I am
sure enough: you are making a ghost of the dearest child. By-and-by you
will see how sweet she is and how good.’
‘All girls have a way of being sweet and good,’ he said cynically, which
was a mood quite uncongenial to him and out of his way.
‘That is not like you,’ said Mrs. Meredith.
He knew it was not. The thought had passed through his own mind that
the saying was ungenerous and unworthy of him, and unworthy of utterance
in her presence. What could any man be worth who could utter one of those
foolish stock taunts against women in any stage of life, before a woman
who was to him the queen of friends, the essence of everything consolatory
and sweet. ‘You are always right,’ he replied hastily, ‘and I am wrong, as a
matter of course. I am out of sorts. I had but just caught hold of life again
and found it practicable, and here seems something that may unsettle all;
but I am wrong, it is almost certain, and you must be right.’
‘That is a delightful sentiment—for me; but I am sure of my ground
about Cara. Oh, quite sure!’ she said, ‘as sure—as I am of my own boys.’
Beresford did not say anything, but he breathed a short impatient sigh.
Her boys were all very well at a distance. When they had been absent he
had been fond of them, and had shared in the sentiment expressed by all
Mrs. Meredith’s friends, of regret for their absence; but when a small share
even of a woman’s company has become one of your daily comforts it is
difficult not to find her grown-up son in your way. He reflected upon this as
he shook hands with her, and went back to his dwelling-place next door
with a consciousness of impatience which was quite unjustifiable. To be
sure her grown-up son had a right to her which nothing could gainsay, and
was, in a sort of a way, master of the house under her, and might even have
a kind of right to show certain mild objections and dislikes to special
visitors. Mr. Beresford could not deny these privileges of a son; but they
galled him, and there was in his mind an unexpressed irritation against
those troublesome members of the new generation who would thrust
themselves in the way of their elders, and tread upon their heels perpetually.
Children were much pleasanter than these grown-up young people. He did
not see the use of them. Cara, for instance, though it was supposed she was
to keep house for her father, of what use was she in the house? Cook
(naturally) knew a hundred times more than she did, and kept everything
going as on wheels. As for Oswald Meredith, who had been a sprightly and
delightful boy, what was he now?—an idle young man about town, quite
beyond his mother’s management; doing nothing, probably good for
nothing, idling away the best years of his life. Why did not she send him to
India, as he was doing so little here? What an ease to everybody concerned
that would be! He thought of it in the most philosophical way, as good for
everybody, best for the young man—a relief to his mother’s anxieties, a
thing which his best friends must desire. What a pity that it could not be
done at once! But it would scarcely be good policy on his part to suggest it
to Oswald’s mother. She might think he had other motives; and what motive
could he have except to promote the welfare of the son of such a kind
friend?
CHAPTER XV.
ROGER.
Roger Burchell had set his mind steadily, from the moment of Cara’s
translation to her father’s house, upon spending those Sundays, which he
had hitherto passed at home, with his aunt at Notting Hill. But the rest of
the world has a way of throwing obstacles in the path of heroes of twenty in
a quite incredible and heartless manner. It was not that the authorities at the
Rectory made any serious objections. There was so many of them that one
was not missed—and Roger was not one of the more useful members of the
family. He had no voice, for one thing, and therefore was useless in church;
and he declined Sunday-school work, and was disposed to be noisy, and
disturbed the attention of the little ones; therefore he could be dispensed
with at home, and nobody cared to interfere with his inclinations. Neither
had the aunt at Notting Hill any objection to Roger—he was a friendly boy,
willing to take a quiet walk, ready to be kind to those who were kind to him
—and to have somebody to share her solitary Sunday’s dinner, and make
her feel like other people when she went to church, was pleasant to her. He
was a boy who never would want to shirk morning church, or keep the
servants from it, to get him a late breakfast, like so many young men. But
accident, not evil intention, came in Roger’s way. His aunt fell ill, and then
something went wrong at the Engineering College, and leave was withheld
—entirely by caprice or mistake, for Roger of course was sure of being
entirely innocent, as such youthful sufferers generally are. The upshot was,
that his first Sunday in London did not really occur until Cara had been a
whole month in her new home. How he chafed and fretted under this delay
it is unnecessary to tell. It seemed to him an age since that October
afternoon when the sun was so warm on the Hill, and Cara stood by his side
looking over the country in its autumn tints, and watching the shadows fly
and the lights gleam over St. George’s. What a long time it was! the mellow
autumn had stolen away into the fogs of winter; November is but the next
month, yet what a difference there is between its clammy chills, and the
thick air that stifles and chokes you, and that warmth and sunny glow with
which red-breasted October sings the fall of the leaves and the gathering-in
of the fruit! And in that time how much might have happened. Had it been
dreary for her all by herself in London, separated from her friends? or had
she found new people to keep her cheerful, and forgotten the friends of her
youth? These were the questions the lad asked himself as he went up to
town from Berkshire, on the evening of Saturday, the 25th of November.
All that he had heard of since she left had been from a letter which Miss
Cherry had read to his sister Agnes, and from which it appeared that Cara
felt London lonely, and regretted her friends in the country. ‘How I wish I
could have a peep at all of you or any of you!’ she had said. Agnes had been
pleased with the expression, and so was he. ‘All of us or any of us,’ he said
to himself for the hundredth time as the train flew over the rain-sodden
country. He thought, with a thrill at his heart, that her face would light up,
as he had seen it do, and she would be glad to see him. She would put into
his that small hand, that seemed to melt in his grasp like a flake of snow;
and perhaps there would come upon her cheek that faint crimson, which
only things very pleasant brought there—the reflection of a sweet
excitement. What an era that would be for Roger! he dreamt it out moment
by moment, till he almost felt that it had occurred. Sometimes a dream of
the other kind would start across him—a horrible fancy that he would find
her happy among others, making new friends, forgetting the old; but this
was too painful to be encouraged. He thought the train as slow as an old
hackney coach, when at last, after all these delays, he got away and found
himself actually on the road to London and to her, and thought of a story he
had heard of someone in hot haste, as he was, who had jumped out of his
carriage and pushed it on behind to arrive the sooner. Roger felt disposed to
do so, though his train was an express, and though he knew he could not go
to the Square that evening to see her. But he was so much nearer her when
he got to Notting Hill. She was on one side of the Park and he on the other.
Next day he would walk across, through all the Sunday people, through the
yellow fog, under the bare-branched trees, and knock at her door. There was
still a moment of suspense, still a long wintry night—and then!
His aunt thought very well of the young man when he got to Notting
Hill. She was his mother’s sister, a widow, and without children, and Roger
had been named after her husband, the late Captain Brandon, whose portrait
hung over her mantelpiece, and whose memory was her pride. She thought
her nephew was like her side of the house, not ‘those Burchells,’ and felt a
thrill of pride as he came in, tall and strong, in his red-brown hair and
budding moustache, with a touch of autumn colour about him in the heavy
despondency of the November day.
‘What weather!’ she said, ‘what weather, Roger! I daresay it is a little
better in the country; but we have nothing else to expect in November,
when the wind blows up the smoke out of the city.’
Roger hastened to assure her that the country was a great deal worse,
that the river was like a big, dismal ditch, full of mists and rains, and that
town, with its cheerful lights and cheerful company, was the only place.
Aunt Mary let herself be persuaded. She gave him a nice little dish of
cutlets with his tea. She asked him questions about his mother and sister,
and whether his papa’s opinions were not getting modified by experience
and by the course of events.
‘Hasn’t he learnt to take warning by all this Romanising?’ she asked, and
shook her head at Roger’s doubtful reply. She differed so much in
ecclesiastical opinion from her brother-in-law, that she very seldom went to
the Rectory. But she was glad to hear all about her godchild, little Mary, and
how Philip was getting on at Cambridge. And how pleasant it was to have
someone to talk to, instead of sitting all alone and melancholy, thinking, or
reading the newspaper. She made much of Roger, and told him he would
always be welcome; he was to come as often as he pleased.
‘I shall see her to-morrow,’ Roger said to himself, as he laid his head
upon his pillow. The thought did not stop him from sleeping; why should it?
but it suggested a string of dreams, some of which were terribly tantalising.
He was just putting out his hand to take hers, just about to hear the answer
to some momentous question, when he would wake suddenly and lose it all;
but still even the disappointment only awakened him to the fact that he was
to see her to-morrow; he was to see her to-morrow; nay, to-day, though this
yellow glimmer did not look much like daylight. He got up the moment he
was called, and dressed with much pains and care—too much care. When
his toilet was careless Roger looked, as he was, a gentleman; but when he
took extra pains, a Sunday look crept about him, a certain stiffness, as of a
man occupying clothes to which he was unaccustomed. His frock-coat—it
was his first—was uglier and squarer than even frock-coats generally are,
his hat looked higher, his gloves a terrible bondage. Poor boy! but for Cara
he never would have had that frock-coat; thus to look our best we look our
worst, and evil becomes our good. But his aunt was much pleased with his
appearance when he went to church with her, and thought his dress just
what every gentleman ought to wear on Sunday.
‘But your gloves are too tight, my dear,’ she said.
Roger thought everything was tight, and was in twenty minds to abandon
his fine clothes and put on the rough morning suit he had come in; but the
frock-coat carried the day. He could not eat at Mrs. Brandon’s early dinner.
She was quite unhappy about him, and begged him not to stand on
ceremony, but to tell her frankly if it was not to his mind. ‘For if you are
going to spend your Sundays with me it is just as easy to buy one thing as
another,’ Aunt Mary said, good, kind, deceived woman. She was very glad
he should take a walk afterwards, hoping it would do him good.
‘And I think perhaps I had better call at the Square and see Miss
Beresford. Her aunt is sure to ask me when I see her,’ he said.
‘Do, my dear,’ said the unsuspecting woman. And he set off across the
park. It was damp enough and foggy enough to quench any man’s courage.
The Sunday people, who were out in spite of all disadvantages, were blue,
half with the cold and half with the colour of the pitiless day. A few old
ladies in close broughams took their constitutional drive slowly round and
round. What pleasure could they find in it? still, as it is the ordinance of
heaven that there should be old ladies as well as young men of twenty, it
was a good thing they had comfortable broughams to drive about in; and
they had been young in their time, Roger supposed, feeling it hard upon
everybody not to have the expectations, the hopes, that made his own heart
beat. How it beat and thumped against his breast! He was almost sorry,
though he was glad, when the walk was over and the tall roofs of the houses
in the Square overshadowed him. His heart jumped higher still, though he
thought it had been incapable of more, when he got to the house. ‘Doors
where my heart was used to beat.’ He did not know any poetry to speak of,
and these words did not come to him. He felt that she must be glad to see
him, this dull, damp Sunday afternoon, the very time when heaven and
earth stood still, when there was nothing to amuse or occupy the languid
mind. No doubt she and her father would be sitting together, suppressing
two mutual yawns, reading two dull books; or, oh, blessed chance! perhaps
her father would have retired to his library, and Cara would be alone. He
pictured this to himself—a silent room, a Sunday solitude, a little drooping
figure by the chimney-corner, brightening up at sight of a well-known face
—when the drawing-room door opened before him, and his dream exploded
like a bubble, and with a shock of self-derision and disappointment more
bitter than honest Roger had ever felt in all his simple life before. There
were several people in the room, but naturally Roger’s glance sought out
the only one he was interested in, the only one he knew in the little
company. She was standing in front of one of the windows, the pale wintry
light behind making a silhouette of her pretty figure, and the fine lines of
her profile; but curiously enough, it was not she, after the first glance, who
attracted Roger’s gaze, but the other figure which stood beside her, close to
her, young, and friendly, in all the confidence of intimacy. It was Oswald
Meredith who was holding a book in which he was showing Cara
something—she, holding the corner of it with one hand, drew it down to her
level, and with a raised finger of the other seemed to check what he was
saying. They made the prettiest group; another young man, sitting at the
table, gazing at the pair, thought so too, with an envious sentiment, not so
strong or so bitter as Roger’s, but enough to swear by. Oswald had all the
luck, this young fellow was saying to himself: little Cara, too! Behind was
Mrs. Meredith, sitting by the fire, and Mr. Beresford, gloomy and sombre,
standing by her. It was the first time he had been in this room, and the visit
had been made expressly for the purpose of dragging him into it. He stood
near his friend, looking down, sometimes looking at her, but otherwise
never raising his eyes. This, however, was a side scene altogether
uninteresting to Roger. What was it to him what these two elder people
might be feeling or thinking? All that he could see was Cara and ‘that
fellow,’ who presumed to be there, standing by her side, occupying her
attention. And how interested she looked! more than in all the years they
had known each other she had ever looked for him.
Cara started at the sound of his name. ‘Mr. Burchell? oh, something must
be wrong at home!’ she cried; then, turning round suddenly, stopped with a
nervous laugh of relief. ‘Oh, it is only Roger! what a fright you gave me! I
thought it must be your father, and that Aunt Charity was ill. Papa, this is
Roger Burchell, from the Rectory. You remember, he said he would come
and see me. But, Roger, I thought you were coming directly, and it is quite a
long time now since I left home.’
‘I could not come sooner,’ he said, comforted by this. ‘I came as soon as
ever I could. My aunt was ill and could not have me; and then there was
some trouble at the College,’ he added, hurriedly, feeling himself to be
getting too explanatory. Cara had given him her hand; she had pointed to a
chair near where she was standing; she had given up the book which
Oswald now held, and over which he was looking, half-amused, at the new-
comer. Roger was as much occupied by him, with hot instinct of rivalry, as
he was with Cara herself, who was the goddess of his thoughts; and how the
plain young engineer, in his stiff frock-coat, despised the handsome young
man about town, so easy and so much at home! with a virulence of
contempt which no one could have thought to be in Roger. ‘Do you bite
your thumb at me, sir?’ he was tempted to say, making up to him straight
before the other had time to open his lips. But of course, being in civilised
society, Roger did not dare to obey his impulse, though it stirred him to the
heart.
‘You don’t introduce us to your friend, Cara,’ said Oswald, smiling, in
an undertone.
The fellow called her Cara! Was it all settled, then, and beyond hope, in
four short weeks? Oh, what a fool Roger had been to allow himself to be
kept away!
‘Mr. Roger Burchell—Mr. Meredith—Mr. Edward Meredith,’ said Cara,
with a slight evanescent blush. ‘Roger is almost as old a friend at the Hill as
you are at the Square. We have all been children together;’ and then there
was a pause which poor little Cara, not used to keeping such hostile
elements in harmony, did not know how to manage. She asked timidly if he
had been at the Hill—if he had seen——?
‘I came direct from the College last night,’ he said; and poor Roger
could not keep a little flavour of bitterness out of his tone, as who should
say, ‘A pretty fool I was to come at all!’
‘The—College?’ said Oswald, in his half-laughing tone.
‘I mean only the Scientific College, not anything to do with a
University,’ said Roger, defiant in spite of himself. ‘I am an engineer—a
working man’—and though he said this as a piece of bravado, poor fellow!
it is inconceivable how Sundayish, how endimanché, how much like a real
working man in unused best raiment, he felt in his frock-coat.
‘Oh, tell me about that!’ said Mrs. Meredith, coming forward; ‘it is just
what I want to know. Mr. Roger Burchell, did you say, Cara? I think I used
to know your mother. I have seen her with Miss Cherry Beresford? Yes; I
thought it must be the same. Do you know I have a particular reason for
wishing to hear about your College? One of my friends wants to send his
son there if he can get in. Will you tell me about it? I know you want to talk
to Cara——’
‘Oh, no; not if she is engaged,’ said Roger, and blushed hot with
excessive youthful shame when he had made this foolish speech.
‘She will not be engaged long, for we are going presently,’ said the
smiling gracious woman, who began to exercise her usual charm upon the
angry lad in spite of himself. She drew a chair near to the spot where he still
stood defiant. ‘I shall not keep you long,’ she said; and what could Roger
do but sit down, though so much against his will, and allow himself to be
questioned?
‘Your friend from the country is impatient of your other friends,’ said
Oswald, closing the book which he held out to Cara, and marking the place
as he gave it to her. ‘Do you want to get rid of us as much as he does?’
‘He does not want to get rid of anyone, but he does not understand—
society,’ said Cara, in the same undertone. Roger could not hear what it
was, but he felt sure they were talking of him, though he did his best to
listen to Mrs. Meredith’s questions. Then the other one rose, who was not
so handsome as Oswald, and went to her other side, completely shutting her
out from the eyes of the poor fellow who had come so far, and taken so
much trouble to see her. The College—what did he care for the College!
about which the soft-voiced stranger was questioning him. He made her
vague broken answers, and turned round undisguisedly, poor fellow! to
where Cara stood; yet all he could see of her was the skirt of her blue dress
from the other side of Edward Meredith, whose head, leaning forward,
came between Roger and the girl on whom his heart was set.
‘Mr. Burchell, Cara and her father are dining with my boys and me.
Edward is only with me for a few hours; he is going away by the last train.
Will not you come, too, and join us? Then Cara can see a little more of you.
Do you stay in town to-night?’
Two impulses struggled in Roger’s mind—to refuse disdainfully, or to
accept gratefully. In the first case he would have said he had dined already,
making a little brag of his aunt’s early hours—in the second—a calculation
passed very quickly through his mind, so quick that it was concluded almost
before Mrs. Meredith’s invitation.
‘I could,’ he said, faltering; ‘or, perhaps, if your son is going I might go,
too, which would be best——’
‘Very well, then, it is a bargain,’ she said, putting out her hand with a
delightful smile. He felt how warm and sweet it was, even though he was
trying at the moment to see Cara. This was the kind of mother these fellows
had, and Cara living next door! Surely all the luck seems to be centred on
some people; others have no chance against them. He stood by while Mrs.
Meredith got up, drawing her sons with her. ‘Come, boys, you can carry on
your talk later,’ she said. ‘Good-by for the moment, Cara mia.’ Then she
turned to Mr. Beresford, who stood gloomily, with his eyes bent on the fire.
‘You are not sorry you have broken the spell?’ she said, with a voice which
she kept for him alone, or so at least he thought.
He gave his shoulders a hasty shrug. ‘We can talk of that later. I am
going to see you to the door,’ he said, giving her his arm. The boys
lingered. Oswald was patting his book affectionately with one hand. It was
Edward who was ‘making the running’ now.
‘You are still coming to dine, Cara?’ he said. ‘Don’t turn me off for this
friend. He cannot be such an old friend as I am; and I have only a few hours
——’
‘So has he,’ said Cara; ‘and he told me he was coming. What am I to
do?’
‘There are three courses that you can pursue,’ said Oswald, ‘Leave him,
as Ned recommends; stay with him, as I certainly don’t recommend; or
bring him with you. And which of these, Cara, you may choose will be a
lesson as to your opinion of us. But you can’t stay with him; that would be a
slight to my mother, and your father would not allow it. The compromise
would be to bring him.’
‘Oh, how can I do that, unless Mrs. Meredith told me to do it? No;
perhaps he will go away of himself—perhaps——’
‘Poor wretch! he looks unhappy enough,’ said Edward, with a sympathy
of fellow-feeling. Oswald laughed. The misery and offence in the new-
comer’s face was only amusing to him.
‘Cara,’ he said, ‘if you are going to begin offensive warfare, and to
flaunt young men from the country in our faces, I for one will rebel. It is not
fair to us; we were not prepared for anything of the sort.’
‘My mother is calling us,’ said Edward, impatiently. Two or three times
before his brother had irritated him to-day. Either he was in a very irritable
mood, or Oswald was more provoking than usual. ‘I have only a few
hours,’ he continued, aggrieved, in a low tone, ‘and I have scarcely spoken
to you, Cara; and it was you and I who used to be the closest friends. Don’t
you remember? Oswald can see you when he pleases; I have only one day.
You won’t disappoint us, will you? I wish you’d go’—this was to his
brother—‘I’ll follow. There are some things I want to speak to Cara about,
and you have taken her up all the afternoon with your poetry. Yes, yes; I
see, there is him behind; but, Cara, look here, you won’t be persuaded to
stay away to-night?’
‘Not if I can help it,’ said the girl, who was too much embarrassed by
this first social difficulty to feel the flattery involved. She turned to Roger,
when the others went downstairs, with a somewhat disturbed and tremulous
smile.
‘They are our next-door neighbours, and they are very kind,’ she said.
‘Mrs. Meredith is so good to me; as kind as if she were a relation’ (this was
all Cara knew of relationships). ‘I don’t know what I should do without her;
and I have known the boys all my life. Roger, won’t you sit down? I am so
sorry to have been taken up like this the very moment you came.’
‘But if they live next door, and you know them so well, I daresay you are
very often taken up like this,’ said Roger, ‘and that will be hard upon your
country friends. And I think,’ he added, taking courage as he found that the
door remained closed, and that not even her father (estimable man!) came
back, ‘that we have a better claim than they have; for you were only a child
when you came to the Hill, and you have grown up there.’
‘I like all my old friends,’ said Cara, evasively. ‘Some are—I mean they
differ—one likes them for different things.’
The poor boy leaped to the worse interpretation of this, which, indeed,
was not very far from the true one. ‘Some are poorer and not so fine as
others,’ he said; ‘but, perhaps, Cara, the rough ones, the homely ones, those
you despise, are the most true.’
‘I don’t despise anyone,’ she said, turning away, and taking up Oswald
Meredith’s book.
By Jove! even when he was gone was ‘that fellow’ to have the best of it
with his confounded book? Roger’s heart swelled; and then he felt that

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