Catholics, too, venerate El Nino
Fidencio
By JAMES BURBANK
Special to the National Catholic Reporter Espinazo,
Mexico
Twice a year this sleepy northeast Mexican hamlet, two hours'
drive from Monterrey, comes alive. Tens of thousands of Hispanic Catholics from
south Texas and Mexico conduct annual pilgrimages here to venerate their
curandero folk saint, El Nino Fidencio. Despite repeated warnings by Monterrey
Archbishop Adolfo Rivera to avoid the heretical festivals, crowds of the
faithful continue to come.
These crowds know no heresy in their veneration. For many Catholic
Mexicans on both sides of the border, religion is anything but pure, and
naturally so. It is the product of a synthesis of Indian and European cultures
that has evolved since the Spanish conquest of the Americas. This explains why
a curandero, or shaman-healer, is also called a saint.
During the week of Oct. 17 and again in March, to honor El Nino's
patron, St. Joseph, throngs of devotees carry flowers and copal incense like
ancient Aztec celebrants. They wend their way through narrow Espinazo streets
to El Pirulito (the little pepper tree) where El Nino, meaning Child of God,
received his miraculous healing powers from the Heavenly Father. After circling
the tree three times, long lines of pilgrims pass to El Nino's tomb located in
the curandero's healing salon.
A fiesta atmosphere abides in Espinazo during the celebrations.
Devoted to the Virgin of Guadalupe and El Nino, dancers wearing plumed
headdresses and elaborate costumes perform in the plaza by the folk saint's
tomb. Musicians, clowns, balloon sellers and patent medicine hawkers wander
through the crowds. Part velorio, or wake, part tribute to El Nino's curative
powers, the fall festivities and the spring rituals are as strange and
compelling as the folk saint they celebrate.
Born in 1898, Jose Fidencio Sintora Constantino came from the
state of Guanajuato as a young boy to Espinazo, where he served as housekeeper
for Enrique Lopez de la Fuente. The boy showed a gift for healing, a knowledge
of medicinal plants and concoctions and an affinity with the supernatural. As a
young man, his reputation as a curandero spread. Hundreds seeking cures camped
out in Espinazo.
In 1928 Mexican President Plutarco Elias Calles' suppression of
the Catholic priesthood had resulted in the Cristero Revolt. Calles, who
organized Mexico's dominant political party -- the PRI -- the following year,
came to Espinazo to arrest the curandero faith healer for practicing medicine
without a license. After El Nino cured the politician and his ailing daughter,
thousands descended on Espinazo. By the time of his death, El Nino was the most
famous Mexican curandero.
In 1938, Fidencistas say, El Nino was murdered by jealous
physicians. Before he died he made a prediction. He said he would come back
three days after his death. El Nino would return by inhabiting various spirit
mediums called cajitas (little boxes) or materias (literally matter, applied to
persons who believe they embody a sacred personage) through whom he would
speak, act and heal the sick.
Now, in many U.S. Mexican-American communities, Fidencista
materias have established missions. During fiesta time pilgrims come not only
from Mexico but from Wisconsin, California, New Mexico and of course the Rio
Grande Valley in Texas, to visit this sacred land. Most of them are poor,
marginalized, with little or no access to health care. They seek healing here
in Espinazo and they view themselves as ardent Catholics.
"In 1938 the pope came to Espinazo," says Juanita Barela from El
Paso, Texas. She credits El Nino with saving her from a life of cocaine and
alcohol abuse. "The pope left a letter in support of El Nino," she says.
The pope's visit and his letter are fiction. Fidencistas show a
marked preference for syncretism and incorporate widely disparate elements in
their beliefs. Fidencista materias invent spontaneous rituals that incorporate
alabanzas (songs of praise), the use of herbs, scented waters called aguas
preparadas and various oils and potions.
A mercado (market) thrives in Espinazo during fiestas, where
images of El Nino, Jesus and various saints are side by side with little
statues of Hotei, the happy, fat Buddhist bodhisattva who is an incarnation of
Maitreya, the future Buddha. Like a Buddhist master, El Nino loved the
mystical, the playful and the unexpected, and so Buddha, too, has been absorbed
into El Nino's festival.
Fidencistas also call their folk saint El Guadalupano, son of the
Virgin of Guadalupe. He often wore a dress as he carried a cross through
Espinazo streets. Detractors say Fidencio was gay and that he was an alcoholic
who drank himself to death, but his adherents relate that the childlike El Nino
loved to have parties and play music to entertain and lift the spirits of the
sick. His followers say Fidencio is an embodiment of Baby Jesus, especially in
the form of El Nino de Atocha, whose spirit materias channel during fiesta
time.
Fidencistas gather at El Charquito, the dirty gray pond near his
tomb where El Nino healed lepers and cancer-stricken patients. They wade into
the fetid water where a materia awaits to immerse them in healing baptism.
Adelita Chavez, a 34-year-old bilingual education teacher from San
Antonio, has taken the Espinazo waters and says, though she is skeptical about
the curandero, that her bad back has been aided by bathing in the sacred pool.
She says her university training in critical thinking is at odds with
Fidencista spiritualism, which nevertheless proves an attraction for her.
"The priest at our church has begun working with a local materia.
He doesn't want anyone to know, but so many people began going to Fidencista
meetings, he had to do something. My husband thinks I'm visiting relatives in
McAllen, Texas. If he knew I had come to Espinazo, he would have a fit."
Wearing the brown pilgrim hat and blue robes of El Nino de Atocha,
a materia from San Antonio has led her group under some shade trees near the
pool. She speaks in a strangely altered voice with her eyes closed.
"Do you know who that is?" asks Tom Garcia, a 40-year-old San
Antonio plumber. "That is Baby Jesus." His expression of awe and devotion
typify the kind of gnosis, power and immediacy that has proved persuasive for
Fidencistas.
They also want their spontaneous ritual practices, their
charismatic beliefs and their Santo Nino to be recognized by the mother church,
a recognition that in all likelihood will never come.
Recently the grandsons of Enrique de la Fuente have sought to have
the Fidencista church receive official recognition by the Mexican government
under the same legislation that has only recently granted Catholic priests the
right to wear vestments in public.
This political move has been viewed by some Fidencistas as a
challenge to traditional materia leadership and a widening of the gap that
separates the official church from this new folk religion.
Such concerns don't bother most pilgrims to Espinazo. They see no
separation between what happens during El Nino's festivals and their more
conventional devotions. Meanwhile, each year El Nino's fiestas draw more
adherents, as this U.S./Mexican border religion continues to grow and provide
solace and healing for many Hispanic Catholics both in the United States and in
Mexico.
National Catholic Reporter, February 7,
1997
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