“How did you know that was a shrine?” Regan asked, that fast, uncontrolled vibrato causing her voice to oscillate. She handed me a cup of the fragrant tea.
“I’ve started a sketchbook about the brotherhood.” I took a sip. The sharp, intense mint flavor of the poleo cleared my head. “I’ve been mapping and sketching shrines all around this area, trying to find out more about them, and about the Penitentes, but the locals don’t much want to talk to a white girl like me.”
Regan perched on the edge of one of the sofas, but she didn’t allow herself to sink in-or to sit still. She fidgeted nervously with the arrangement of the art books. “You’re doing a book about the brotherhood? I’m sure that must be very difficult. They’re very enigmatic, those Penitentes. They don’t want anyone knowing what they’re up to, although there aren’t many of the crazy old fools left anymore to keep their secrets.” She twisted her tea mug around and around in her hands.
“I don’t need to know their secrets. I’d just like to know more general stuff, really. I think it’s okay for them to have some mystery and intrigue. That’s what makes them interesting.”
Regan did not respond, but instead stared out the windows at the rio. We sat in silence for a minute or more. She seemed absorbed in her own thoughts. Then a quite unexpected event occurred-one that instantly endeared this nervous, high-strung, somewhat peculiar woman to me. Over this, our first of many cups of poleo, Regan became the first local elder to break the silence and talk to me.
“I want you to know that I don’t hold to any of their beliefs,” she said, raising the flat of her palm up to me as though she were swearing in at a trial, “but I could tell you a few general things. If it would help with your book, that is.”
She began by telling me about the processions of Easter week. “Around here, everything stops for La Semana Santa, Holy Week. In many of the small villages, you will see several processions of the Penitentes to and from their moradas. I promise you, it is not for the fainthearted. You see, they flagellate themselves with yucca whips. One of them uses a sharp flint, called a pedernal, to cut the brothers’ backs so they will bleed and not swell.” She mimed the cutting action. “It makes deep, mutilating gashes. Then the ones doing penance scourge these wounds with their own whips. Sometimes they even lash themselves with ropes tied with tiny thorns or nails called la disciplina. Or they press cacti into their bleeding backs and bind it to them with ropes. I’ve seen them lash fence wire together with rope and whip themselves, and even ask others to whip them with this.” She shook her head back and forth and grimaced with displeasure. “They march out of the morada in a procession, whipping themselves. They go back to the morada for nursing and cleansing with rosemary water. Again, they march and whip themselves. Over and over and over. A Penitente will sometimes walk on his bare knees for hundreds of yards in beds of razor-sharp cacti. Others half carry, half drag huge crosses that are half again their weight and height up the side of the mountain to the Calvario-the place where they reenact the crucifixion. In the old days, if one of them died in these rituals, his death was like a sacred event,” she said, raising both palms toward the heavens in a pantomime of praise. “If he survived, his sins were forgiven, and he was absolved from worldly sin, at least until the next season of Lent. They are still extremely superstitious about all this. One day of suffering is supposed to pay for a year of sin.
“Oh, my, I can still remember it,” she said, her deep voice cracking with an occasional low-pitched squeak. “On Good Friday, when they would make procession from the morada to the church, we would get blood spattered all over us as they passed by whipping themselves! You see, this was supposed to make them pure, even purify the community, or bargain souls out of purgatory-making these brutal penances.”
I called on Regan many times after that. Each time, I brought her a little gift-tamales, fresh bread from the pueblo, candles. It was clear that she looked forward to our visits as much as I did, and we developed a kind of routine. She would always brew the poleo while we made small talk. Then I would take out my book and a pen, and she would have a story ready. Over time, she relaxed more and more in my presence, if one could ever call Regan relaxed. And her fondness for our time together was made evident as she began to prepare for my visits by making notes of her own, so she would not forget to tell me something she felt was important-either some of the local history or more of her own personal experiences.
Once she told about a time when she was a child, and she and a friend had gone up into the mountains to an old morada. “We couldn’t have been any more than eight or nine years old. We hid behind large boulders, watching as the Penitentes prepared for a crucifixion. This man had a black bag tied over his head with a rope, and he was made to drag this enormous cross up the hillside. And then they tied his arms and chest and feet to it and raised him up! If they had found us watching,” she said, her big dark eyes almost popping out above her high, pronounced cheekbones, “they would have stoned us to death!”
She paused for a moment, then went on: “They left him there-they would leave them there sometimes for the whole day, even overnight, you see-exposed to the weather, almost naked. It’s very often freezing that time of the year! And they bind their limbs tight, to cut off the circulation, as part of the emulation of Christ’s suffering. They bind their chests tight.”
I was taking notes as fast as I could write, trying to capture every word Regan said. When she hadn’t spoken for a minute or so, I stopped writing and looked up.
“You know,” she said softly, “if a wife found her husband’s shoes on the doorstep after a night of ceremony, she would simply know that he had been chosen, and he had not survived the ritual. No one was permitted to speak of this, and no one did. Whoever was selected to endure the trial of crucifixion was supposedly blessed”-Regan raised her eyebrows-“whether he lived through it or not.”
Regan seemed lost in her thoughts for a moment as she shook her head repeatedly in disbelief. “It was barbaric, like they were trapped in the dark ages. Some fool started this ridiculous behavior-what was it? Five hundred years ago? And they were still doing it, without question, even thirty years ago. But at least not too many do these things anymore,” she insisted, still shaking her head. “It was the old ones-they believed in this terrible penitence. They thought the way to salvation was to experience Christ’s agony, his pain. As if they could. They believed that nonsense about paying for their own sins and those of others with their anguish.” Her voice got louder as she went on, “You know, the Church forbade this, even the law forbade this. But they didn’t listen. Instead, they moved their rituals to secret places and held them after dark. They even had the sympathy of some of the local priests.”
“But if someone died,” I asked, “how could they cover that up?”
“What little government there was here turned heads and allowed all this. Deaths were not investigated, some not even reported!” She set her tea mug down hard onto the cedar table, and the poleo sloshed out of the cup and onto the beautiful pink and white, making a pale green pool. She didn’t seem to notice the spill. “You see, many times, the authorities were Penitentes themselves.” She paused. “But that was in the old days. Now, thank God, we have returned to the Catholic Church, and almost nobody does those things anymore. New Mexico needs to move out of the dark ages.”
She stopped talking and was quiet for a few moments. Then she began the conversation at a new place. “You know, Jamaica, you must come to mass here in Agua Azuela sometime. I think you would surely enjoy it. We have one monthly mass, usually on the second Sunday of the month. We have to share Father Ximon with Embudo, Dixon, and Pilar, but he does still make it here once a month.”