THE MUSEUM OF SANTA FE.
Its corners copy the towers of Laguna, Taos, and Acoma.
Early Good Friday morning, our party drove in and out the valleys, fording to our hubs streams that yesterday were mere trickles, and tomorrow, augmented by melting mountain snows, would be raging torrents. New Mexico has few working bridges. One fords a stream, if it seems sufficiently shallow, or waits a day or week at the nearest hotel for it to subside. Rivers were fast leaving their bounds this morning, but we managed to cross in time to arrive at Alcalde before ceremonies had begun.
Built like most adobe pueblos, Indian and Mexican, about a straggling square, this little village furnished a good vantage for Americans to see and to be observed,—watched with quiet hostility by idling natives. Cross-currents of ill feeling we sensed intangibly; not only did the village as a whole bristle toward us, but it contained two sects of flagellants, and two morados, whose families were fiercely partisan; and in addition these were opposed by the native element of strict Catholics who, obeying the mandates of the Church, frowned on the fanatic religionists. We were warned not to take pictures nor show our cameras, nor to follow the procession too closely. Our presence was barely tolerated, and our innocent attempts to become an inconspicuous part of the landscape met with scowls and uncomplimentary remarks. Perhaps they were justified; the desire to guard one’s religious rites from curious eyes is a high instinct, which, no matter how effacingly we “hunted penitentes,” we were violating.
The saints in the whitewashed church had been dressed for the occasion in new ribbons and laces. On a low wheeled platform stood a crudely painted figure of Christ, his eyes bandaged with the pathetic purpose of saving him from the sight of the agony to come to his followers. With him were other figures; one I think was Judas, with his bag of silver and mean grimace. Soon from the morado came a short procession of men and boys, weak-kneed and trembling, clad only in cotton drawers and shirts which speedily became ensanguined from wounds made by hidden thorns. They walked with a peculiar swaying motion, as if their knees were broken. Three of them, no more than boys, bore great crosses of foot-square timber, about twenty feet long. The heavy ends dragged on the ground; the cross beams rested on bent backs, on which, the whisper went, were bound the spiky cactus whose every curved needle pressing on the flesh spells torture. Blood ran down their shaky legs, joining blood already crusted. Their faces were hooded.
A band of flagellants followed who as yet played a less active part. At wide intervals over the scorching desert were planted the fourteen stations of the cross, to which the three principals, barefooted, dragged their burdens. At each they rested while the drama of that station was enacted as crudely and literally as an early mystery play. A middle-aged penitente in store clothes, fiercely in earnest, read appropriate passages from the Mexican Bible, stumbling over the pronunciation. Then the procession chanted responses, and the brief respite, if respite it was for the cross-bearers, came to an end. At the proper station, three little black-robed Marys broke from the crowd, and played their tragic part.
We watched in suspense the slow progress, wondering if the martyrs would reach their goal alive. As they neared the fourteenth station, one of the “two thieves” tottered, and had to be supported, half-fainting, the rest of the way. The other two barely managed to finish. Our dread was heightened lest the Mystery be carried to its bitter close.
No printed word could have aroused among its ignorant spectators the tense devoutness inspired by this medieval drama. Religion to many of us has become a denatured philosophy, a long step from this savage brutality. Yet have we any substitute which will so kindle our imagination and idealism that it could school the body to endure gladly even the supreme agony?
During the heat of the day, all was silence within the morado to which the actors had retreated. The sobbing Mexican women who followed the procession vanished with their black veils into their houses, some perhaps to await news of the death or collapse of their men, which not infrequently attends the Holy Week celebrants. Toward dark, over the country side, automobile phares began to converge toward the silent morado. The world outside had taken up “penitente hunting” as a cold-blooded sport. They came openly baiting the penitentes, who angered, refused to appear. Eight, nine, ten, eleven! We left our darkened car, and hid ourselves in the sand dunes near the graveyard, in the dark shadow of a clump of piñons.