You and I and the Lady of Guadaloupe

Church of Our Lady of Guadaloupe, Puerto Vallarta, Mexico

Suppose you were Mexican, and suppose the history of your religion went back to the sixteenth century when Spanish plunderers and missionaries together subdued your ancestors with the sword and the Bible, converting them to a Christianity resembling as closely as possible the church culture of Spain. And suppose you were making a scanty living selling trinkets and souvenirs, T-shirts and serapes in a tiny stall among hundreds of tiny stalls offering the same fare to tourists. Suppose further that as you walked by the Church of Our Lady of Guadaloupe on Calle Hidalgo some ancient force draws you inside while on your way to the Malecon to open your booth.

Inside is what has amazed you a thousand times. The high, vaulted space of it, the soaring white columns gold-leafed on their caps, the two statues of Jesus, one in a one-hand-raised, “blessing the people” pose and the other in a posture of abject defeat, a crown of thorns on his head. You would likely genuflect, cross yourself, possibly kneel in a pew and say a prayer . . . of confession? A plea for a better life? Like Christians the world over, your prayer would arise from a longing, a yearning for—possibly—you’re not sure what, and so the words might be so hard to find that rote petitions must suffice, a bible encapsulated in the rhythm of beads on a string, maybe. You would probably descend the steps to Calle Hidalgo lightened, refreshed, but still not whole, never completely fulfilled.

And then to the day’s labour. You would probably open your booth of trinkets and T-shirts as yet-another oft-rehearsed ritual: unlock the rusted iron hatch, drag out the display racks, make sure every space displays the most colourful fabric, the most glittering silver jewelry, whatever might perchance catch the eye of one or two of the thousands of visitors that will promenade along the Malecon that day. Many pesos are needed to put the children into clean, bright uniforms for school, to put good food on the table. Experience tells you that the longer you make your day seated on your plastic chair, searching out by intuition any potential customer, the more pesos can be harvested.

But suppose instead that you are one of the visitors to this place that is always warm, that always caresses you with balmy sea breezes, never with icy gales. Suppose you are walking down the Malecon, your pockets full of pesos and US dollars, Canadian dollars or Deutschmarks. Your hotel room is clean and modern and comfortable but you lament the absence of an ocean view; you should have selected your actual room more carefully. You check your bank account on your smart phone and see that your work pension, your OAS pension, your CPP pension, interest on your investments have all been paid in as they are every month.

And suppose you get really tired of the hawkers, as you might call them. The young man with silvery bracelets on each arm, enticing you to buy with, “See what I made for you?” Or the waiter waving a restaurant menu in your face uninvited. Or street performers nudging you with a basket of small bills and coins and the beggars rattling a few coins in tin cans. Would you see it all as a gigantic rip-off? Would you say, “I’m tired of being solicited for money every five steps!”

But suppose it dawns on you that here on the Malecon the complete drama of human survival is played out: the ones who have and the ones who need, the ones with the “right religion” over against the ones with the “wrong religion,” the ones with dark skin and the ones with light skin, the interplay of greed and generosity, the glory and the despair. And most starkly of all, those who have the means to be mobile in so many ways and those who simply don’t. The ones who labour to provide, and the ones who benefit from their labours. And if your thoughts tended this way, would you be accused of being a Marxist?

Or would you, after all, come away with the warm feeling of having spent time with people who are generally so affable, so friendly, so helpful beyond what seems necessary. Would you go home with stories of meeting real people, getting to know them by name in just a few encounters, of having felt the human bond in a way you never did at home? Would you, perhaps, go home with a new sense of one race . . . the human race? Would the struggle to be understood in an unfamiliar language provide you with an appreciation for the dilemma that so many migrants face worldwide?

Some say travel provides the best education. Maybe it’s true.