Authorities in Mexico believe they have finally made progress in negotiations with a religious cult whose members have been physically blocking teachers from entering into their small walled community for three days.

Government Secretary Jesus Reyna Garcia told Mexican media that progress has been made and the community leaders have agreed to end the standoff.

The talks came after members of the religious sect blocked roads into the New Jerusalem community and attacked children, parents, and teachers who tried to attend a small house that had been converted into a school. The church supporters, including women dressed in the robes and headscarves that the sect requires them to wear, started fistfights with residents who wanted their children to go to school at improvised classrooms set up after the school buildings were destroyed.

In July, members of the cult destroyed the numerous government school buildings in the town, saying the Virgin of the Rosary, whom they worship, told them school buildings were built by the devil and were to be demolished. They used sledgehammers to destroy the schools and then doused them with gasoline and set fire to the school furniture and computer equipment.

“It is a problem of fundamentalism,” said Garcia, “If I wanted I could make sure that classes begin tomorrow with constant police presence, but you cannot carry on like that for an entire school year.”

The blockade is affecting more than 200 children in the tiny community of 3,000. Before the progress made by Mexican authorities today, many local officials in the western state of Michoacán said it was time to call in a large-scale police operation.

“We need to remind these people that they are not living on an island,” said the governor of the state, Fausto Vallejo Figueroa, to reporters in Mexico.

Under the Mexican law, grade school education is compulsory. Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission and the Roman Catholic Church said that the refusal to allow classes in the town of New Jerusalem is a violation of children’s human rights. The school year officially began on Monday.

“They want to impose beliefs, not a religion . . . by taking away the right every child has to attend classes in government-provided education,” the Mexican Bishops Council said in a statement.

The council does not recognize the cult, which was formed in 1973 by a defrocked Catholic priest who objected to the ending of masses in Latin and other modernization moves. The community prohibits formal schooling, television, radio, modern music, dress and fashion.

Leaders of the cult are not opposed to education in general but insist on being able to appoint their own teachers, create their own curriculum, and mandate robes and headscarves for female students.

“What happens is that those people are using the school as a way to introduce to our community things that are banned, like fashion, immorality, vice, drugs and alcoholism,” said a New Jerusalem Cathedral spokesman known as Father Luis to CNN.

The New Jerusalem community also believes their compound will be the only place on Earth spared in an impending apocalypse.

Godless societies are on the rise but arguments over religion still rage in Léon Ferrari’s provocative collages. The most glaring idiosyncrasies of Christianity are nowhere more evident than around that heavily contested zone – the female body.

At the entrance to his latest exhibition in Buenos Aires’ Malba, an image of Michelangelo’s Christ, plucked from the Sistine chapel, is superimposed upon a Martin Schreiber nude of the pop icon, Madonna. Displaced from its original context, the marmoreally-contoured, imposing religious figure appears to rise, like a black-and-white surrealist still, from the pop icon’s reclining figure.

The blazing drama of late Italian religious paintings is insistently subjected to Ferrari’s potent re-imaginings. His provocative collages combine a distortionary, surrealist angle with a photomontage technique. Insistently foregrounding unlikely encounters between revered religious iconography, biblical quotations and oriental erotica, Ferrari’s ‘re-readings’ debunk any canonical interpretation, cutting religious and political hegemonies down to parodic size.

The exhibition opens with the mid-90s Braille series: this is Ferrari in a more sober, reticent vein. Scintillating dots overlay biblical images of scenes from the Last Judgment and the Expulsion from Eden, highlighting the seeds of cultural indoctrination. Unlike his bold, provocative collages that offer surface critiques of sexual morality, the transparent film of the braille series works by subtly drawing the viewers’ attention to dominant cultural narratives. Biblical translations are placed as side appendages, pointing to the sources of a 2,000 year history of deceit and repression.

From the laconically elegant typeface of his 1960s ‘Cuadros escritos’, Ferrari has insistently sought to foreground the materiality of language, exploring its associative potential. With the braille series, the viewer is silently engaged with the tactile surface bossing: the act of ‘touching’ the historic reproduction implicitly subverts the visual hegemony entrenched in Western iconography. In theory, bringing the viewer into physical contact with the work emancipates them from their role of passive spectatorship. In practice, visitors accustomed to viewing an objet d’art with revered critical distance, approach the work cautiously.

But Ferrari’s work is, nonetheless, compelling purely on the grounds of its wry directness, its wit and pizazz. In the vignettes of the Genesis landscape, ‘I created evil’, a blissfully insouciant Adam and Eve are lectured by a tufted-bearded priest and chased by a stick-wielding angel, casting the nude definitely out of Eden. Each religious figure is relentlessly perforated with Ferrari’s censoring crystals, placing such irrefutable dogmas in skeptical visual parentheses. In ‘The bread of life’, a coy-seeming Christ, his fingertips smeared with blood, heads a table on which plates display his beheaded disciples. Alongside the biblical text reads: “I am the bread of life: He that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth in me shall never thirst.”

The iridescent braille film over Andrea Mategna’s ‘The Lamentation over the Dead Christ’ points to the failure of Christianity to revere both body and soul, offering its own illusion of the spirit rising out of the recumbent body.

The series moves eastward with a series of erotic Japanese prints of couples in elaborate pornographic poses. The playful irreverence of the works depends on the combination of idea, image and biblical caption, of the like of ‘Flee fornication’ and ‘Who eateth my flesh’. While Man Ray’s black-and-white print ‘Eve’ is placed in dialogue with Jorge Luis Borges’ love poem.

In ‘Thou shalt not covert thy neighbour’s wife’, Gustave Courbet’s starkly realist, libertine ‘The Origin of the World’ is divested of its Musée d’Orsay gilded baroque frame and subjected to Ferrari’s braille censor.

Curator Florence Battiti presents a coherent, intelligent retrospective: the contemptuous works are allowed to seamlessly flow together, evoking the ubiquitous narrative of religious doctrine. The ever-so slight variations on the same theme do run the risk of sliding into gratuitous repetition, but Ferrari’s work is at its most probing when it subjects Christianity’s disdain for the flesh to absurdly comic proportions – quite literally in Utagawa Toyokuni’s gruesomely enlarged ‘love thyself’ prints.

In the second half of the exhibition, images from the mass media are starkly juxtaposed with religious iconography. A gaudy, technicolour pope presides over a Goya-like multi-layered etchings of hell; a cartoonish God looms over the Vatican; while angels bemusedly contemplate a phallic Roman sculpture.

The provocative temporal and cultural transplantation of these vignettes spin out of Ferrari’s central conviction that the “Bible is an anthology of cruelty”. The images point endlessly to the repressive, violent strains encoded in religious practice; and to the political manipulation of cultural signs. Nothing is self-contained in Ferrari’s world; his most successful pieces work on a theatrical principle of dramatic irony.

The apocalyptic scenes of Hiroshima are viewed through the curtains of Piero della Francesca’s ‘La Madonna Del Parto’; the angels of birth are now depicted as minions heralding the launch of weapons of mass destruction. As in Brueghel’s painting in which the major event is eclipsed by the diurnal round, a couple in Jan van Eyck’s ‘Virgin of Chancellor Rolin’ are absorbed in their ostentatious domestic setting, while in the distance a prospect of war and destruction rages on.

The explicit, intransigent works are testament to Ferrari’s relentlessly inventive, irreverent style. Curated in dialogue with Malba’s concurrent exhibition, Bye Bye American Pie, it offers a provocative, searing critique of the mechanics of political and religious imperialism.

The 37th annual Luján youth pilgrimage took place last weekend, beginning in Liniers and running the length of Avenida Rivadavia to Luján, almost 60km away in the province of Buenos Aires.  The event draws thousands of the faithful every year and can take up to 20 hours to complete.  The 20km section that I covered was lined continuously with makeshift parrillas and water, sock and insole vendors – clearly an excellent source of revenue for the residents along the pilgrimage’s route.

Photographer: Shane Korpisto.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Christian missionary believes Jesus commanded his followers to take the gospel message to the people of every nation. This means leaving their home countries in order to live and work amongst a foreign community.

In Argentina, the word ‘missions’ will instantly call to mind the Jesuits, an order of Catholic priests who built settlements in South America during the 17th and 18th centuries. These Spanish New World colonisers aimed to organise the indigenous people and convert them to Catholicism whilst allowing them to retain elements of their native culture. Ruins of such settlements can still be seen in the aptly-named province of Misiones. The issue is polemic: whilst the settlements were feats of organisation and strong both economically and militarily, they raise the question of whether one people group has a right to impose their belief system on another in such an extreme way.

In the first half of the 19th century, a Protestant former British navy officer named Allen Francis Gardiner made several visits to Argentina in an attempt to establish a mission. During his last trip to Patagonia, the Yahgan people of Picton Island were hostile towards Gardiner and his colleagues. A ship carrying food supplies from England then met with delays and, since the men had forgotten to unload their gunpowder from the boat that brought them, they couldn’t shoot any animals to eat. They eventually starved to death, martyrs to their own cause. However, they left behind the legacy of the South American Mission Society (SAMS), which would run independently until 2009 when it merged with another mission.

Fast forward 150 years and it may come as a surprise to know that the Christian church is still sending missionaries to Argentina in order to serve society and share their message of God’s love and salvation for all. We meet four Protestants, all under the age of 30, to find out more about life as a modern day missionary.

Hannah Davis, 22, is an English Literature graduate who formerly worked in a publishing house. “Being at the computer all day and not being able to use my personality made me feel like a zombie,” she recalls. “I didn’t want to be comfortable or stationary. I could have carried on climbing the career ladder but I felt compelled to help others.” Two months ago, she arrived to spend a year working in a playgroup called Grandes Lucecitas (Great Little Lights) run by an Argentine Christian NGO called Generadores de Cambio (Generators of Change). The playgroup, in the provincial town of Monte Grande, welcomes 25 children and charges a fraction of the cost of other nursery schools.

“The idea is that children deserve the best possible start in life,” she explains. “Also, that they learn in different ways – academically, spiritually, creatively.” In addition to English which Hannah teaches, the children will amongst other activities have swimming lessons, grow plants and learn dance in an effort to develop all of these skills. For Hannah, it has not all been plain sailing. Being a beginner in Spanish, she initially experienced some teething problems. “Communicating can be a struggle. Especially the first few weeks when the kids would cry and I couldn’t understand why…I felt like crying too!”

This winter, Hannah and others from Generadores de Cambio will make a two-week trip to Salta. “The Wichi communities can be shy as they don’t often get visits from outside, except for reporters, but they’re always grateful to see us. We plan to make a vegetable patch and build a space to put on extra-curricular classes in art, writing and dance, whilst training community members to carry on these classes after we leave. For the children, we’ll have a big feast, dress up in costumes and act out plays. The plays speak about God but major on the fact that the children are loved and special. We also get pupils from schools in Buenos Aires to make surprise boxes containing clothes, pens and toys. For previous visits, LAN airlines agreed to transport them all to Salta for free.”

Laura Kyte, 25, became a Christian on a summer camp at the age of 14. “I never planned to be a missionary though,” she says. During university holidays, she volunteered to work in a church in Spain that had been founded by a young couple from the US. “I was struck by what they’d done and how the church was Spanish and not at all Americanised. Seeing this couple live out their faith in another culture made me think: if I really believe what I say I do, it should transform my life and make me want to share the good news with others.” She decided to do just that.

Supported by savings and her home church’s generosity, she first came to Argentina to work in a villa in Córdoba. However, she missed athletics, a sport she’d previously excelled in. “I thought being a missionary meant giving up everything, going to a remote area and working with children. I felt reluctant and wondered if I was being selfish but I just couldn’t see where my passion for sport fitted in.”

Laura moved to Buenos Aires to get back to 1500m, 3km and 5km training and to volunteer for the Coalición Argentina Deportiva, a network which aims to relate sport to the Christian faith. Day to day, she runs events where non-Christian sportspeople can hear about the Bible and make up their own minds, as well as mentoring Christian athletes such as basketball and volleyball players. An associated organisation is Atletas de Cristo, which gives prominent Christian sportspeople t-shirts emblazoned with slogans. One such example is Brazilian footballer Kaká who will often, having scored a goal or won a match, take off his jersey to reveal a t-shirt with a simple but striking message: ‘I belong to Jesus’. Laura wears similar t-shirts and takes advantage of the limelight after winning a race.

“The best thing about my work is supporting people to make the connection between faith and sport, a connection that changed my life,” says Laura. How? “The Olympic gold medallist Eric Liddell said: ‘God made me fast and when I run I feel his pleasure’. That’s how it is for me too. I want to be the best athlete I can.” She is currently ranked first for 3km in the capital and Greater Buenos Aires.

Andrew and Bethanie Walker, 28 and 29, arrived in March to work long-term, supported by the organisation Crosslinks. “We’ve been very warmly welcomed. We know we’re still at the honeymoon stage of our experience,” admits Bethanie. She explains how she came to faith at university. “I heard the gospel clearly explained for the first time and became aware of how relevant it was to everyday life.” Meanwhile, Andrew, brought up in Hong Kong, recalls: “I became convinced that Jesus was God and had died for my sins and it turned my world upside down. I thought: everyone needs to hear this. I’d been studying Psychology but I decided people’s spiritual needs were greater than their emotional needs. I decided to go to Bible College.”

The couple’s work in Argentina will eventually involve training new church leaders and supporting Christians. Outside of Buenos Aires, Andrew says churches are “growing and enthusiastic but needing pastors.” Before being sent out to the interior though, Andrew is learning Spanish (which Bethanie already speaks from working in Tucumán before they married) and both will attend Bible school in Santiago, Chile next year. They see this as an important transitional step and a chance to gain more of an understanding of their new culture.

Doesn’t the idea of foreign missionaries coming in to train locals seem a bit, well, colonialist? “Missionaries are often portrayed as waving their own religious flags and ‘correcting’ locals’ beliefs but the Christian faith is not a European idea – it’s universal,” explains Bethanie. “We’re not coming in to tell Argentines how it’s done but we can offer a fresh perspective. Similarly, we’re being challenged in our British way of doing things. Being here shows up our own cultural blind spots.”

It is interesting to note that whilst missionaries such as these four come to Argentina, South American Christians are leaving these shores to take the gospel message to that spiritual wasteland: Europe. “Our organisation currently has one Argentine guy working in Northern Ireland and a girl in England,” Andrew says. “Mission today is more of a mutual relationship.”

Lead photo of Christ the Redeemer statue in the clouds above Rio de Janerio by Olivier.

“I’m here because I love my Saviour,” says Elder Charles. His voice cracks as he coughs back his tears. “God loves the people here, and I can’t live another day without telling people that. I just can’t do that.” The 163 young men surrounding him, including three faces on skype, clap their hands and Elder Charles falls back in the wooden pew. Elder Beatty rises: “My Father in heaven has blessed my life in so many ways. I’m not more important than the people of Argentina so why would I withhold my blessing from them?”

These are the modern day saints. Personally selected by the 12 Apostles who head the Mormon Council back in Salt Lake City, Utah, these young men have come to Argentina to spread God’s love.

Otherwise known as the Church of Latter Day Saints, this offshoot of Christianity found it’s foothold in Middle America in the 19th century, and it remains the bastion of well-watered, homegrown US citizens. The Book of Mormons, penned by Vermont born prophet Joseph Smith in 1833, maintains that modern day revelations are possible and that the word of the gospel must be spread. Through divine inspiration thousands of young men from Utah, Arizona, and Ohio are moved to carry out this sacred call to arms across the world.

In South America there are more than 50 Mormon missions, and each year they welcome in thousands of new members. Over the next 24 months the men and women present today will trawl the streets of Buenos Aires for the long-suffering. They’ll preach on the Subte. They’ll preach on the bus. They’ll preach in the pouring rain. They’ll preach on the way to the supermarket. And when they hear no for the hundredth time, they’ll preach some more.

Soldiers of God

Mormon missionary service begins at age 19 for boys, and age 20 for girls. “We devote ourselves to Christ,” says Elder Jones who is coming up on 18 months in Argentina. Missionaries are permitted to speak to their families twice a year – Christmas and Mother’s Day, and they get one day off a week.

“Is it hard not talking to your family for all that time? Of course, I have seven siblings. I left home when my brother was one so I spoke to him for the first time this Christmas. But I’ve been called here. This is where God wants me.”

You may have seen Elder Jones and others like him on the bus or walking down the street in pairs. Solid mid-West stock. Healthy and tall. Pristine suits, shiny dress shoes, not a hair out of place. A neat pin on the right hand pocket bears their religious name – and an invitation to read the gospel says it all.

“We teach that first impressions are very important. We must always represent the Lord,” says Richard Gulbrandsen, president of the Buenos Aires North Mission in Virreyes. “In the heat the young men can take off their jackets.” Under the southern sun, the president and his wife boast not a wrinkle, nor a bead of sweat between them.

“When a young man or woman desires to go on a mission they fill out their papers and the 12 apostles look at a photo and seek an impression as to where they should serve.” He slows down on the subject of purity. “Its about worthiness. Sex, health, eating well.” And indeed, scanning the assembly of young missionaries, not a soul is bursting at their trouser seam. The soapsuds literally lift into the air. If Crest were filming, this would be the scene.

Learning the Missionary Way

Today is missionary training day. Tomorrow the new members will hit the streets with the gospel in hand. The president and his wife move along the pews, with Gulbrandsen embracing the men, one-by-one, and Hermana Gulbrandsen reaching out her arms to the 18 female members. Three missionaries are tuning in over skype from Ushuaia and Bariloche. Class ranges from Spanish instruction, to practice missionary scenarios. Throughout the lesson, anyone is invited to share their revelations and many members take the stand to describe when they felt God by their side. “Yesterday at a supermarket, I was just thinking…” begins one of the sisters.

But above and beyond a heavenly calling, completing a mission also requires some earthly engagement. “I’ve worked in my dad’s business since I was 10, and each year I put away half my wages so I could do this,” says Elder Godfrey, 20, from Utah. The Mormon Church has tallied a blanket fee that applies to all missionaries across the globe. Remarkably well spoken and steady with his response, Elder Godfrey is miles ahead of his bawdy 20-year-old peers back home. But in this particular church hall, his dedication and sobriety barely stands out against the stern demeanor of every boy in the room.

Street Preachers

An early wake up makes for a full day of preaching. Bed at 10.30pm and curtains up at 6.30am. Each missionary has an agenda book full of appointments for the week. Elder Urra and Elder Jones, who work in a pair, have a day of meetings two train stops north of the mission: Lunch with some church members followed by an ‘investigation’, at the house of a young woman who has expressed interest. “She’s having problems with her boyfriend – problems being pure,” explains Elder Jones. But that doesn’t stop the pair from offering her a baptism the next day.

The train is hot and stuffy, as expected for a BA summer. But the boys know that public transport is great place to preach. The city, so famous for its exhaust spewing buses, has found a special friend in the Mormon missionaries. “Buses are a good place to make contacts and do missionary work. Get used to standing. They are usually very full,” instructs the North Mission website. “When we see a family we always talk to them,” says Elder Jones, “they’re the best.”

But rejection is far too common a thread and the learning curve is steep. Elder Jones began the mission a wide-eyed teenager from a large, loving family in Utah. He had worked to stay pure, he played basketball in High School, and he had God in his heart. He turned down a sports scholarship to join the mission; when he returns home he will attend The University of Utah. He still doesn’t know what he wants to study, but he knows he will bring his family up in the Church.

“In the beginning I thought everyone would listen,” he confesses. “Being rejected is hard. We know the blessing these people can have in their lives. It’s more we feel bad for them.” Sauntering up to a family on the train platform, Elder Jones coos over the baby. “How old?” he asks, a tender smile softens his face. The opening works wonders, and the family tunes in. He certainly can’t be faulted for his admirable confidence and tremendous people skills. But it doesn’t last young. Slowly their eyes fall to the ground. The elder sister starts shuffling her feet, and the husband turns his face. But Elder Jones does manage to get an address and phone number. He’ll be back tomorrow.

Back at the mission, President Gulbrandsen is proud of the young men’s hard work. All of them, he explains, brave the elements everyday, walking for miles in the pouring rain or under the beating hot sun. Mostly people say no. Sometimes they’re outright ignored. “But the Heavenly Father lives. That’s why we’re here. It’s why we wake up every day at 6am, it’s why we get rejected everyday. We’re not called the Latter Days Saints because of what we are. We’re called this because of what we’re trying to be.”

Cigar smoke clogs the hazy air, only the steady drums break through, as a crowd gathers, clapping their hands and chanting “fuerza” in a rhythmic frenzy. The mountainside teems with bare-chested young men and jostling women and children; a man in the middle of the group lies on the ground, writhing and contorting his body to the rippling vibrations.

He has been possessed by María Lionza. The blood that drips down his face is now a powerful talisman; babies are brought in from the crowd, and he kisses them one by one, leaving a bloody stamp on their foreheads that will welcome them into the world.

Afterwards, 19-year-old spirit medium, who appears unscathed by the blood that spurted from his mouth minutes before tells me that he doesn’t remember a thing. Only that the force of María Lionza had invaded his body and captured his soul.

The Cult of Maria Lionza

‘Queen María Lionza’ was the daughter of an Indian slave and a Spanish Conquistador, who fled to the wilds of the Venezuelan mountains to escape the turmoil of her conflicted identity. Today, she is Venezuela’s most prominent folk hero, ruling a colourful pantheon of historical deities that includes past presidents, liberators, Indian ancestors – even gangsters who have earned Robin Hood status.

Once a year, thousands of Venezuelans flood to El Sorte mountain where María Lionza’s rebel spirit permeates the water and trees of the national park. Here, healing rituals are performed. Dark forces are summoned from the earth temporarily occupying the body of spirit mediums who razor blade their tongues and stick metal skewers through their cheeks – evidence of the great queen’s magnanimous powers.

The rite takes place on 12th October, more commonly known in the north as Columbus Day, which marks the ‘discovery’ of the New World. The day has since been renamed across Latin America in recognition of the indigenous peoples who lived on the continent before the Conquistadores’ arrival, and is called The Day of Indigenous Resistance in Venezuela. As President Hugo Chávez seeks to reinforce the legacy of Venezuelan heritage, María Lionza stands as a perfect symbol of the struggle, her mixed race roots reflecting that of just about every person in Venezuela.

The Courts

As I approach the park gates of El Sorte, bare-chested young men and shoeless women emerge from the dusty paths, donning colourful bandanas that identify them with their chosen spirit courts – ramshackle campsites transformed into healing churches.

“There’s the court of the Africans, the celestial court, the court of the liberators, the court of the criminals, the court of the gringos…” explains Angel Guarana, a recent initiate into the court of the Indians. His list stretches back to the beginning of time, each historical associate of Venezuela tumbling off his tongue like the name of an intimate friend. As the 19-year-old speaks he prepares for his next rite, tracing a six-pronged star into the ground with chalk dispensed from an old ketchup bottle.

Followers of the court of the Indians summon El Negrito and other indigenous ancestors, channeling their powers in light trances. Members of the celestial court wear white, their peaceful, more Catholic-centred camps illuminating the mountain, the light shining through the haze of cigar smoke, which is said to summon the spirits; even small children puff away on cigars, lingering by the altars as their parents rein in the mountain forces.

But it is the court of the Vikings that really quakes under the force of the mountain shades. Young men – some still in school – channel Viking spirits, the most powerful of all, and slice their tongues with razor blades. Others break whisky bottles over their heads, their potent blood spattering across the audience who keep the spirit alive with enamored applauses and magnetic chants.

Rolando Pinto: Erik ‘El Rojo’

The first time I see Rolando Pinto his skin is pallid and his eyes are unblinking, grey, fixed on some invisible force in the distance. He is not present at all. It looks like all warmth has left his body, all personhood, gone. He writhes on the dusty ground, growling, sometimes highlighted with the piercing decibels of fear. His legs are twisted awkwardly to the side and all his movements refracted into short, sharp bursts that are led by the banco – or aid – who helps channel the Viking spirit of Erik ‘El Rojo’ into his body with cigar smoke, hand gestures, sprays of alcohol. As the drumming reaches a frenzy, he runs the shiny silver razor blade across his tongue; rapidly, over and over, effortlessly, like splicing the peel off a carrot. Blood and foam pour down his chin and the bancos rush to get him a stool, his hands raised in the air, as members of the audience come forward to be blessed.

The blood and sweat, no longer that of 21-year-old Rolando, takes on the omnipotent viscosity of ‘El Rojo’s,’ strengthening all that come into contact. Disengaging from the clamour for a minute, a young man in the crowd turns to me. “You know, this medium is in high demand.”

Prying him for more information, he explains that many men in the audience are members of the national guard: government employees working in customs or at checkpoints. “Chávez’ bodyguards come here to build their strength,” he says. “The president needs protection.”

The last part of the trance is the most painful to watch. Violently resisting the soothing gestures of the bancos who attempt to restore Rolando’s own self, he squirms and kicks on the ground. The bancos swarm around, waving their palms above his forehead. For a second it looks like there might be a panic, like they may be unable to revive him. But they are experts in this field, seamlessly tinkering with the twilight zone between life and death; and with all the astuteness of paramedics, their airy hand gestures and muttered chants restore a lost soul to an empty body. Suddenly he returns, his proud family embrace him, kiss him on the forehead, squeeze his hand, “Good work!” they say, patting him on the back.

Ten minutes later, cleaned off and changed, Rolando says that he has no memory of the trance. There are no remnants of the splices on his tongue, no lisp, no lingering blood. He is calm, locking his fixed gaze with mine, evidence of human presence, returned.

Rolando is a chemical engineering student and works at Empresas Polar, the biggest food manufacturing company in Venezeula. As we speak I can see the steady focus of a scientist shine through. His eye contact never falters and he invites me in, captivating me with the persistence of his logic. Rolando’s everyday reality of food packaging and mathematical equations compounds the mystical nationalism of María Lionza, along with the many more students and government employees who flood to the mountain for the ritual.

“This is a religion for everyone” he says, repeating, “for everyone”. “Good or bad. It depends how you use the spirits.” Rolando has been learning how to summon spirits since he was a young boy; the art of going into trance is passed down from older spirit mediums.

“I’ve been doing this since I was six,” he explains. But it is the sport of men. Those who self-mutilate are all in their twenties, strong and fit, they hanker through the campsite as the sun catches their muscles; Viking tattoos on one arm, scars from spirit possession on the other. The more violent the display, the more potent their power.

But in an interesting twist on the macho showcase, it is transvestites who really control the ceremonies. Men who have undergone surgery and hermaphrodites tiptoe in and out of the campsites, wiling their feminine charms to harness in the guiding forces of María Lionza; this special connection to the buxom earth spirit displayed conspicuously on their bodies.

Made in Socialism

While the festival is rooted in indigenous folklore, what really seems prevalent is the Venezuelan national spirit. The flag is everywhere adorning altars and decorating piercing spokes; it is also part of the dress code with many donning the national colours.

Since Chávez was elected in 1998, the court of the Libertadores has rapidly grown. Here, ordinary Venezuelans gain strength from the liberators of their nation, thrown into unearthly seizures, through the powers of Símon Bolívar and José de San Martín. “Chávez is not on the altar yet,” explains an old man, as he pours holy-river water over his head, “but in the next 20 years, he’ll be up there with the others.”

But a former Chávez supporter who has been coming to El Sorte for many years notes that this year the mountain appears more empty than usual. “Less people can afford to come here…If it were real socialism, Chávez would have provided free buses!”

Nevertheless, there are still more than 8,000 people present at El Sorte. A blend of folkloric hero worship, Catholicism, African Voodoo and Cuban Babalawo, the cult of María Lionza permeates all levels of Venezuelan society. Chávez endorses these practices. And since he came to power the more violent, bloody spirit mediums have moved down the mountain and out in the open. It is rumoured that Chávez himself engages in such magic. Whispers fly that his recent decree to exhume the bones of the celebrated liberator, Símon Bolívar, was merely a ploy to use them for his own Babalawo rituals.

Whether or not Chávez is trying to carve out a place for himself on the future altars of spirit mediums is unknown. But many supporters are enraptured with his mission, reciting his mantras without even realizing.

“Healthcare should be free for everyone,” explains Yuraima Nuna, a teacher and mother of three, who prides herself on the free curative rituals that she conducts under the bridge. The altar of her celestial court glitters with candles and flowers; hidden amongst them is a gangster effigy holding a gun, a Mary statue, and the buxom María Lionza riding her tapir.

Yuraima doesn’t possess the brute physicality and youthful hubris of the Vikings; “I’m not God,” she says, wistfully. “I’m the instrument of God. Don’t let anyone tell you that they can heal people. Only God can do that.” Her family sits around and watches, tending to the candles, preparing for the next rituals. Under the dark bridge, her campsite glimmers through the shadows, the pure, virginal white piercing the noise of the drumbeats and bloodletting that pours forth from the mountain above.

Summoning the Spirit of a Nation

María Lionza freezes the memory of a fractured past and bridges the indigenous history of Venezuela with contemporary politics. The symbols are so intermeshed, drawing on Catholicism, voodoo, even remnants of druid religions; it is impossible to tease out the strands. The cultural rite stands for Mestizo heritage, a shared history so engrained that all sense of individual identity has instead become wrapped up in the state.

What it means to be Venezuelan is unclear, but on the Day of Indigenous Resistance, this syncretic cult humours the discussion. Somewhere in the confusion, lurks a grain of truth. Perhaps it is of healing, of recovery, of unity. Either way, the perplexing choice of Viking spirits powerfully pervades the performance. On the Day of Indigenous resistance, contemporary Venezuelans throw off the shackles of oppression by summoning their most ultimately European of roots: war hungry Vikings who are said to have reached the new world long before the Spanish Conquistadors. Some sort of mistranslated joke that has become twisted and distorted in the throes of a tumultuous history.

As we leave El Sorte behind us, the blood, sweat and phlegm drying on our clothes, the world of everyday Venezuela boasts it’s own surreal quality. We pull up at a petrol station and pay US $1.84 for a full tank. A man sweeping the forecourt suddenly rushes to our side. “I saw you on the mountain!” he says, proudly flashing his Viking tattoo and embracing us one by one, his scarred left arm brushing against my neck. Turning our backs to depart, he remains in the shadow with his broom, grinning with all the force of María Lionza herself. To be Venezuelan perhaps, is this. A return to everyday life, bolstered by what he has seen on the spirit-saturated mountain. The cacophonous chants of “fuerza! fuerza!” running through the land as if normality truly depends on it.

Lead Image by Zoe Getzels

“A mini-break means love,” said Bridget Jones and you would definitely have to harbour a lot of love to walk the 65 kilometres from Buenos Aires to Luján, but it’s not called the Capital of Faith for nothing. If your faith doesn’t stretch quite that far, but you want to see where six million pilgrims go every year, hop onto the bus at Plaza Italia and make your way to the religious capital of Argentina.

In 1630, an oxcart carrying two statues of the Virgin got stuck in mud near the river of Luján and it wouldn’t move until the statue showing the Immaculate Conception was removed. The owner took it as a sign that the statue should stay and left it in Luján. Since then, the Virgin of Luján has been credited with performing a variety of miracles. She is now the patron saint of Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay.

If you really want to join the faithful out in force, make a trip to Luján when all the pilgrims gather. The Virgin’s day in Luján is like a godly Glastonbury. The main square is overtaken by an enormous stage and the crowds are entertained by sermons and music. It is rare to see so many Argentines in such a quiet crowd; everyone from the priest at the front to the boy-scout at the back is quiet and entranced by the prayer and singing.

This festival of faith is staged just in front of Basilica Nuestra Señora de Luján, a pale yellowy-pink church that will make you feel like you’ve been transported to Mediterranean Europe. There is something about the imposing,sharp lines of the neo-gothic architecture and the neatly arched buildings that converge around it in the quiet town that could easily have been transported straight from Italy or Spain.

Inside the church, the original statue of the virgin sits in her own tiny cave behind the main altar. Even as masses congregate within the church, there are small groups huddled around the dark recesses by the statue, paying their respects and hoping for their own miracles. The stones lining the wall near her statue are inscribed with the names of families that contributed money towards building the church. A little more exploring will take you to a side chapel dedicated to St. Patrick and a crypt, where many more virgin statues are housed.

Once you leave, you might be lucky enough to be baptised – or at least get a good drizzle of holy water. Priests stand on a makeshift stage in front of the church with a microphone and a bucket, talking to the crowds and flicking water over their heads. If the pope hooked up with Oprah, it would probably be like this.

Nearby is the transport museum, which houses a variety of vehicular treasures including some horrifying funeral carriages and a snowmobile used on an early expedition to Antarctica. The best exhibition, however, features two embalmed horses called Gato and Mancha. Their owner, Aimé Tschiffel, was a teacher from Quilmes. He rode them from Buenos Aires to Washington DC from 1925 and 1928. They travelled 22,500km through Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Panama, Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico. After this epic journey, their owner was so proud of them that he had them embalmed so that they could be remembered forever.

If you peer closely at them, you can see where they have been stitched together and it’s a strangely haphazard job. Perhaps bits of them started falling off and had to be patched back on again. Though it is slightly grotesque, they’re also quite surreal, so it’s not quite as gory as a Damien Hirst exhibit.

Also worth a look is the Complejo Museográfico Enrique Udaondo. Luján is, after all, in gaucho region and this colonial museum complex is filled with gaucho artefacts and historical items that link to the conquest of the desert and various Argentine presidents.

Whilst you are out of the city, take your time to enjoy the peacefulness of such a small town. Head down to the river where children will be playing on the fairground rides and rent a pedalo. The river does have some trash in it, but it’s nice to float along and watch families eating choripan and drinking mate along the river.

If you want to take in the scenery, get on the chairlift, but be warned, the chairs are plastic so you will feel a little precariously attached to the pole. Nonetheless, it offers a beautiful view over the river and town and across the back of the basilica.

For lunch or dinner, there are food stands along the river or any of the restaurants that line the streets coming off the main square offer a good value asado. There is also a German and French restaurant in the centre for anyone feeling the European vibe.

It’s no Vatican city, but I’d venture to suggest that there are more stalls selling religious memorabilia. The stall-keepers wear strangely clinical white cloaks and whatever saint you are after, whatever size rosary bead tickles your fancy, one of them will have it. Luján is worth the journey to get out of the city for a day and it certainly is a “holy see” to see thousands of pilgrims congregate in the town square, holding their hands up in worship.

Good days to visit Luján:

First Saturday in October for the pilgrimage

8th May – The Virgin’s Day

8th December – The day of the Immaculate Conception

Let’s say it’s 3am and for some reason you can’t sleep. You surf through channels in boredom, dealing with insufferable infomercials and mind-numbing reality shows considered “too hot for daytime television.” However, when you reach the lower channels, something catches your attention.

There’s this Brazilian preacher on a show called ‘Pare de sufrir‘ (Stop suffering). He speaks to you in Spanish, but his tongue carries a heavy Portuguese accent. He wears a pristine white suit and his perfectly combed hair is thick with gel. Gold jewellery shines from his neck and fingers.

He is, in a way, charming.

And he’s not selling anything. He’s just talking about love and loving others. “Is your life burdened with problems? Are you looking for a job? Has your significant other left you?” he asks. And then: “Jesus Christ is the answer,” and he invites you to visit his church where you can purify your soul at no expense.

However, after watching his message for a few minutes, you come to realise something is slightly odd. He presents you with a “Possessions Decalogue,” pointing out ten signs that suggest you may be possessed by the devil (dramatisations included). Symptoms may include anxiety, insomnia or being on edge, and considering it is 3am and you’re mindlessly flipping through tv channels, chances are you’ll soon believe Satan is residing comfortably within you.

Sound silly? Truth is, it would just be another late-night TV anecdote if it weren’t for the millions of people around the world being herded by the Iglesia Universal del Reino de Dios (Universal Church of the Kingdom of God), a 33-year-old movement that started in Brazil and has spread the word of “the holy ghost” all over the world throughout the Americas, Africa, Asia and Europe with an unstoppable force.

So why is it so appealing? Founded in 1977 by Edir Macedo Bezerra, the church, despite technically being Christian, introduced its followers to a series of religious charms that were said to carry the power of God within them. And so, for a small fee, believers could buy a bottle of holy water from the river Jordan, a bag of salt blessed by the Holy Ghost, or a container of Israeli oil. They also performed live exorcisms and miracle healings in front of the audience, which made it a lot more exciting than going to mass.

However, persistent claims of money laundering, fraud and shady business dealings suggest there might be a darker side to the church. Rumours surrounding the Iglesia Universal and its mafia-like behavior are abound. Ever since a Telenoche Investiga segment in 2001 showed that the alleged “Israeli oil” the church was selling was nothing more than common, supermarket oil, the place has attracted scores of investigative journalists hoping to uncover some dirt and expose them as frauds.

The church has been under investigation by Brazilian authorities over accusations of money laundering, but so far no major indictment has been made. It might help that it carries a great deal of political clout in Brazil: the country’s current Vice-President Jose Alencar is a member of the Iglesia Universal, and he resigned from his party in order to join the Partido Municipalista Renovador, which was created by the church.

Controversy has followed the church as it spread quickly around the world. In July this year, Regina DaSilva, the New York treasurer for Iglesia Universal was arrested for fraud. Here in Argentina, where Iglesia Universal has around half a million followers, author Alfredo Silleta claims in his book ‘Shopping Espiritual‘ that the institution covertly purchased two radio stations. According to the Argentina law, it is illegal for foreign organisations to privately acquire a license for radio or television.

The business of hope

Despite the allegations, Iglesia Universal continues to raise large sums of money from its devotees. In Brazil alone, the church is believed to be making well over US$700 million from donations each year coming from the 4,500 temples scattered across 1,500 Brazilian towns and cities.

Critics say the church exploits the marginalised – such as unemployed or immigrants – using ‘prosperity theology’. Under this system of beliefs, the more you give the church, the more you receive from God.

To experience firsthand how this works, the Indy decided to visit the Sunday service in the impressive Templo de la Fe (Temple of Faith) in Almagro, Buenos Aires. It was a delicate undercover mission, as after receiving so much unwanted media attention, the church views newcomers with deep suspicion. [Read Eric's account first hand here]

Most of the 800 or so parishioners at the service appeared to be from low-income groups and experiencing a great deal of suffering in their lives. In short, they looked desperate. And they were more than willing to listen to the preacher who told them that the only solution is to pray, to offer up money to Jesus, and to bring others to the church. If their prayers are not answered, they are told, it means they’re not giving enough. A vicious circle soon develops, and just like Iglesia Universal’s Sunday service, it’s very easy to enter but very hard to leave. (You can read the full account of my bizarre experience – including a live exorcism and being told that my parents were possessed by the devil – here).

According to Alfredo Silleta, this ‘model’ helps explain how the church grew to become a “political-economical-religious empire”. In Brazil, as well as boasting members in the highest echelons of government, the church owns several tv and radio stations, daily and weekly newspapers, and a bank.

As the Vatican continues its conservative struggle to keep the Catholic Church from modernising, these alternative churches seem more appealing and accessible to the masses. And as the Iglesia Universal increasingly departs from the idea of being a religious institution to become a mass-production corporation, in time we may come to learn that faith too, comes with a price tag.

Lead image: IURD – Africa by Roberto Filipe

Adrian has kindly given over some space to Eric Murray for his first-hand account of a trip to Iglesia Universal. Note: The goal of this piece is not to discredit the Iglesia Universal or disrespect its many followers. It is just a description what goes on within the church’s walls. The reader will be the ultimate judge (guided by a little of my subjectivity, of course).

Any porteño driving down Av. Corrientes Avenue will have certainly noticed a large white building that resembles a Greek temple. The Templo de la Fe (Temple of Faith), located on Corrientes 4070, in Almagro, catches the eye of anyone who’s passing by. It is a huge structure that draws attention during the day because of its imposing façade, which is illuminated conspicuously by night.

The temple boasts over 25 “masses” every week, with a wide variety of starting times so any one can find the time to attend, on any day.

Sunday morning is a special time of the week. The 10am mass is apparently the most important one and no one wants to miss it. So we head off to the temple hoping to have our very own religious experience.

The street feels alive that morning. Vendors keep walking up and down the avenue selling roses and other flowers, Jesus-themed regalia and even facturas so anyone can have a hearty breakfast before entering the building.

Several security guards wearing black suits and black ties, along with shades and a walkie talkie, keep staring at the public going through the doors of the temple. Their purpose there isn’t really clear and they  look more like bouncers at a nightclub that the typical sweet old greeter expected to be standing at the entrance of a church.

Another man in plain clothes is also looking around, staring at everyone’s faces. This man’s purpose, according to others who have tried going undercover before, is to identify first timers and find out the reason of their visit If their intentions are (deemed) legitimate(meaning, they are not after a story), he will find a way to make them join the congregation. Hard to believe that a man has the ability to remember thousands of faces, but according to several colleagues he has been able to spot in the crowd, he does.

As a fellow journalist – pretending to be my wife – and I walk by his side and enter the temple, we hear the man saying ‘hello’ from behind us, trying to catch our attention. We intentionally ignore him and keep walking straight, until we enter the grand salon where the ceremony takes place.

The view is certainly impressive.

The stage, tackily decorated with Greek architecture and religious paintings, has only a simple podium with a microphone and a couch. Behind them, there’s a swimming pool in which “baptisms” take place from time to time. Everything is under a very, very high ceiling.

The same Brazilian man from TV steps up and says hello in  casual Spanish with a strong accent. Dressed in a white tuxedo, he resembles a southern preacher from the United States.   The large crowd – which I estimate is close to 800 people – cheers and salutes him.

And without further ado, the ceremony begins.

“Did you remember to bring your envelope?” the preacher asks. Hundreds of people raise their arms in response, showing him in return a small, white envelope. “Well, come on over then!” he says, as people start leaving their seats and standing in line in front of him. One by one, they walk up the steps to the podium and throw their envelopes into several black,  industrial-sized garbage bags. I ask an old lady standing next to me what the envelopes contain, thinking that she’ll tell me they are letters to God.

“Money,” she replies with a smile.

Or in church jargon, “donations.”

For almost 20 minutes, it’s all about the line and dropping the money in the bags. By the time it’s over, several assistants are needed to move them, since they are fat and heavy with cash.

“It’s our first time, so we didn’t know we were supposed to bring money” I tell the lovely lady. “Don’t worry,” she smiles back. “Just don’t forget the next time”.

As the bouncers carry the bags into a small door behind the stage, two sentinels with unfriendly faces take up guard duty outside.. I guess no one is going to be getting any crazy ideas about taking some envelopes for themselves.

Next  on the agenda is the Iglesia Universal’s raison d’être: to preach on the benefits of worshipping the Holy Ghost.  As the preacher on stage gets emotional, he asks everyone to approach him, and like bees to an  empty bottle of Pepsi, they begin their procession. The pastor then starts uttering a series of sentences, which, in all honesty, allsound the same, and asks us to close our eyes and open our arms to let the Holy Ghost enter our bodies.

With his thick, raspy voice, he says we must “allow for the Holy Ghost to pierce our hearts, because if we don’t let the Holy Ghost pierce our hearts we will be sorry we didn’t let the Holy Ghost pierce our hearts and the Holy Ghost will be mad we didn’t let the Holy Ghost pierce our hearts.”

And no, I am not kidding.

For over half an hour he keeps repeating the same sentence over and over. As my back begins to hurt for standing for such a long time in the same position, people around me begin sobbing and moaning.  I realize this is most important part of the two-hour ceremony, and I’m missing it because my eyes are closed.

So I decide to sneak a peek and slowly open my eyes. The view is surreal. Hundreds of people stand around me in a trance, talking to themselves, painfully crying in agony for all the current suffering in their lives while blowing their noses and drying their tears.  They ask God why he has forsaken them.

If I weren’t such a cynic, I would even dare to say they seem truly possessed by the Holy Ghost, all joining hands in collective, heart-breaking sadness.

And I realize these people aren’t here because they are devout Christians or avid church goers. No, the truth is these people are desperate.  They need someone to tell them that everything is going to be ok. And to have someone who claims to represent that which you believe in is a palliative enough to make you hopeful, at least until next Sunday.

As I’m still observing the people around me, my fakewife begins squeezing my shoulder.

Something is wrong.

As I look up, I realize two of the pseudo-bouncers are staring at us,making some  unfriendly gestures. In our effort to observe as much as we could, we hadn’t realized that we were the only two in a group of 800 people whose eyes were wide open.

As the preacher ends his speech and we all return to our seats, I feel like a big red bull’s-eye is now on my forehead.

“I have to go to the restroom, do you know where it is?” my (fake) wife asks. I don’t.

But just like that, the nice lady who was sitting next to us enters the conversation and kindly offers to chaperone her to the ladies room. We exchange looks, unable to discuss the possible dangers of such a bold proposal, but in the end stay in character. “Thank you very much,” I reply, and I offer a nod to my wife, hoping she will be careful.

As she leaves, the Brazilian preacher announces the time to celebrate in Holy Communion, for which ushers start handing out small bread buns and plastic cups containing something that I hope is wine, since I’m sure a little alcohol is going to help  release the tension mounting up inside me.

Unfortunately, it’s only grape juice.

Worse, grape juice from concentrate and extremely disgusting.

We eat, we drink, we pray, we sing.

And as the Communion ends, I realize it’s been fifteen minutes since my wife left for the restroom.

As I begin to fear for the worst, I decide it’s too late for her and start eyeing for the closest emergency exit.But before I canbolt, she returns, still with the nice lady by her side.

“Everything ok, love?” I ask.

“Hmm-hmm,” she replies without even looking at me.

I notice the old lady has a small notepad in her hand with information on my wife written all over it. And that’s the reason why this silver haired Mata Hari was so friendly: she wanted information.

“Your wife has told me all about you,” she says, menacingly. “And before you leave, I’d like you two to meet the preacher.”

I swallow hard, since we’ve just been told we’re going to meet the (local branch) puppet master.

“It’s time for me to bless your families!” the preacher says, and asks everyone to raise the photos of their children, their parents, grandparents and friends in general. Of course, for those people to be really blessed, their photos must be nicely framed in the Iglesia Universal’s Photo Album™, like something out of Disneyland.

No photo album, no blessing. Simple as that.

So we finally get to the last part, in which the preacher, as he “always does,” tells the story of the Good Samaritan. “Always remember to help others,” he says. “And what better way to help those in need than telling them to come here?” he asks, as assistants hand out the “Good Samaritan flyer”, which urges those in need who still have not joined the Iglesia Universal to do so immediately.

People begin to leave and my (fake) wife and I head towards the door, in an effort to get out of there as soon as possible. But the persistent lady reminds us that before leaving we must meet the preacher.

we exchange glances and realize it may be best not to stand out from the crowd and we agree to a short conversation with him.

As we walk down the aisle towards the stage, the lady asks me why it is we waited for so long to join the church. I try to come up with the best possible answer and blame my catholic parents, “who are against it.”

“Well I’m sorry to be the one that tells you this,” she says, “but I’m afraid your parents have been possessed by the devil and that’s the reason why they are trying to keep you away from us.”

And just like that, without any preambles, she has just told me my mom is Satan (I had somewhat suspected it all my life but never thought I would find out about it here).

As we approach the main stage, I feel as if we’re entering the lion’s den.

The old lady tells us to wait in line to meet the Preacher, and as we do so, we notice several assistants greeting other parishioners as well. Some people are crying, others just look desolate, their gaze lost in a sea of sadness.The helpers are telling them that, if they keep coming every week, eventually they will find salvation.

It’s our turn and the Preacher greets us with a smile. “It’s a pleasure to have you both here for the first time,” he says. “As you can see, this is a great place for the whole family,” he adds, although I’m having trouble paying attention to him since only two meters away from us an assistant is performing an exorcism on a woman. Her demonic voice sendsshivers down my spine.

“All done!” the assistant says, as the woman grabs her purse and leaves.

After he blesses us and lets us know of the entire weekly Schedule, he lets us go. We begin walking down the aisle, looking miserable on our way out. We reach the sunlight. We’re free.

However, the people coming here more than two or three times a week are not.

After experiencing two intense hours in front of a Brazilian charlatan who promised desperate people that the only possible road to salvation is through him, it’s very hard for me to find any positive aspects in the Iglesia Universal, although I’m sure many of its parishioners beg to differ.

So if you ever walk by the attractive façade of the Iglesia Universal and decide to venture in because you’re either religious or insane, make sure you at least keep these helpful tidbits in mind.

God only knows when you might need them.

They have come from all over Argentina. Some have even come from parts of Paraguay and Brazil. Most have come by bus, many by car or motorcycle, and some by good old fashioned hitchhiking. They have come with their spouses and children, aging parents and grandparents. They have come alone, leaving their families behind. They have brought tents, blankets, lawn chairs, guitars, portable barbeques, charcoal, snacks, and foam coolers. They have brought nothing but themselves. Most importantly they bring well-loved statues – whether small or as large as their torsos – of the man whom they have travelled to thank, remember, and ask of; the homegrown saint of Argentina, Antonio ‘Gauchito’ Gil.

On the eighth day of every January, the town of Mercedes in the northeastern province of Corrientes is inundated with more than 200,000 followers of Gauchito Gil. However, it is a along a stretch of road eight kilometres north of the town where the action happens. It is here where Antonio Gil is said to have been brutally murdered, and where a small sanctuary stands in his honor.

Nearing midnight on 7th January, a continual procession of buses, vans, cars, real and wannabe gauchos on horseback make their way to the sanctuary amidst a chorus of crickets. Everyone wants to be there when the clock strikes midnight. When it does, most, like myself, are stuck kilometres away from the sanctuary and ditch their cars to head on foot toward the music and fireworks that light the sky. The day has begun.

The evening is warm and the air is thick with the smell of asado. Parked buses, cars, tents and venders line the road to the festival. Vans sell overpriced beer, soda, and hot water for thermoses. One man’s trunk is piled high with pigs ready for the grill.

About half a kilometre from the festival, the flow of people slows to a stop, as most have joined the ever-growing and motionless line to enter the sanctuary. Following it takes one through rows of stalls selling statues, rosaries, candles, red ribbons, posters and trinkets. There is even a Gauchito Gil brand of yerba. Stacks of meat simmer on grills and clouds of smoke billow from the makeshift restaurants into the faces of those stuck in line. Speakers blare songs dedicated to Gauchito Gil and televisions screen dramatic documentaries that tell the story of his life and legend of his death.

It’s one hell of a party thrown by a saint. And to an outsider, ignorant to the Gauchito Gil mystique and watching the five-hour line and its surrounding spectacle, there really is only one question: Who is Gauchito Gil? Who is this serene-faced man with a bushy mustache and long dark hair, wearing those wide-legged gaucho pants and three red bandanas, one around his waist, neck, and head? And how did so many come to adore him?

Lover, Outlaw, Savior

As one of the various legends goes, somewhere around the 1850s in the province of Corrientes, a beautiful young girl falls in love with the handsome gaucho who works on the ranch to which she is heiress. Her name is Estrella Diaz Miraflores, and his, Antonio Mamerto Gil Núñez, El Gauchito. Problem is, she’s engaged to the local chief of police, and besides, her family would never accept such a match with a humble, though charming, farm worker. El Gauchito hides in the town of Pay Ubre, what is now Mercedes, and from there enlists in the Triple Alliance war against Paraguay.

Upon his return, he is called yet again to fight, but this time in a civil war, Correntinos against Correntinos. But the Gauchito has a dream that night, in which the native Guaraní god Ñandeyara appears to him and tells him “not to shed the blood of brothers”. In the morning, the Gauchito is gone, and becomes a deserter of the army, living outside the law, and dedicating his life to helping the poor and indigenous by stealing from the rich.

One day, while sleeping under a tree after a party, the police catch up with the Gauchito, arrest him, and head for Mercedes. Eight kilometers from town, his captors decide to take justice into their own hands. They tie him to a tree and begin to fire. But he won’t die. So they string him up by his feet and slit his throat. Before they do however, the Gauchito speaks his last words to the sergeant:

“You are going to kill me now, but you will arrive in Mercedes tonight at the same time as a letter of my pardon. In the letter they will also tell you that your son is dying of a strange illness. Invoke me before God and pray for your son’s life, because the blood of the innocent serves to makes miracles.”To which the sergeant says: “I don’t care,” and kills the Gauchito.

But much to the sergeant’s dismay, the letter does arrive as the Gauchito said it would, and his son is indeed, terribly and mysteriously ill. Remembering the Gauchito’s words, the sergeant takes his son from bed and to the now-buried Gaucho, eight kilometers north of town. There, before God, the sergeant prays to Gauchito Gil for the life of his son. The next morning, as promised, all is well. And thus, Gauchito Gil’s murderer becomes his first devotee.

At least, that’s what they say.

Not alone

For the people waiting in line, some for the first and most for the second, seventh, or thirtieth time, Gauchito Gil is not so mystical, but a saint with whom one can be intimate and talk to every day.

“To me, he is a friend who fulfills promises,” says Juan Carlos, a middle-aged man from Misiones dressed in gaucho-wear, a large red flag with an image of the Gauchito draped on his back.

“He is a reference of support for me,” says Rita who has come by bus from Esquina, Buenos Aires. “Because we all need some support and some kind of faith.”

Some could not share their thoughts on the Gaucho, as even the thought of describing what he has meant to their lives made them choke up.

A tall elderly man with a weathered face and a wide-brimmed gaucho hat tells me he does not come to ask the Gauchito for anything, “but to thank him for what he has already given me.” He eagerly launches into the story of his niece’s operation on a malignant tumor. Moments into it he stops and raises his hands to his face, pushing back tears. “She called me the next day,” he continues, his voice feeble. “And told me ‘Uncle! I got the results. Everything is okay!’ I told her it would be.”

“I work in a factory but I go out to the campo often,” he tells me. “And when I go, I don’t go alone. I say to myself, ‘Okay Gaucho, we have to do this and that’.”

Many had similar experiences with terminal illnesses or family members with health problems, and curiously, they have remained healthy enough to make the trek every year to ask for continual protection. One woman holds her daughter, less than one month old.  She tells me that the birth was hard on the baby, who will need six months of physical therapy for a dropped shoulder.

“It’s my first time here,” she says, perhaps looking at four more hours of waiting, “but everything I have ever asked of the Gauchito he has fulfilled. I don’t care how long I have to wait.”

For almost everyone, the main reason for coming is the same: To fulfill a promise. Because everyone knows that if the Gauchito answers your prayers today, you must come back.

Wait not in vain

By night, the festival is a dark unintelligible jungle of faces and sounds, music and laughter. But by day, in 40 degrees of heat and not a cloud in sight, with the line to enter the sanctuary twice as long, the event reveals itself for what is truly is: an act of faith.

Alongside a steady stream of cars and buses that kick up dust and cough out exhaust, devotee Antonio Aguirre makes his way to the end of the line not on foot, but on his knees. Carrying a couple of plastic bags with water and items for the sanctuary, he hobbles carefully along the graveled shoulder of the road.

“My promise begins at the bridge,” he says signaling to a small bridge about half a kilometre behind him, “It’s about three kilometres in total.”

Though he used to live in the province and would come to the sanctuary with his Correntino parents, Antonio had since moved to Buenos Aires and had stopped coming. That is until some years ago when his son was ill and would not sleep for days. A friend asked him if he had made a promise to someone. He remembered that he had, and knew what he needed to do.

“I brought my son to the sanctuary and he slept like a king.”

If the Gauchito answers Antonio’s prayers today, next year he will travel from Buenos Aires to the sanctuary by bicycle.

The sanctuary itself is a tin roofed, three by five metre space enclosed by a metal fence. Inside is a statue of the Gauchito, a large cross and a looming cement tomb, both covered with metal placards of thanks and praise from devotees. Ten or so police officers “administer” the viewing of the sanctuary, one of which directs the entire process with a piercingly loud whistle. Followers enter in groups of 15 or 20, carrying flowers, red ribbons, bottles of whisky, and other offerings for the Gaucho. Upon entering they immediately rush to the statue, whose paint has been worn away under hundreds of thousands of hands. They touch it, close their eyes, and despite the chaos, find a private moment with their Gauchito to say thanks and to pray.

No more than a minute later and it’s all whistles and “Bueno, Bueno,” as the police brusquely escort the devotees out. A day-long wait in the heat for one minute inside the sanctuary. A small price to pay for prayers answered, most would agree.

Times of need

Second to asking for their health, everyone told me that they had and continue to ask the Gauchito for work. As Gauchito Gil was from the North-East, so are many of his followers, coming from the notoriously impoverished northern provinces of Misiones, Chaco, Formosa, and Corrientes itself. Facing a shortage of work due in part to the consolidation of land and expansion of agribusiness, a large number I spoke with had moved away to urban areas, but continue to keep up the custom.

“Most people don’t have work or education,” says Carina of Corrientes, who sold hot water for mate during the festival. “There is education but there are no work opportunities. Although they [people of the area] might be prepared, they look for work outside, in Buenos Aires or Cordoba.”

Gustavo from the city of Avellaneda in Greater Buenos Aires became a follower when he saw a small red altar of the Gauchito while leaving a soccer stadium after a game one day.

“My job situation was bad and I looked to the sky and said ‘The only thing I ask for is work.’” He says he is now working with a healthcare company, and this is his first time at the sanctuary.

“I came here without a dime,” he says, “but with tremendous peace.”

Next to Gustavo are Fabian and Hector, strewn out on two mattresses placed in the open cargo space of a large bus, a shady and breezy refuge from the heat. They are bus drivers and have been making the eight-hour trip from Buenos Aires to Mercedes for seven and five years respectively.

Fabian says that coming to the procession fills him with a sense of protection “in a country where justice takes a long time.”

“We have to confront many problems – a lot of insecurity, the lack of social equality, things for which the Gauchito fought as well. His saying was ‘not to spill the blood of your countrymen, but fight for the well-being of all’. Today if we really understood that saying, we wouldn’t be where we are.”

Festival Blues

The festival for a saint had quite a handful of not-so-saintly characteristics. Despite the number of vendors selling food and beverages, one could not count a single trashcan and there were maybe five bathrooms in total, all of which cost between 50 cents and 2 pesos to use. Therefore, unsurprisingly, the flat green pastures surrounding the sanctuary were converted into one big repository – with bottles and papers scattered everywhere and the pervasive stench of urine.

Nearly every room in every hotel in Mercedes was booked, charging between $150 and 300 per night, and campground space was also limited and expensive. Despite the lack of accommodations, there seemed to be no qualms with charging ten pesos for a “choripan” and 15 for a litre of beer – more than double the normal price at any kiosk in Buenos Aires.

Fabian says that the authorities of Mercedes should do more in the way of accommodations.

“It’s not justified. When one sees the social level of the people who follow the gaucho, it’s like, there’s a lot of profiting going on. Let’s hope the Gaucho doesn’t turn into a business.”

“We aren’t in Punta del Este or Pinamar,” he says, “We’re in Mercedes in 50 degrees of heat. The iguana has to cross the road with gloves.”

Who’s to saint?
Gauchito Gil is what many would call a “pagan saint,” as the Catholic Church has not canonized him as a “proper” one. And chances are that the Congregations of the Causes of Saints that oversees the canonization process aren’t making any recommendations to the Pope anytime soon.Yet despite being devoutly Catholic, most everyone I spoke with did not worry too much about the state of the Gauchito’s sainthood, and the response was indignantly unanimous: “Take a look around.”

“It doesn’t matter that they don’t recognise him,” the elderly man tells me. “What we show him is something magnificent,” he says. “We show him that, maybe he can’t be sanctified, but with this demonstration, there is no need. This is sufficient, this act alone. There are no words.”

Fabian says: “The Gauchito wasn’t looking for fame,” and reminds me that the Church “is always late” when it comes to a lot of issues.

“I prefer the humility, the modesty, the loyalty of humble people, to the grand luxuries. You don’t have to be rich to be a saint. And you don’t have to be rich to be devoted,” he says.

Caina of Corrientes says the Gauchito is a tradition of the area, “a saint of the people even though he was a worker and robbed and did what he did.” Or perhaps it is because he was a worker, a deserter, an Argentine Robin Hood, that Antonio ‘Gauchito’ Gil gains more and more followers each year.

Exhausted and sun-baked, the masses pack up their tents, gather their families and friends, and climb onto the buses and into cars to head home. Leaving their prayers behind they take with them one very important promise: To return.