As a boy, Juan Carlos was spiritual in the sense that he felt the divine presence everywhere. Within his house, his pious grandmother kept two separate shrines: one to the Virgin Mary and another to her favorite saints. The presence of holy water in small bowls, attached to the walls of her bedroom, and the shrines themselves, gave the domestic atmosphere great reverence, while the sight of grandmother kneeling in deep prayer impressed Juan Carlos with the seriousness of their common faith, the tie that bound them firmly together as a universal community in Christ.
Juan Carlos would often kneel with his abuela in front of the Virgin, asking divine intercession with God on every conceivable matter. These usually involved matters of health but could include matters like finding lost keys and the like. As prescribed, Juan Carlos said his prayers on going to bed, expecting fully not to wake up if he should omit a prayer or a mass on Sunday when he did his best to follow the sermon with attention.
At one point in his life, he considered becoming a priest or at least a monk, for his young mind could conceive of nothing more noble than to work in the service of the Lord of Mercy and Love. In preparation for a life of self-sacrifice, he placed rocks under his mattress to make his sleep as uncomfortable as any saint ever had it. In other words, by the time he was fourteen, Juan Carlos was well on his way to being a soldiers of Christos in the celestial cause of the Lord. He would work hard to spread the spirit of agape, the love of mankind.
Juan Carlos used to visit an aunt, a middle-aged woman similarly devoted to the Virgin and Jesus Christ. She took all of her meals in a boarding house run by two elderly sisters—faithful Catholics both—the senoritas Gonzales. They ran a dining room frequented by members of the town’s military and aspiring business elite who favored capitalism over communism in the hope of getting a green card to the United States of America. As such, a lunchtime meal at their boarding establishment presented a cross-section of who mattered.
The senoritas Gonzales were elderly and portly but not too proud to personally serve their patrons the daily bread and soup and chicken and rice and flan (as desert) that was the fare at the boarding house. They were proud of their role in society, and they appreciated a word from a colonel or a professor on the quality of the soup or the ceviche.
Like many locals, the sisters were very proud of their Spanish ancestry — their links to the European motherland, far distant from where their fate had cast them among the indios whom they neither liked nor could figure out.
Their ancestor, Senor Enrique Gonzales from Alicante, had emigrated to the New World two centuries ago in search of wealth beyond human comprehension and fame eternal, only to marry another European cast off and begin a line of descents that culminated in the sisters Gonzales. However, what all of them had in continuity, apart from their Iberian race, was their culture and religion, and it was this that tied Juan Carlos, his grandmother, aunts, and the elderly sisters in a bond that defied anything the modern world could throw at it.
One day, Juan Carlos was visiting his aunt at the Gonzales sisters’ boarding house. The place was abuzz with the usual lunchtime crowd: a colonel or two, businessmen from the center of town, teachers, some clerics, and a foreign tourist. Two waiters in white aprons were occupied serving meals while the more elderly of the sisters stood in the pantry clutching her crucifix on her ample bosom, hoping all was going as intended. But then there was a sudden, insistent KNOCK on the door.
One of the waiters made his way to the door and opened it. Momentarily curious, the young Juan Carlos shifted his attention from his aunt to the door, wanting to see what transpired.
The waiter opened the door to reveal an elderly, haggard looking indigenous woman with a cloth sack on her back, clutching an infant in one arm, with a hand outstretched. She looked up imploringly at the waiter and muttered something almost incomprehensible, but Juan Carlos heard the faint word “comida”. The woman was begging for food.
The waiter seemed unmoved, but looked in the direction of the pantry where his mistress stood clutching her crucifix; he was awaiting his orders.
“Shall I get her something to eat…?” he asked.
“NO!” came the reply. “Shut the door!”
The waiter slammed the door in the woman’s face.
And that is when Juan Carlos opened his eyes. And this made all the difference.
Tags: Catholics, Christianity, indios, los indigenas, racism, religion
