Reflections on or trip to Cotija 2018.

Reflections on Cotija 2018:

            Once again I have come to this small town located in the foothills of the Sierras here in Central Mexico, to relax and unwind from the stress of everyday life in California. This is my wife’s hometown and we have been coming here almost every year since we were married in 1986. We built a house here about 15 years ago, so we have both our “hotel” and eventual semi-retirement home here.

            The people of Cotija are some of the friendliest people one could find in Mexico, or anywhere else in the world. So many speak English because they have worked or are still working in the U.S. and especially in December, many return for vacation and the various feasts that happen at this time of year. I have known some of the people here for more than the 32 years that I have been visiting, since my college days in the late 70’s early 80’s when I worked at a dairy store that happened to deliver product to the many taco shops in the San Diego area, this is also how I met my wife, whose father owned one of the shops I delivered to.

            The weather in Cotija in December is cool, but not cold. Evening temps can dip into the low 60’s and daytime temps into the mid 70’s. Like Mary Poppins would say, “It’s practically perfect.” Although the last week the temperatures at night have dipped into the mid 40’s, but daytime highs have remained in the mid to upper 60’s. We are in the highlands after all and we get a breeze coming into the valley that cools things down.

            One of the perks I have at the present time is that, as a deacon in the Catholic Church, the Cure of the town parish invites me to celebrate Mass with them. One would usually need a letter of good standing from the diocese where they are serving, in my case San Bernardino, but the priest has known me and my wife for many years, and I have full faculties from my Bishop to serve in all capacities as a deacon. I was privileged to assist in the Sacrament of Baptism the last time I was here two years ago. The baptismal fount is hundreds of years old and has seen at least two saints baptized in it, one being St. Rafael Guizar y Valencia, the other, my wife (although she is not yet canonized…). Noted, I assisted, I did not do the actual baptism, but assisted with anointing and proclamation of the Word, etc. Saturday night I assisted with the last Mass of the day, 7:30 and before the dismissal, we had Eucharistic Adoration. Usually, the priest would raise the Monstrance to bless the people, but he motioned for me to do it, so with a great sense of pride and humbleness (I know they are contrary, but this is how I felt), I raised Jesus in the Monstrance and blessed the people. The feelings of inadequateness in the minister does nullify the effects of the blessing, or in the case of Mass, the Sacrament of the Eucharist.

            Continuing on the spiritual life of the people in Cotija, many of the “hijos ausentes” (those who live in the United States, but come here for the Religious feasts in December including Christmas, so they are the “missing” sons and daughters of Cotija) many of them will also use this opportunity to get married in the Church, or to baptize their children, or to get Confirmation in the Faith, or even to celebrate a Quinceanera (15^th birthday blessing and traditional introduction to society for a young lady). These are done all through the week at the parish church, Nuestra Senora del Popolo (Our Lady of the People). December truly is the busiest time for our priests, between all of the masses that are celebrated, the baptisms and the Quinceaneras, weddings and funerals, they are practically non stop in their service to the people of Cotija, and this parish has only three priests to do all the ministries and Sacraments that are needed to be done. We had a Quinceanera at the 7:30 pm Mass last night. It is quite a sight to see a weekday mass, especially at night, to be almost full of people as it was last night. It is also a blessing to see it. I was surprised that there was a Quinceanera scheduled at an evening Mass, and the Celebrant mentioned to me before Mass that he too, wondered why one was scheduled at this hour. God works in mysterious ways I suppose, because this girl was very moved by the priest’s words to her about her life and her responsibilities to both herself and her family and to God. I have to admit, that in my 6 years since my ordination, I have celebrated many of these celebrations and for the most part, it seems like the girls are almost just waiting for it to be over so they can get to the “party” part of their “quince”. It is sometimes disheartening to perceive that attitude in these young women, then just at the point where I feel like telling my pastor that I don’t want to celebrate these anymore, I get a young woman for whom the Eucharistic celebration is the highlight of her day and the party is just icing on the cake. I had one such girl who was very involved in her service, even to the point of singing the “Ave Maria” when it came time to place the flowers at the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe and to ask for her help in becoming the woman that God wants her to be. I was moved to tears. It was after that Quinceanera that I changed my attitude towards the ritual and saw that I was there for God and to do His will in giving the best homily to encourage and challenge the young women who are celebrating this transition in their lives. How they take it, or their attitude towards it, does not matter, at least to me.

            We took a day trip to a National Park in a neighboring town about 2 hours away (about 50 miles, but through mountain roads and traffic…). This park is home to a natural source of pure water, in fact, you can drink water straight from the rock without fear of getting sick, it is that pure! The state of Michoacán is home to the world’s best hass avocados, and Uruapan (where the park is) is the Capital of the avocado empire. We depend so much on Mexican avocados (even though we have the largest avocado growers in our own backyard in San Diego County), that when the workers went on strike last month, there was a major disruption in production and distribution and avocado prices went through the roof, so much so that we had to stop selling guacamole except on the menu items that came with it. Don’t let anybody fool you into thinking that the avocado growers in California don’t want or are afraid of the Mexican avocados. Two major California distributors, West Pak and Calavo, are invested heavily in Michoacán. Both have packing and distribution centers here and make money hand over fist with their product.

            We took another trip, this time only for the afternoon, to a mountain town in Jalisco, about 45 minutes from Cotija. Mazamitla is a town in the Sierras, just as Uruapan is, however the difference with Mazamitla is that it seems to be frozen in time. It is a tourist town, but it still looks like it did 50 years or 100 years ago. Clean streets, flagstone roads throughout the center of town and quaint shops selling just about anything you might want, from waffles and crepes to fine art. We usually just go for lunch at a nice restaurant/resort that overlooks the valley below, as we did today. I remember the first time I was at this particular restaurant and was surveying the surrounding landscape with the plethora of pine trees in these mountains, the scent surrounds you as you breathe in clean mountain air, and I remember thinking that I was going to see the Cartwright clan come riding over the hill and I heard the theme to ‘Bonanza’ playing in my head. I have been to many small mountain towns in many places, but none have the authentic charm as Mazamitla has. This is a town I need to return to and spend a number of days exploring it’s charm and beauty.

            No vacation is complete without at least one minor emergency. We had ours with a flat tire on our rental car. Now, it was a minor emergency because we were returning from a neighboring town and it went flat at a most inconvenient time. A long downhill curving road with no place to pull over. Once we did, we changed it with the spare and drove back to Cotija where we had the tire patched and reinstalled.  It now remains to see it the patch holds to take us back to the airport rental office. Other than that, the only other emergency is running out of bottled water at 6 in the morning so I can’t make another cup of coffee. The water from the tap is not clean enough to drink, but is good enough to wash dishes and clothes and for general cleaning, bathing and personal hygiene, but not for personal consumption. There is only one house here in Cotija that has water clean and pure enough to drink from the tap, and that is at the home of the previously mentioned Saint Rafael Guizar y Valencia which has a well as it’s source of water, not the city’s supply. This water has been laboratory tested and has been certified as some of the purest water in all of Mexico. Now, is it because it is a well? Or is it because it is at the house where a saint lived while he was growing up? I do not know, all I do know is that I have drank from that well also and did not get sick. Like I posted in a video from Uruapan, who says you can’t drink the water in Mexico? Heck, there are places in the US where you can’t drink the water from the tap because of some kind of environmental contamination that has come as the result of our failure to care for our world, and in some cases the pure greed of companies that build infrastructure from inferior material so that over time, it corrodes and poisons the water coming into the home, just so they can make a fast profit.

            Last night was the “Midnight” Mass for Christmas (which started at 9 and finished around 10:30 pm), the Gospel reading from Luke of the Birth of the Savior in a humble stable. As our priest reminded us, the subtlety of God coming into our world as one of us, born in Bethlehem, which means ‘House of Bread’ and being laid in a manger, a place where animals would eat their food. Jesus, the Bread of Life, which we are to eat in the Eucharist for us to have life, and that we might have that life abundantly.  Again, the priest sang most of the Eucharistic Prayer, with the people in their parts with a sung response. I think a Mass sung, is a Mass prayed twice, which St. Augustine would agree with me, “He who sings, prays twice”. I honestly don’t know what incense they use, but I need to get some for our parish because the priest would put inly a small amount and the smoke just kept coming and coming (like the Energizer Bunny), raising the prayers to Heaven with the smoke from the Thurible.

            Today, Christmas Day, marks our last full day here in Cotija. It will be a day of washing clothes, cleaning house (why, I don’t know, we have a lady that takes care of the house throughout the year) and of packing our suitcases. Of course, we will go to the 12 noon Mass, my last one assisting and I will have to pack away my alb and stoles after Mass. It has always been an honor to serve the people of God in the Mass, regardless of where that Mass takes place. That is what makes us Catholic, Universal, that the Mass is the same readings everywhere in the world on the same liturgical calendar. The bread and wine offered on that altar, regardless of the geographical location of the parish, still is transubstantiated into the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ by the prayers offered by the priest for himself and the people at that Mass. For this reason we affirm through the Creed that we are the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.

            I wish everyone who reads this reflection a very Merry and Blessed Christmas season and a Joyous New Year. May God bless you and yours in the coming year as we continue on our journey back to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Random Reflections on my Second Trip to El Salvador:

           

I wrote about our mission trip to El Salvador last year (2017) with the Maryknoll Fathers and how the country is still, in many ways, recovering from the civil war that rocked this Central American country more than 30 years ago and lasted more than a decade. That war was but the latest in tragedies that have plagued this Central American country. From Colonial times, the people of El Salvador have been exploited for the riches of their country. Even when she won her independence, the wealthy land owners continued their stranglehold on the people, using cheap, sometimes free, labor to build their empires. The wealthy owned the land and owned the government as well. Some things never change (anywhere in the world).

            I have returned to this verdant green country once again, this time to assist our daughter in law in securing her paperwork that she needs to apply for lawful entry into the United States and be reunited with our son and their children.

            Not much has changed since last year (not much changes in a year anyway). Much of the infrastructure improvements that were in process last year are still in, well, process. Once completed, they will facilitate the movement of auto traffic better than the current situation. People say if you can drive in a number of places in the world, you can drive anywhere in the world. They say Mexico City Mexico, Manila Philippines, and not to exclude the States, Atlanta Georgia. I would add San Salvador to that list, I’m sure others could add to the list.

            Where we are staying in San Salvador is in one of the “middle class” neighborhoods of the city. The hotel is a converted home, some would call it a hostel. (I always thought of a hostel as a YMCA in foreign country, 4 sets of bunk beds in the room, common showers, and the Village People singing on the one radio). This middle class neighborhood is still segregated in that there are a number of areas that have banded together in order to form a co-op of homes that are in a “gated” community, sometimes it is an actual gate and in others it is a big chain that blocks entry into the community. Both are kept under constant armed vigilance. In my first reflection from last year, I mentioned the obvious disparity between the uber rich and the uber poor, million dollar mansions with their high razor wire topped walls and armed guards, right next to corrugated shacks where an entire family would live with no running water, toilets, nor privacy. This middle class neighborhood has no suck stark distinction. Yet, it does. On the way out to the medical clinic this morning, I observed a man sleeping on a cardboard sheet, right on the sidewalk. Poverty and homelessness is not particular to this country, nor is drug abuse and mental illness, which I observed in the young man walking down the street with the waist of his pants literally down around his thighs, displaying his underwear for all the neighborhood to see (thank God he was wearing underwear). But these kinds of scenes are played out on a daily basis all over the world. We, in the United States, like to think of ourselves as a first world nation, and in many ways, we are: First in percentage of population that is incarcerated, first in drug abuse by our people, first in homelessness (take a look on Olympic Blvd in Los Angeles any day of the week), first in homicide rates in the Western World. Even with all of our technological advancements, we still have a long way to go in how we treat our fellow citizens and those who are “strangers” among us.

            El Salvador, in a way, is a microcosm of the US, in that they pretty much have what we have here at home; democratically elected government, paved (mostly in the cities) roads, seems everyone has a cell phone, public and private transportation systems, small and medium and large businesses (US companies abound here, from KFC to Pizza Hut), and indoor plumbing. The only thing that is missing is a Starbucks on every corner, but they have Mister Donut (a very nice place to get, er, donuts, not to mention they have a cafeteria also where you can buy breakfast lunch and dinner: try that at Starbucks!); not on every corner, but you would never know that by the amount of billboard space they occupy. They also have all the vices we have; obsessive materialism, class envy, obvious economic disparity to accompany that class envy, and let’s not forget gang violence, which is a reality here from what I have been told by various priests that I talked to last year. I read in a newspaper (yes, they still have a printed newspaper) that in one area of the capital there were 105 murders in a span of five years between 2012 to 2017. I though about that. That number is like summer statistics in Chicago on any given year, yet here, it is a cause for great concern, as it should be. Our homicide numbers should be of great concern for us also. But, I fear that as long as we have this attitude of “well, it didn’t happen to me”, we will never learn to be our brother’s keeper.

            El Salvador does not have its own currency. They officially adopted the US Dollar on January 1, 2001, in part to try and curb runaway inflation in their country. Many other Central American countries have the Dollar for their currency as a stabilizing factor for their economy. El Salvador also uses the US system of measurement, at least at gas stations, and I though I was getting a decent price for diesel at 3.20 a gallon (in California, it is closer to 4), but if one looks at El Salvador’s minimum wage at around 250.00 a month, 3.20 is a lot to pay, so there is good reason that their roads are overrun with busses in this capital city.

            I had the opportunity yesterday, to take Stephanie to the Cathedral in San Salvador. She told me that she had never seen the inside of the Cathedral and she was duly impressed when we walked in. We then went downstairs to the crypt where Monseñor Oscar Romero is buried. I knelt in prayer at his grave, asking for his intercession for the peace of his people. There is a strong sense of tranquility that pervades the whole of the area where he is buried, perhaps because of the violence that pervaded his beloved country during his lifetime and in fact took his very life by an assassin’s bullet, that peace and tranquility which he sought with all his being has finally taken hold in this most sacred spot where the future saint (October of 2018) is lying in repose.

            Just a block over, in the next plaza, is the Church of the Rosary, a brick and mortar edifice that is not constructed in the traditional form of a parish church. From the outside, it looks more like a gymnasium than a church, but there are line of stained glass windows that stack up inline up to to near top of the building on both sides and when one is inside and the sun is shining through those windows, there is a glow about the whole church. There is also a famous collection of the stations of the cross made by a local sculptor. Unique and beautiful, they are an artistic interpretation of the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus without being too “artsy”. To stay and contemplate each station is a reflection of what Jesus did for all the world for all time. There is another memorial inside the church, well, actually there is a mass grave inside the church with a plaque that both marks and memorializes the grave and the 21 people who were massacred in the plaza in 1979 in a government suppression of a protest of the people for better conditions.

            When we were here last year, we had the privilege of having a deacon from San Francisco join us in our mission. He is Salvadoran, he is a few years younger than me, which would have made him a young teen in 1979. His father was a religious man, working with the Church in El Salvador to help the people with their struggle for normalcy. He was at the plaza that day of the government massacre, he described for us the horror of that day and many other days of their sad history of the 70’s through the 90’s. He told us of his actions of pulling people into the church as they sought refuge from the hail of bullets from the governments rifles. He had left El Salvador not too much later after this, he developed a medical condition that could only be treated in the US. By the way, as a youth, he hated the US for what we were doing to his country by sending military aid in the form of armament and ammo, military advisors and trainers to train their military how to effectively kill fellow Salvadorans, so it was ironic that they only place he could go to get treatment for his condition was the US. By the time he was well enough to travel back to his homeland, civil war had become full blown and he was not allowed to return. He stayed in San Francisco, married and started a family, continued in assisting in church and was ordained a deacon in 2012. 2017 was his first time back in his home. When we went to the Church of the Rosary, while we were looking and appreciating the beauty of this church, he stayed behind near the grave of those 21. When I came back to the front of the church to leave, he was there kneeling at the grave, crying; not just crying, but weeping uncontrollably. I could do nothing except kneel with him, put my arm around him and weep with him. All those years of hate, buried deep inside of his soul, had been forgiven in his confessions earlier, I am sure, but now came the renewed grieving for his people whom he loved. 

              When I was recalling this story to Stephanie, I received a moment of grace from God and my eyes once again welled up with tears and I started to weep again. How can I care so deeply for these whom I never knew, were not “my” people, and which this disaster didn’t “happen to me”? Because, in reality, these are my people, we are linked by our humanity, we are linked in our faith, when one part of the body suffers, the whole body suffers.