The Virgin of Juquila

I am off on another weekend adventure. This time to the hill town and age old pilgrimage destination of Juquila. This is a place where a local virgen is worshiped and one may ask her assistance in personal issues. Bill has asked me to ask for a decent health care plan for the United States, which I plan to do. Bill is in Fulton collecting signatures for a petition for a decent health plan. I am in Mexico petitioning for a decent health plan for Americans.

Juquila is inland about three hours by bus from Puerto Escondido. I am not great at distances, but I would guess it is about 75 miles. The reason it takes so long is that the road was up, up, up with lots of curves. We went through different types of landscape with palm trees being replaced with pines and it getting obviously cooler. The mountains were cloud capped and at one point the bus was up in the cloud. The bus continued on to Oaxaca City, and four of us headed to Juquila transferred to a camioneta (a pickup converted to handle passengers) to continue our journey. The other three pilgrims were an elderly couple, she with long double braids of gray hair and a gingham apron over her yellow flowered dress, he with pants well repaired and a sturdy felt hat. The third was Hugo, a gentleman about my age who lived in Wisconsin for 8 years mostly working in a machine shop. All three agreed that it was a beautiful thing that I was willing to make this pilgrimage.

Juquila clings to a mountainside and many houses are built of wood planks with metal roofs. The center of town has the church with the Virgin and services for pilgrims all around. For the humble pilgrim, the church has palets for less than 50 cents a night in a room with others. A palet is actually floor space to create your palet. Surrounding the church is a market place with all kinds of goods for tourist/pilgrims as well. Lots of recuerdos-memories to take home and one can buy things to offer the Virgin as well: flowers and milagros small representations of the requests one may make of the Virgin: eyes, arms, legs, whole body, a man and a bottle represent giving up alcohol, and for those who have material needs: car, house, money. There are also water jugs for sale in case you forgot to bring one for the holy water available to all. In addition to the marketplace, where one can buy food to go, there are restaurants and hotels as well. I have a room with private bath and TV in a hotel just off the main plaza.

The sales people are friendly and relaxed, no push to buy. I enjoyed walking around the market, seeing the variety of items available for everyday use, for the Mexican tourist and as well as for the pilgrim. I am the only American I have seen all day. One shop person told me she knows an American who lives in a nearby village named Pablo. She wondered if I knew him. She said he can speak both Spanish and Chaitano-the language the indiginous people speak around here.
The church itself is quite big but simple with no pews. Right now it seems spacious because the special festival time for this Virgin is annually in early December, and so there are not so many pilgrims as could be accomodated. The Virgin is in the center of an alter that is mostly white with some gold gilding. This is in contrast to most of the bigger Mexican churches I have been to which have an entire back wall of all gold.

Sunday morning I awoke early to the tunes of a brass band complete with tuba and big loud drums. I was told this was special for as today is Fathers Day. The band played on and off until about noon, and once it was daylight they really did add a lot to the festive atmosphere.

I took a taxi to El Pedimento early on Sunday. This is a second pilgrimage place for the same Virgin. The taxi driver stopped so I could get a view of a creek he called Siete Honduras. This is where knowing Spanish but not being fluent in Spanish can get one in trouble. I think Siete Honduras means seven waterfalls, because there were seven. But it may mean something else. Anyway, the nearby indigineous people that the seven waterfalls represent the seven heads of a snake who live in a creek, according to the taxi driver. I believe the Hindus also have a seven headed snake god, interesting how certain themes reappear in relligions. It was wild rushing white water and could easily have been a river to my thinking but the taxi driver insisted it was a creek.

El Pedimento must be about 5 miles from town. Here, there is a small shrine with the Virgin again. All around the shrine and in the woods nearby woods are crosses and banners that families have left either to request certain benefits or to thank the Virgin for fulling their wishes. Some banners were simply to commemorate their sixth or tenth visit to Virgin. Some were simple hand lettered on paper, others hand sewn, others commercially made banners. Crosses were everywhere, in any space on the ground, in tree branches anywhere. People were kind and no one seemed upset that there was a foreigner in their midst.

I have been posting these blogs and responding to emails from public internet sites. I can use the computer with internet access for just under one dollar per hour. This seems like a great deal to me and I wonder why such sites do not exist in the US. Also, the system for cell phones seems more reasonable as well. Once you have paid the intitial fee, you can go to pharmacies or other stores and pay to have a time credit put on your cell. I have about five dollars worth of credit on the phone loaned me by the program I am here with. Public transportation seems to work fine, too. One hitch must be volume, we do not have the volume of people who are willing to pay 50 cents to ride from place to place given the inconveniences and uncertainties involved. Here, though it works great and I can get anywhere in Puerto Escondido within half an hour of leaving the house where I am staying.