New Studies

“María de Guadulupe es la patrona de Santa Anita,” María explained to me as we walked to the tiny, yellow one room church in the center of the community, “she is also the Patron Saint of Mexico. Since both she and that country protected and gave refuge to so many of us during the war, we adopted her as our Patrona.”
December 12 is a national holiday in Mexico, in celebration of the Virgin of Guadalupe, who is ultra-important both religiously and culturally in Mexico. She is said to have appeared many times, but most importantly, her image was engraved inside the coat of a campesino man when he appeared to her on a hillside. Later, a church was built to her in that very spot, and the coat itself is displayed inside.
The 12th of December however, is not important only to Mexico as being the Día de la Virgen. At least two farms in this rural area of Guatemala have also adopted her as their patron saint, their protector. For this reason, the 12th of December here in Santa Anita was not a work day, but rather a day of celebration, of fiesta.
It started with a mass at 10 am. The priest showed up from Colomba, about a half hour away, moments beforehand. To perform the mass, he wore jeans and a button up shirt (people here, while traditional, don’t really stand so much on ceremony). At the end of the Hail Mary’s and Our Fathers, there was the wedding, quick, with an exchange of vows, rings, and coins to symbolize the sharing of all of the couple’s worldly goods. She dressed in a traditional handmade huipil (woven top) and he in a button down shirt.
In the evening, the Virgen was brought out on a small platform, carried on the shoulders of four of the community’s youngsters, as we all followed holding candles and singing songs of praise. The two lines in which we were theoretically organized quickly converged into a mass of people meandering along the community’s three ‘streets’, which are actually just the grassy paths along which the houses are located. Some people walked meditatively; I on the other hand, became the perpetual source of flame for a group of teenagers who passed the time seeing who could most blow out each other’s candles. Walking along in the midst of the whole community, accompanied by a guitar and a bass and genuine joy, made me smile as I both participated and observed.
The culmination of the evening, after the chicken and rice dinner sin utensils, was a dance just outside the church. With everyone gathered around an empty dance floor, listening to music, Luis Felipe, one of the community members, took it upon himself to teach me to dance marimba, traditional indigenous music. We danced and laughed and eventually coaxed other people onto the pista. I spent the evening practicing merengue, kicking up my heels and bouncing around with chicos from 8 to 60 years of age.
En fin, there is nothing to put into perspective the wonder of having graduated from college and experiencing life in a completely different surrounding, than spending a Monday night boogeying to Guatemalan marimba, cumbia, and merengue rhythms on a dirt dance floor under a plastic tarp suspended by freshly cut bamboo stalks in honor of the Virgin of Guadalupe. The 1-2-3 steps, the saint’s days, the prayers, the eating rice with just tortillas, involve a very different kind of studying than that I did for finals, but it is equally if not more enriching. They are life lessons, smiles and moments unforgettable. So soak up all you can at Hamilton, those of my dear friends who are there; but know that all sorts of amazing and unexpected adventures await you.