Culture and Religion

Warning: A PG13 Camino Adventure

I didn't know what I was going to write about today. The walk was almost… easy? At least as easy as 13.4 miles can be. The weather was beautiful. The scenery was fantastic. Nothing too crazy. We didn't meet any curious characters.

I guess there was this: On a walk past a beach we noticed a couple instances of, shall we say, the relaxed European dress code for women on beaches. But it wasn’t from the women you might expect to be flaunting the kind of beauty that magazines and movies hold up as the standard. So we simply said, “You be you. I’m glad you feel comfortable in your body.” I don't want to write at length about the topic, so I thought I might simply take the day off from writing and give you a day of rest from reading. But then we got to our town: Nueves. Nines.

As we got closer we kept seeing signs that said “La Blanca” Sept 7-8 in Nueves. I wondered if it was a local band doing a two night set or something. But then the lady checking us into our hotel said in pretty good English, “I have to warn you, there is a festival going on in town tonight and tomorrow." I said, “La Blanca?"

Yes, she said. Do you know it?

No, but I saw the signs. What is it?

“La Blanca is, how do I say it… the Virgin.”

“Oh” I said. “The Virgin Mary?”

“Everyone is supposedly a virgin in these parts” she said with some dismissiveness. “The men carry a big tree and put it up in the town square, and the women dance with their tambourines.” OK, this was something I had to see. So after showering and washing my clothes, I asked Chris if she was interested. She was more interested in a nap, so I went out by myself. I talked to the reception woman again, saying I wanted to go see the erection of the big tree. She kind of rolled her eyes. I asked, “Are you Catholic?”

She said, “The country is Catholic.”

I asked, “Is this a religious ceremony? Or cultural?”

She said, “That is hard to say. It is a mix. It is cultic” (she actually said “Celtic”, but I think she must have meant “cultic.” And I went down to the town square. It wasn’t hard to find — you just follow the sounds of the bagpipes (maybe she did mean Celtic). There were lots of women and girls in some kind of traditional costumes. And there were men wearing white shirts with a sky blue scarf. And then it seemed like everyone else in the town was there. It took me three tries to find someone who spoke English who could explain to me what was going on. Finally I found a university student who spoke good English, but had drank quite a few beers by this time. Here’s the gist of what I got from him:

A long time ago, there was a ship that ran aground or sank, and the mast of the ship was taken into the town as a symbol of strength and virility. The town of Nueves now has two rival ethnic celebrations, which at some point became administered under the auspices of the two churches in town. This one is “La Blancha” because it has the church which esteems the Madonna and child under the name of “La Blancha”. Their celebration is one where they go out and cut down the tallest eucalyptus tree they can find, strip it of its branches, and erect it in the town square where it stands for a year as a symbol of “La Blancha”. Next to it is a smaller eucalyptus tree which symbolizes the child.

“But is it religious?” I asked.

“Kind of, but that is mixed with ethnic identity primarily” he said. “The town is divided by the river, and the people on this side of the river say their festival is better. Do you hear what the girls are singing?”

“I hear but don’t understand” I said.

“They are singing a kind of chant that is simply, ‘our ritual is better than your ritual’” he said.

Then I said, “I have to ask, is it also kind of sexual? There are a bunch of men erecting a long pole in honor of a virgin, right?”

He laughed and said, “It is definitely related to a cult of fertility where there is a pole stuck into the ground that provides some guarantee for the future of the community. And it gets everyone worked up into a frenzy so I wouldn’t be surprised to learn the birth rate is higher nine months from tonight.” Interesting. Is that why this town is called “nines”??

I had to wait about an hour for them to bring the big tree to the town square, and then it took about another hour for them to get it erect. [insert your own PG13 joke here] I asked the student why it takes so long. He said, “They have to be very careful. About 30 years ago they were doing this ritual and the tree fell and killed the man who sells churros.”

Yikes. So now, they dig a trench leading down to a hole about 10 feet deep. The tree trunk is brought up to that and then raised in stages, with lots of supports and ropes, but all only powered by human muscles. Each time they raise it a bit, others dump in dirt to pack around the part of the trunk that was raised. There is a kind of foreman who decides when it is packed well enough and then very dramatically tells the men with the ropes to pull again. At the climax of this process, the tree is perfectly vertical and they pound in wedges all around it to secure it. Everyone cheers wildly. I cheered with them.

It’s so interesting to see a ceremony that once had religious implications, but now is so lacking in any religious significance. It made me wonder what people in this town would think of many American church services or maybe camp meeting revival services. Would they seem almost entirely ethnic too? Maybe. It’s pretty tough to find Scriptural references to altar calls and accepting Jesus as your personal savior.

One of the reasons I like traveling in other cultures is that it holds a mirror up to our own experience. What seems so different here is normal to them; that works the other way too. May all of us be slow to take what seems normal to us as absolutes for everyone everywhere. Instead, let us learn from others and celebrate the diversity of people and customs, always doing our best to love God and love our neighbors.