2023-05-01 05:38:02
CORDOVA, New Mexico (AP) — Since missionaries began building adobe churches 400 years ago on what was the remote frontier of the Spanish empire, small mountain communities like Cordova relied on their own resources to keep the faith alive.
Thousands of miles away from religious and secular centers of power, everything from priests to sculptors to paint pigments was hard to come by. The settlers instituted lay caretakers of the churches called “mayordomos”, and placed in the chapels elaborate altarpieces made of local wood and varnished with pine sap.
Today, threatened by exodus, shrinking congregations, and fading traditions, some of their descendants are fighting to save these historic adobe structures from literally crumbling and returning to the land they were built from.
“Our ancestors put blood and sweat in this place so that we would have Jesus present. This is the root of my faith,” Angelo Sandoval said on a chilly spring day inside the church of San Antonio, erected in the 1830s, where he serves as mayordomo in his native Cordova. “We are not just a church, we are not just a religion; We have roots.”
From the local soil they were built with to the generations of family memories they hold, these churches anchor a unique New Mexico way of life for their communities, many of which no longer have schools or stores, and face chronic poverty and addiction. .
An estimated 500 Catholic missions remain in northern New Mexico, where the Rocky Mountains gradually turn into desert mesas to the west and endless plains to the east.
It is increasingly difficult to find the necessary investment—hundreds of thousands of dollars, plus specialized conservation skills and families willing to serve as stewards—to preserve them, especially since most are only used for a few Masses a year.
“It really is a labor of love,” said Father Rob Yaksich, pastor of Our Lady of Sorrows in Las Vegas, New Mexico, who oversees 23 rural churches, mostly adobe, spread over a sprawling territory. “When the generation of parishioners is gone, will they become a museum or will they serve their purpose? This old and entrenched Spanish Catholicism is undergoing serious disruption.”
Fidel Trujillo is a mayordomo at the pink stucco church of San José in the village of Ledoux, where he grew up. With his wife and other family members, he keeps it immaculate even though only two masses are celebrated here a year.
“Our ancestors did a tremendous job bringing us the faith, and now it’s our job,” Trujillo said in the characteristic mix of Spanish and English spoken by many in this region. Although he is also active in the main parish in the nearby town of Mora, he brings his children, ages 6 and 4, to San José whenever he can.
“This serves as a retreat and instructs us,” he added. “I much prefer coming to these chapels. It’s a compass that guides where your heart really belongs.”
Each mission is dedicated to a particular saint, for whom the community develops a special veneration. When the largest forest fire in New Mexico last spring tore through the woods near San José Church, and Trujillo was evicted for a month, he took the statue of San José with him.
In the small town of Bernalillo, Catholic parishioners have maintained a vow to San Lorenzo for more than 300 years, which includes that each year a family build an altar with its image in their home, and make it available 24 hours a day. of the day, 7 days a week, for anyone who wishes to pray.
“There was a knock on my door at 2am and I let them in,” said butler Barbara Finley.
Their home sits near the historic adobe Sanctuary of San Lorenzo, which the community fought to preserve despite the fact that a larger church had been built next to it.
“400 years ago, life was very difficult in this part of the world, the remote interior border of the Spanish empire,” explained Félix López, a “santero” teacher, the artists who sculpt, paint and preserve the figures of the saints in the devotional and unique New Mexico style, born out of historical isolation. “The people needed these saints. They were a source of comfort and refuge.”
Over the centuries, most were stolen, sold or damaged, according to Bernadette Lucero, director, curator and archivist for the Santa Fe archdiocese, which has inventories of its hundreds of churches dating back to the 17th century.
But how much these expressive sculptures and paintings still matter to local communities is evident in places where they survive in their original form, such as at the Cordova, Truchas, and Las Trampas missions, on the road from Santa Fe to Taos through the mountains.
“Saints are who you turn to spiritually; they can be very powerful,” said Victor Goler, a santero teacher who has just finished conserving the altarpieces in the Las Trampas church, from the mid-18th century. “It is important that the community have a connection. His feeling runs so much deeper and that’s what keeps him going.”
On a recent Sunday at the 1760s Santo Rosario Church in Truchas, López highlighted the rich decorative details that centuries of smoke and dirt had hidden until he meticulously cleaned them with absorbent sourdough bread crumbs.
“I am a devout Catholic, and I do this as a meditation, as a form of prayer,” said López, who has been a santero for five decades and whose family is originally from this town located on a mountain range 7,000 feet (2,100 meters) above altitude.
A few miles down the valley, in Cordova, Jerry Sandoval—another santero and the mayordomo’s uncle—says a prayer to each saint before beginning to carve their image out of pine, poplar, or poplar wood. Then he paints them with natural pigments—purple is made from crushed insects, for example—and he varnishes them with sap from the pinyon, the hardy pine that can be found here and there in the countryside.
She also helped preserve the centuries-old, colorful altarpiece of the local church, to which many children return for traditional Christmas and Easter prayers, giving the Sandovals hope that younger generations will learn to be attached to his church.
“You see all this,” said Jerry Sandoval in front of the richly decorated altarpieces of the San Antonio church. “Many people call it tradition, but we call it faith.”
For Father Sebastian Lee, who as manager of the popular Chimayó Shrine complex — just a few miles away — also oversees these missions, fostering local attachment is a daunting challenge as congregations shrink even faster since the pandemic. of COVID-19.
“I want the missions to be where people can get a taste of culture and religiosity. They are very healing; you are soaked in the faith of the people,” Lee said as pilgrims filed past his tiny adobe-walled office toward the main Chimayó shrine. “I wonder how to help them, because sooner or later some mission is not going to have enough people.”
The archdiocese’s Catholic Foundation provides small grants, and several organizations have been founded to help with conservation efforts.
Frank Graziano is hopeful that his nonprofit organization Nuevo México Profundo, which supported Cordova’s conservation, can get the necessary permission from the archdiocese to restore the 1840s-era San Jeronimo Church. There are deep cracks in its adobe walls and nests of insects buzz in an open hole next to one of the windows.
The surrounding village, in a wide valley in the shadow of Hermit’s Peak, is almost completely uninhabited, making it unlikely that the community will intervene to provide the necessary maintenance. Exposed to rain and snow, adobe needs a new coating of earth, sand, and straw every two years so it doesn’t dissolve.
That makes local involvement and some kind of ongoing activity, even if it’s just funerals, critical to long-term preservation, said Jake Barrow, director of programs at Cornerstones, an organization dedicated to preserving New Mexico’s architectural heritage, which He has worked in more than 300 churches and other structures.
When volunteers began raising funds for the mission in Truchas, the community suspected it would be turned into an art gallery, butler Aggie Vigil said. But they were convinced when she shared a dream of making the old adobe church, then unstable and infested with gophers, usable once more for masses.
But with fewer priests and fewer parishioners, removing some rural missions from the Church’s active list might be unavoidable, said Father Andy Pavlak, who is on the archdiocese’s commission for the preservation of historic churches.
“We have two options: either return to the community, or return to the land from which they came. We can’t save them all,” said Pavlak, who for nearly a decade said masses in 10 churches in Socorro County, the oldest dating to 1615. “Adobe is made from the earth. Adam and Eve were made from the earth. We all go to earth. How do we do it with dignity?”
Running his hand along the smooth adobe walls he restored in the 1880s Santo Niño de Atocha chapel in Monte Aplanado, a town nestled in a high-mountain valley, Leo Paul Pacheco argued that the answer might depend of the faith of laymen like him.
He and his son belong to one of the many confraternities—known as “penitents” for their devotion to penance and prayer for the souls in purgatory—that historians credit with fulfilling the religious and social role of the Church when dangers border gates prevented the arrival of priests.
The cofradía brothers are still helping to establish a model as their county struggles with unemployment and the drug crisis, Pacheco said.
“We lift our community up in prayer. What we do is highlight and share aspects of the community that build ties,” she said.
In the long term, it will be up to future generations to harness their faith to save these historic churches.
“They still have access to the same land,” Pacheco said as the sand particles and thatch on the adobe walls shimmered in the sun. “They will provide.” ______ The Associated Press’ religious coverage is supported through the AP’s partnership with The Conversation US, with funding from the Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
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