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The Cross in Peru

by Alejandro Bermudez 

I was riding in the back of a truck from the Sacred Valley back to Cuzco, Peru, when the temperature dramatically plummeted and hail began to fall.

Although I was very well equipped with a comfortable winter jacket, a poncho and hiking boots, I still felt cold. But I could not miss the fact that among my fellow riders in the back of the truck there was a group of Quechua-speaking locals barely covered with poor Alpaca ponchos, mid-calf pants and ojotas – sandals made from old rubber tires.

“Aren’t you cold?” I asked one of them. They all look at each other briefly before bursting into laughter. “Cold it is, taitay” – Quechua for “little daddy” – “How could it be not?” one responded in broken Spanish.

I felt ashamed. Here I was, a city boy, believing that Andean natives were somehow insulated, either by genetics or custom, from the cold I was feeling. Obviously they were not. The message, sharp and brief, was that on the open back of a truck, under a hailstorm, how could anybody not be cold?

They were cold, but they were at peace with it and felt not the slightest urge to complain about it.
The capacity of Andean Peruvians – and many others in Latin America – to bear pain and suffering is deeply associated with their Catholic faith.

Let me explain. There are many sources of suffering for poor people in the Andes – not only merciless weather, from which they have little to no protection, like air conditioning or heating. There is the lack of food, medicine and health services that forces them to see their loved ones, especially children, become sick and die. There is the lack of respect for their work, which is poorly paid, and to their own dignity in a country whose government institutions still discriminate by color and race.

The truck episode made evident to me that there is not such a thing as “getting accustomed” to suffering. I would confirm this later in life during several mission trips to the Andes. When they would open up around a campfire after a catechesis, most of the Andean people would tell the horror stories that mark their lives, crying openly for a long while. Only then the profound wound of their suffering would be visible in the fullness of its tragedy. The day after, they would be profoundly grateful, but as stoic as the day before.

The capacity to bear their suffering, I realized, did not come from being accustomed to it. In other words, they are not less sensitive to pain that any other normal human being is. It is just that they just cling to their Catholic faith, and in particular, to the mystery of the Cross and the sufferings of Jesus.

No wonder then that in the Andean region the Cross is celebrated not only in September during the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross but also throughout May in the month-long feast known as La Cruz de Mayo (The May Cross.) This celebration is so deeply embedded in the Andean tradition that the Peruvian bishops asked and obtained permission from the Holy See to celebrate May not only as the month of Mary, but also the month of the Cross.

Anyone who participates on one of the many Cruz de Mayo celebrations will be surprised to see that the Cross carried in procession is both empty – there is no suffering Christ on it – and covered in colorful flowers.

Very few peasants could articulate the profound theological truth expressed in this rich Christian symbol: the empty Cross after the Resurrection is our only source of life, hope, and joy; and there is no true Christian life without the Cross.

They cannot explain it, but they live it on a daily basis, thus bringing the mystery of the Cross much closer to themselves than we who can explain it but hardly live it.

More than once I have heard international economists or sociologists complaining that the Andean nations are backwards because their people are too conformist to their fate.

Peru’s rapidly growing economy, which continues its torrid pace even during the global recession, and the country’s successful efforts to bring justice and development to the poorest areas is a wonderful refutation of the claim that “too much faith” can be hazardous for a nation’s economic development.

But if I would have to choose between spiritual and material wealth for the Andean people, I would very carefully consider the words Pope John Paul II addressed to Latin America in preparation for the celebration of the 500th anniversary of its evangelization:

“Your faith is your richness in the midst of your poverty, a richness that nothing and no one should take away from you.”

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(The views expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of Headline Bistro or the Knights of Columbus.)