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| Essay Archive | December 16, 2002 |
IN PRAISE OF THE VIRGIN
Nicaragua's Love for María
Doña Rosa's knees began to bleed. She did not notice. The grinding wounds from walking on her knees, the brilliant sun, and dizzying heat inside a breathless church, made Doña Rosa's head spin and her knees numb, immune to all but her goal. When she reached the altar, stained black with candle smoke, Doña Rosa began to weep, her sobs punctuating the prayer she has recited for more than a half century. Doña Rosa raised her head and gazed through a fog of tears at the image of the Virgin. She was not alone.
Nicaragua's devotion to the Virgin Mary or la Virgen María is historic, profound and very much alive. It could be that the Virgin Mary holds more emotional and spiritual importance in Nicaraguan than in any other country in the world. Nicaragua has several unique celebrations to the Virgin and two of them in December commemorate María's Immaculate Conception of Jesus Christ. The most renowned is La Purisima or Gritería, a centuries old tradition that's uniquely Nicaraguan.
The heat of León begins to vanish into night; Parque Central is full, as darkness falls on another December 7th. With the 6:00 p.m. cry of faith, "¿Quien causa tanta alegría? ¡La Concepción de María!" (Who causes so much happiness? The Conception of Mary!), the city of León erupts in a pyrotechnics display that pounds the senses with acrid smoke, flashes of burning light and resonant echoes of explosions that shake the old city's adobe walls. León is the birthplace of the Purisima tradition, but all of Nicaragua is in simultaneous celebration at that very moment. Plaster and wood images of the Virgin Mary are placed on makeshift altars inside the front rooms of homes in the cities and in front yards of houses in the countryside and villages. The altars are decorated during the day with palm fronds, flowers, candles and many personal touches. After 6:00 p.m. the faithful roam from altar to altar, singing songs to María and receive gifts from the homes with Purisima altars. Gifts of traditional homemade sweets, sugar cane, oranges and limes or newer additions such as imported candies, plastic toys and bowels.
The Gritería of the Purisima (shouting and signing praises to the Virgin) on December 7 is a unique show of faith for Nicaraguan believers in the Immaculate Conception of Mary. The miracle of the Immaculate Conception is believed to have occurred on December 8, also a national holiday and the celebrations on December 7 finish at midnight setting the stage for a solemn 8th. Those who find this date confusing in light of the celebration of Jesus' birthday on December 25th must recall that the exact day of the birth of Christ remains unknown, but descriptions of his birth in the bible point to warm weather and it is no secret that the 25th of December was chosen by the 4th century rulers of Rome to coincide with (overtake) an important pagan celebration of the winter solstice, a wildly popular holiday celebrated in hope that after the shortest day of the year, the sun would once again regain its strength.
The Purisima celebration, the culmination of nine days of prayer to the Virgin, can be traced back to 7th century Spain and the year 663 when the Bishop of Avila with then King Godo Sisenando declared that the Immaculate Conception of Mary be celebrated throughout the country. In 1484, just a few years before the Spanish arrival to the Americas, Doña Beatriz de Silva founded the first religious order for Mary, "La Immaculada". The Catholic devotion to la Virgen María grew and a solemn "vote of blood" was made by the Spanish Catholic Church in 1624 and King Felipe III to defend "in all moments" la Inmaculada Concepción de María. Around this time Franciscan Friars in León had taken note of an especially profound devotion to la Virgen María and the novena (9 days of in home) prayers leading up to the anniversary of the Concepción Inmaculada. The Franciscans decided to give some of the León families their own images of the Virgin, to facilitate prayers. A tradition was born. The Purisima then spread from house to house in León and over the years to all of Nicaragua.
Fifteen year-old Aracelly García waits patiently to fill her plastic red bucket with water. To arrive she has weathered a hot, bumpy, dust filled bus ride from her village of Somotillo, located along border with Honduras. Her grandmother and mother have been making this journey for decades. An annual pilgrimage made on December 6 to the frightfully hot town of El Viejo, located in the northwestern province of Chinandega. She stands in the water line behind the old church of El Viejo, built in 1562, named Basilica del la Inmaculada Concepción de la Virgen María during a 1996 visit by Pope John Paul II. It is home of Nicaragua's patron saint, La Virgen del Trono (Virgin of the Throne). Aracelly believes, as thousands do, that the La Virgen del Trono housed inside the ancient adobe church holds special powers, that the little 70 cm high statue has a direct line to the Mother of God, la Virgen María. After her bucket is full of water, she will wait in another long sun-drenched line with her private supply of cotton. Her duty - the honor of cleaning some of the Virgen del Trono's extensive collection of silver pieces donated over the centuries by believers in the Virgin's powers. In return, la Virgen will help Aracelly's family to have a better yield of corn next season and perhaps help cure her little brother's chronic illness. This simple act of devotion, known as "lavado de plata" (cleaning the silver), has become one of extreme faith, drawing believers to El Viejo from as far away as Guatemala. In this writer's experience, this innocuous act of preparing the Virgin's silver pieces for her big party (the Purisima celebration the following day) often permeates an even stronger and purer force of faith than the Purisima celebration itself. Aracelly García has cleaned a precious silver relic of la Virgen del Trono with care and passion. She will return to Somotillo, with the used cotton safely guarded in her pants pocket, renewed faith for a better year in 2003 and confidence that the tradition of her family is not only wise, but also eternal. However, in the mass of worshipers, she must find her aging grandmother.
Despite a prolonged and multi-fronted attacks on Nicaragua's worship for the Virgin by fundamentalist US evangelical churches, Mary still holds a powerful sway over a majority of the populous. Nonetheless, Nicaragua's once nearly unanimous belief in the Catholic Church and her traditions has been eroded greatly in the last 3 decades. The Catholic Church's historical and pragmatic use of saints and the Virgin to convert multi-God indigenous beliefs into a Christian faith of one God, via a clever series of saint-for-Indian-God substitutions, is seen by the US bible belt churches as idolatry, or worse, devil worship. Protestant scholars have determined that the Virgin Mary is not at all significant to Christianity and her virginity a myth. However, even hard-core evangelist Nicaraguans (now some 35% of the population) must struggle to not be caught up in the festival joy and cultural uniqueness of Nicaraguan celebrations made in Her name.
Part of the attraction of the Virgen María in Nicaragua is the mystery and legend that surrounds her images here in Nicaragua. Two examples are the patron saint of Nicaragua, la Virgen del Trono in El Viejo and the patron saint of Nicaragua's armed forces, la Virgen de la Concepción de María in Granada. They are colorful stories, sure to capture the imagination of those with a strong belief in the possibilities of the spiritual world. And Nicaraguans are undoubtedly amongst the most spiritual people anywhere, whether they are believers in the purity and power of the Virgin Mary or not. When the Vatican sent the world's second most important image of the Virgin of Fátima on a world-wide tour, the enthusiasm of the Nicaraguan people upon her visit, the sheer importance of Fátima's arrival, shocked the image's Vatican caretakers, who marveled that the public's response to her was unparalleled in their world travels with the venerated image. La Virgen de Fátima would stay two additional weeks in Nicaragua, to satisfy the feverishly popular demand to see her.
La Virgen del Trono is said to have arrived to Nicaragua on the back of Alonso Zepeda, the brother of Saint Teresa of Spain, who gave the image to her brother before he left for the new world in the late 16th century. Legend has it that Alonso Zepeda arrived to the indigenous settlement of Tezoatega, later named El Viejo (old man), after its immortal Indian chief Agateyte, who lived to be over 80 years old. Alonso Zepeda arrived to El Viejo tired and rested in the shade of a tree. When he left the comfort of the shade he noticed his luggage load was much lighter. He wrestled it off his back and found that the Virgen del Trono had somehow escaped his pack and returning to his rest spot found her under the tree where he had taken shade. Alonso packed her once again in his back brace and headed off, only to find down the road that his load was, once again, strangely lighter. He checked for the image of the Virgin and found that she was missing. Alonso Zepeda returned to underneath the same tree and found the image of the Virgin del Trono once again in its shade. He decided it was here that she wished to stay and the Basilica de la Inmaculada Concepción de la Virgen María was built upon that very spot. She remains there today.
After protecting colonial Spanish troops in battles against British pirates at El Castillo in the Fortaleza de la Inmaculada Concepción de María, the Franciscan style image of the Virgin Mary known affectionately as "La Conchita" (Our Dear Little Conception) was carefully packed and sent by boat up the San Juan River and across Lake Nicaragua to Granada in the early 1700's. While the boat struggled to cross Lake Nicaragua during a storm, large waves swept the well-packaged image overboard. Later, woman washing their laundry on the shores of the great lake saw a box and were amazed at how it neither came ashore nor would be swept further into the lake. The women went to the Covent of San Francisco to inform the friars of the magic box in the lake. The Franciscans went at once to retrieve the box from the water and were thrilled to find the beautiful image of la Virgen de la Concepción de María inside it, in perfect condition. The friars put her in procession in Granada with great celebration and she was placed inside the Cathedral of Granada. In 1833 La Conchita saved Granada from the throes of a cholera epidemic and gave light to the Granadinos when the black ash thrown by the massive eruption of the Cosiguina Volcano in 1835 darkened the town.
The image's military career as the protector of the fortress in El Castillo was restarted in 1854 when Granada was almost taken by León during one of many armed squabbles between the two historic cities. La Conchita was taken out of the Cathedral and into the battle trenches, and her presence saved the plaza from being taken by the enemy. La Virgen de la Concepción de María was credited in aiding combined Central American forces in their defeat of William Walker's occupying army in 1856-57. Yet her immortality was confirmed when Walker's troops burned Granada to the ground. La Conchita remained standing inside the charred, ruined Cathedral, in perfect condition. In 1862, General Tomas Martinez, then President of Nicaragua, signed a state decree that officially declared La Conchita, "General of All Armed Forces of Nicaragua". In 2001, in an official state ceremony, the Nicaraguan government reaffirmed the Virgin Mary's title as "Patron of the Armed Forces of Nicaragua". The Bishop of Granada proudly assured reporters that this honor Nicaraguans had bestowed upon the la Virgen María is unique in all of the Americas.
Doña Rosa has finished praying and fights to regain her feet. Her head is swimming. Doña Rosa is full of emotion, heat fatigue and bodily pain. She stumbles backwards, but is propped-up a teenage worshiper who steadies her with young, gentle hands. Doña Rosa's face is wet with emotion and her knees covered with a mixture of her own blood and earth tracked inside the ancient Basilica by the knees of believers. At her side, supporting the weight of her battered body and tireless belief is her granddaughter Aracelly García. Aracelly wraps her young arms around her grandmother Rosa, caressing her tired, wrinkled body and whispers into her ear, "¿Quien causa tanta alegría?" Doña Rosa smiles broadly. Satisfied, she replies, "La Concepción de María".
Copyright © Richard Leonardi