With their sparkling embroideries and colourful sashes flapping within the frigid wind, lots of of Guatemalan faithful flocked to the Catholic church of this heartland farming town to rejoice their biggest festival yet in honor of the Black Christ of Esquipulas.
Just days before the beginning of a U.S. administration that’s promised a swift immigration crackdown, they turned with hope and pride to the statue of the crucified Jesus, an elaborately carved replica of essentially the most venerated image of their tropical homeland. Church members had it especially commissioned and brought from Guatemala at enormous expense, together with two massive marimbas. No feast is complete without these musical instruments.
“The Black Christ of Esquipulas has come taking planes and crossing borders like us,” said Lucas López. Fourteen years ago, he left San Marcos, one in all Guatemala’s poorest regions, where communities nonetheless also organized festivals this week.
López and his wife, María Ramírez, at the moment are raising their 4 children in Worthington, a town transformed by international migration. With his salary from the pork processing plant job for which he awakes each day at 4:20 a.m., the couple recently bought their first home a couple of blocks from church.
At Sunday’s Mass that launched the daylong celebration, López and Ramírez — wearing sequined and embroidered huipil and skirt, colourful ribbons tied in her hair — led a dozen faithful in a conventional barefoot dance bringing the offerings to the altar.
“We’re so glad to point out that we’re here, with our American dream, and in addition to share our culture with others,” López said.
One crucifix for a lot of countries — and their migrants
The original crucifix dates back to the late sixteenth century, and its feast day on January 15 draws hundreds of pilgrims to the basilica in Esquipulas, a city on Guatemala’s border with Honduras. On Sunday, Cardinal Fabio Baggio, long the top of the Vatican’s migrants department, may even rejoice a special Esquipulas Mass at St. Peter’s.
From New Mexico to Panama, and throughout Guatemala, nearly 300 churches are dedicated to its veneration, making the image a source of communal identity even beyond its religious meaning, said Douglass Sullivan-González, a University of Mississippi history professor.
He added that it’s been intertwined in modern Central American politics, from Indigenous rights — because centuries of candle smoke have given it a darker skin tone — to civil wars.
“The image itself comes alive in its context,” Sullivan-González said.
For many in Worthington, that context is migration. Gratitude they made it to the United States, whether twelve months or two dozen years ago, mingles with nostalgia for customs and family members left behind.
The community includes undocumented migrants, asylum seekers and U.S. residents, so apprehension over who will get to remain and for the way long mixed with the pride of getting pulled off a genuinely Guatemalan celebration some 2,500 miles (4,080 kilometers) away.
“The immigration police is coming already!” joked Benigno Miranda when an empty passenger van pulled up by the home where he and other church members had gathered to arrange the 2 marimbas to be transported to St. Mary’s Church. That’s what the van was really for.
“One can’t be afraid on a regular basis,” added Miranda, reflecting widespread sentiment amongst those celebrating the festivities that God will determine their destinies greater than shifting politics and policies.
Working a miracle to bring a sacred image to Minnesota
After all, the Black Christ of Esquipulas is thought for miracles — so long as one truly has faith, choir member Lilia Soto said.
She remembers going to go to the sanctuary in Esquipulas together with her grandmother before she got here to Minnesota at 17 — and in addition recalls how, shortly afterward, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid at Worthington’s meatpacking plant had many migrants terrified to depart their homes.
But now the Black Christ is here at St. Mary’s — normally hanging on a wall by the doorway, though for the festivities it was mounted on a processional float decorated with the identical kaleidoscopic fabrics as the ladies’s dresses.
“When they were getting it down, I principally went running to present it a hug,” Soto said.
That made it even higher than in Esquipulas, where the image is untouchable behind glass, she said.
“It’s like having just a little piece of Guatemala on this church,” added Dilma Pérez, her fellow choir member.
Pérez and her brother Sergio got here to Worthington from San Marcos — where their parents commonly took them to church, but couldn’t afford to travel to Esquipulas — greater than two dozen years ago, when she was a teen and he about 9.
Now Pérez and her husband have three U.S.-born children, and in addition relatives in Guatemala who still rely upon their remittances because wages of their region hover around $6 a day. They each work in a pork processing plant 45 minutes away by automobile.
Nevertheless, one taco and tamale sale at a time, the family led the community’s effort during the last three years to fundraise the nearly $40,000 needed to have an artist in Esquipulas sculpt the statue, to purchase the wood marimbas, and to get them to Worthington.
“We sacrificed lots,” Sergio Pérez said Sunday afternoon, after serving the celebration’s free taco lunch within the parish school cafeteria and before playing guitar within the hours-long prayer service. “It’s been somewhat physically exhausting, but spiritually I feel strengthened.”
Keeping traditions alive for future generations
For many diaspora communities, maintaining traditional celebrations while integrating within the lifetime of the local church is crucial for the religion of future generations, said Jennifer Hughes, a history professor on the University of California, Riverside.
In the villages in San Marcos that also celebrated festivals this week for the Black Christ of Esquipulas, some participants lamented losing many youth to migration.
“Unfortunately, our people need to migrate to get ahead,” said Freddy De León, a dancer in one in all the processions.
But ties remain, also through remittances. The sister of one other organizer, Luis Ramírez, watched a live Facebook video of their hamlet’s festivities from her New Jersey home.
“That’s how the tradition continues,” he said.
In Worthington, where students of color constitute greater than 80% of those enrolled in K-12 and speak greater than 40 languages, children are growing accustomed to intercultural mixing.
Downtown, a flyer promoting the celebration in Spanish hung in a Guatemalan corner store, three blocks from where lifelong residents ice fished in the course of frozen Lake Okabena.
That’s one thing Ramírez isn’t desirous to try, though the cold not fazes her. Her prayers to the Lord of Esquipulas center on a binational future for her family — that they will someday travel to Guatemala without losing the grip on their American dream.
During Mass, the procession of the crucifix to the altar was preceded by dancers carrying flags — that of Guatemala and the Stars and Stripes next to one another in the middle — and accompanied by the marimba tune of “Our Lord of Esquipulas.”
“It was very emotional. It’s what we’ve learned since our birth,” said one in all the players, Antulio Juarez. He’s spent 12 years in Worthington, but learned marimba music by ear from his grandfather in Guatemala’s volcanic highlands.
Sergio Pérez hopes the chance to listen to this music will help keep the festival growing for years. Beyond that, he asks for no other miracles.
“I don’t ask him for anything, because I feel that he’s already blessed me a lot,” he said of the Esquipulas image.
His sister Dilma was equally self-effacing — and trusting.
“Faith is what keeps us going regardless of what life confronts us with,” she said. “We don’t do it to please anybody but God.”
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Associated Press photographer Moises Castillo in Guatemala, contributed.
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Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely chargeable for this content.
