Vacations: A view of Junín de los Andes

As promised, I'll summarize the rest of my vacations in Junín de los Andes, and then on a different post I'll try and do the same with San Martín de los Andes, and be done with it (I kinda want to start writing about local news again!).

After our visit Lake Huechulafquen, the only other thing we did outside Junín was a couple of visits to San Martín. There are buses every other hour that take you there in about 50 minutes. We walked around the city a lot, and I visited Cerro Chapelco and its ski resort (obviously in the low season), but I'll speak of San Martín's main features later.

In Junín we took advantage of the river, which runs only a block and a half from Marita's. There's a little bridge that spans the river and takes you to the banks on the other shore.

The Chimehuin, as expected of Patagonian rivers, is shallow, with a pebbly bottom, very cold, and very fast. I tried to swim in it — but to my dismay I caught a strong current and had to surrender to it, until I was left on a bed of pebbles about 30 meters away.

My embarrassment was compounded by the sight of many children and teenagers who repeatedly jumped into the river, ignoring the certain danger of hitting the bottom, and then proceeded to maneuver easily following the swirls and eddies of the river, and getting (it seemed to me) exactly where they wanted. Needless to say I didn't try swimming again. Of course, these guys were all local people, so they knew the river from long experience; and being young and restless, they weren't afraid of anything.

The other thing we did in Junín was visiting the Via Christi, which is a kind of Via Crucis with sculptures and plaques representing and describing Jesus Christ's path to the place where he was crucified according to the Christian myth.

The special thing about this Via Christi is that it combines images and motifs of the Passion with local spirituality, focused on the Blessed Laura Vicuña and the (also recently Blessed) Ceferino Namuncurá, the latter being the first member of a native Argentine tribe to be on the road to Catholic Church-declared sanctity... plus a lot of ecumenical, or syncretic, references to aboriginal spirituality, a vindication of the indigenous tribes, and a retelling of the Spanish Conquest (which didn't reach Patagonia) and the so-called Conquest of the Desert in the late 19th century. The "desert" was Patagonia, which was indeed the frontier of European-Argentine civilization at the time, although it was by no means uninhabited. The Argentine Army, under the command of a typical plutocratic government, advanced over Patagonia and systematically drove away or slaughtered the native tribes it found, or turned the natives into virtual slaves, who were forced into military conscription or sent to work as servants of wealthy families of Buenos Aires; after the land was cleared of its original inhabitants, it was divided in huge fiefdoms and given away to ranchers belonging to the oligarchy who (directly or indirectly) ruled the country.

The Via Christi had elements of this story, as seen from the point of view of modern revisionist history and by recent popular Catholic leaders such as Bishop Jaime de Nevares (1915–1995). I found the whole mix quite funny in its heterogeneity, not because the story was funny in any sense, but because the story of liberation theology is so pathetic — educated folks, with the best of intentions, trying to reconcile modern views about human rights and the struggle of oppressed peoples with the teachings of a church that is fiercely hierarchical and misogynistic, that has supported oppressive governments and countless massacres in the name of its god, and is even today a major obstacle to certain basic human rights in large parts of the world. You have to admire and pity these people for the effort of weaving their version of history into Christian doctrine, even as their own Church stops short of calling them heretics.

The Via Christi also had certain obvious, and to me, rather distasteful hints of anti-abortion propaganda, with abortion compared to the genocide of the natives, and figures looking like small children or late-term fetuses embedded into the beam of Christ's cross.

This funny/creepy tour was very well kept, anyway, and it served as good exercise. When we reached the top of the hill, we could see most of the urban area of Junín de los Andes. The pictures were no good, unfortunately, due to the harsh lighting, but I managed to rescue some.

Our last days in Junín de los Andes were relaxed and festive. We had asado once, and the last night, after spending the afternoon by the river, my friend Gabriel pulled out his finest tricks and made us matambre a la pizza, which is a massive slab of flank steak with cheese and tomate sauce on top, cooked on a grill over charcoal embers (like asado, but not for so long). After that we went out to a noisy bar, and drank just enough to make fools of, but not so much as to endanger, ourselves. No pictures of that, thank you.

Sunday came. Mauro and Gabriel had bought tickets for a direct trip back to Rosario, a bit tired of vacations. I decided to make the most of my time and booked a place in a hostel in San Martín de los Andes. Somehow we woke up after 4 hours of sleep, and after some light breakfast, the guys escorted me to the bus terminal and waited until I left. Their bus departed later that day, at 2 PM — but by that time I was already in my next, and last, destination.

Just be merry

Now that Christmas has been reduced to leftovers and torn wrapping paper, let me say something about the first comment I received on my last post (the one about the Palacio Minetti). I felt it was appropriate to wish everybody a nice day — in particular, a "merry Christmas" to those who believe in the myth of Baby Jesus. One of my readers was apparently offended by my choice of words, and upon my ironic (but harmless) reply he proceeded to tell me that we "condescending atheists" are "disqualified" (from commenting on Christmas, I take it?).

Let's make a few things clear. Christmas etymologically means "the Mass of Christ". It's originally the commemoration of the birth of Jesus, the supernaturally-conceived son of the Judeo-Christian God, from an allegedly virginal Galilean Jewish woman called Maryām, about 2,014 years ago.* It's a myth, in the sense that it's not plain historical fact, but it doesn't need to be "real", in the strictest sense, to be meaningful. Christmas means different things to different people, including next to nothing but a consumerist spree and an occasion of food and drink binges for the majority of the Western world.

*As you must know, Jesus (if we're to use the Gospels as historical sources) must have been born in the spring or summer of 6 BCE or 4 BCE, not in the winter of 1 BCE as assumed by our calendar and our choice of date to celebrate Christmas. Shepherds don't tend their herds outdoors in the middle of winter; Herod the Great died in 4 BCE according to trustable sources, and the Roman governor Quirinus (the one that ordered the census mentioned in Luke) ruled in 6 BCE. The Gospel story was composed much later and is very badly done consistency-wise, both myth-internally and history-externally. This is something that Christian scholars have known for centuries, though you wouldn't hear it from your local priest.

The Christmas myth does nothing for me. I don't believe that one should cherish the "Christmas spirit" when one doesn't pay attention to Christ or his alleged teachings during the whole year, and then tries to sum them up in "let's be nice to each other, just once". Yet I know many people who believe in the myth, in its entirety or in a watered-down version; a number of readers of this blog probably belong in either group, and I wanted to let them know that I wished the best for their Christmas. I don't pretend to respect their myth as if it were meaningful to me, but I respect them.

In the end, of course, most people do the same things for the Christmas season, regardless of their beliefs. Everybody gathers (when possible) with the family, and eats a lot of high-calorie foods, and drinks a lot, and while some families quarrel, some others find this a suitable time for reconciliation and forgiveness. In Argentina, many (mostly older people) attend Mass early in the evening, and many (mostly younger ones) go out after midnight. Children open up presents. Grown-ups end up debating football or politics. Fireworks are launched. Hospitals' ERs get crowded with dozens of wounded from corks popping into eyes, burned from mishandling fireworks, and injured in alcohol-induced fights. At dawn, the streets end up littered with plastic bags, broken cider bottles, and passed-out teens. People take a second look at their presents and either decide to hang them in the walls or put them on their desks or wear them, or store them in some place away from sight. Children enjoy their new toy cars, videogames, toy firearms, and flashy T-shirts. Drowsy grown-ups pick up the leftovers and recycle them for Christmas Day lunch.

What this all has to do with Baby Jesus is beyond me, but if you choose to cling to that adorable myth, you don't have to be ashamed of it. We all have our inspiring visions. But a baby born two millennia ago from the immaterial touch of a ghost and doomed to be nailed to a wooden beam 33 years later because of my as-yet-uncommitted sins isn't a vision I can share, and political correctness isn't my forte. Hence, the different salutations: if you do believe in Baby Jesus, then celebrate his birth and be merry about it; if not, just be merry for whatever reason you can come up with. (The latter, of course, is what most people end up doing, no matter what their professed beliefs are.)

I understand there are cultural differences. I understand the United States has (or has had) this ridiculous "War on Christmas". It's not like that here, by and large. I don't know where that commenter wrote from, but for all the problems we have in Argentina, we don't have that kind of division running along our society. If I get a "merry Christmas" from anybody, I can tell him or her that I don't believe in Jesus, and all I'll get will be a blank stare meaning "well, and what's that have to do with anything?".

Catholics and evangelicals and the power of words

If you remember, yesterday I was talking about a conversation I had with a friend, about language. The same day, after that, I also got to talk with a friend about the poverty of language, specifically in religious discourse. It was quite an interesting chat, so I thought I could share some of it.

My friend has the perception that evangelical preachers (in Argentina, and especially TV and radio preachers) have lowered the level of discourse to a crude minimum, and people sadly respond to it because they, too, have had their vocabularies shrunk, and their thought (and their ability for abstraction) as well. What he means is, you turn on the radio or the TV and you find pastors basically selling Jesus as a miracle product, or preying on the vulnerable without any kind of subtlety. We're talking of "ARE YOU IN PAIN? COME TO JESUS AND HEAL!" in big block letters across the screen, literally or figuratively.

My own contention is that the preachers are giving the people exactly what they want (a wind-up machine called Jesus who provides you with money and health and a comfortable house once you know the magic words) and that people might have a smaller vocabulary but do not necessarily have less ability to think and reason; that is, the preacher's speech is so plain, and so lacking in spirituality, and so incoherent at times, that you only need a basic command of language to see through the scam. That is, I don't believe that exposure to grossly simplistic religious language can be used to bring down your ability to think about deep spiritual matters, unless of course you accept that degraded language on your own volition and then become accustomed to it, which is what most people do.

On the other hand, my friend said, Catholic priests were still using "higher" language at times: less concrete, more superficially spiritual, possibly popular but not vulgar. I contended this was as bad as the evangelicals, only more weaselly. "Jesus will give you financial stability if you receive him and praise him in the assembly" is straightforward; "God takes care of all His children" is almost completely empty, although being empty it allows for the hearer to fill it with meaning, and is only useful for the hearer once completed with the warning that, in order to be a good child of God, you must go to church every Sunday.

I had the feeling that my friend was either not conveying his ideas wholly, or he lacked experience in a Catholic community, because if you've had that you know that most people in church are just there to gossip about their neighbours, and not to hear the priest using spiritual or abstract language. Moreover, they'd go straight to the evangelical preacher if they weren't culturally accustomed to being Catholics in an overwhelmingly Catholic country.

The real difference between those sects is the level of commitment they require. In order to be a Catholic you have to do... well, nothing. If you want to be an active Catholic, you're only required to attend church and sit there. It's all a social community experience, no more. You may get something spiritual out of the priest's rambling, but you can safely ignore it and believe yourself to be OK most of the time. Catholic spirituality is based on suffering, self-abasement and mortification, but understandably they don't insist on those things too much; they remain safely in the abstract plane. On the other hand, evangelicals (in line with Weber's analysis of protestantism, I believe) see suffering and poverty as an indication that you're doing something wrong, and so try to correct it, actively. They call on you and insist that you have to turn around your life, through the use of Jesus, and if you dare tell them that you're fine, they tell you, emphatically, that you're not. You're filthy. You're addicted to money, sex, Internet porn, alcohol, dancing and parties, and all sorts of foul social intercourse with the unsaved — mundane stuff that you've got to get rid of.

The Evangelicals are proactive — they're in the minority and they need to make you suffer so they can save you. They'll dig up whatever is rotting inside you and show it to you, and describe the feeling and the smell graphically to you. The Catholics are in the majority, and they'd rather keep their ninety-nine sheep happily in the fold than go out of their way to look for the missing hundredth. They do the sensible thing, as expected from an old well-established sect. I can't guess what will happen to those two.

My friend is actually preparing a thesis about the exercise of power through language, and this is part of it, so I'll keep you updated.

The Christ in the Picture

I'm not one to engage in criticism of religious beliefs in the personal level (not anymore); I do breach the subject when it comes to religion intruding in my private life or in public policy, for example. I'm sincerely baffled about this, though, so that's why. It's about the story of my co-worker and her lovely granddaughter. My co-worker (let's call her Ms. A) is convinced that her 15-month-old granddaughter (I'll call her Little N) has come to know Jesus instinctively and in spite of her parents' lack of belief. As far as I can tell, her father (Ms. A's son) is not very religious, and her mother is agnostic.

Little N has developed a fixation with a picture of Jesus. During a visit, grandma saw the poor thing's eyes intently fixed on the image, and she told Little N who that man was, and taught her a children's prayer. Little N can barely say "Jesus" but she does stare happily at the picture, and she waves and smiles at it whenever she toddles past it. So far, so good, a little religious indoctrination. Only now Ms. A is convinced that her granddaughter really sees something in the picture, that she recognizes Jesus. My other co-workers, women in their 50s mostly, agree that Little N must be seeing something we spoiled adults cannot see. The girl's parents decided not to baptize her, so this must be Little N's way of "asking for baptism". It's "really incredible, but then children know". One of these women, speaking from a fairly typical, incoherently sincretic view, opines that the baby "doesn't see that picture (of Jesus) as we do, but she sees the energy". They also believe that Little N "might bridge the separation between their parents and God".

They kept on this line of discussion, turning then into the individual stories of their children's loss of religious practice. Most people in Argentina are Catholics that have never practiced; many of us attend church only as long as our parents take us, or when forced for some other reason, until we become teenagers or a bit longer. Then, it's only weddings, First Communions, baptisms, and even more rarely, on Easter Sunday and the like. Will this be the future of Little N? Will she turn into a skeptic at an early age? Will she become a prophet of the Christ in the Picture?

I didn't open my mouth during the discussion and definitely closed my ears to the last part I've just revisited, since time and experience have taught me that nothing good comes from discussing religion. I've been an atheist and a skeptic since 21; I lost years of my life coping with the progressive loss of the hollow faith I was raised in, and revisiting my arguments for people who've never bothered to examine their own beliefs would be a waste of time. I only wish Little N is given the space and the education that she will need to think about it and to reach her own conclussions in time.