festivals – Feminism and Religion

One of two pieces on Joy, part 2 tomorrow.

Joy was not a conspicuous presence in my childhood home. My parents were kind and loving, but both had been raised in the Protestant conservatism of rural Alabama during the Depression years. Laughter, contemporary music, dancing, drinking—none of these were part of my growing up years. Attending church was our primary social activity. I started middle school in the mid-1960s having never heard of the Beatles, Chubby Checker, or the Twist.

Instinctively, I felt that there must be more to religious experiences than the dull passivity of listening to an old white man lecture on details of an antiquated religious text. Psalm 100 in the Hebrew Bible instructs us to “Make a joyful noise unto the Lord,” but I couldn’t find joy anywhere in my home church. Even my relationship with Jesus, which felt sacred and special, was dimmed by the constant focus on Jesus’ suffering and death and my concurrent obligation to avoid sin at all costs.

This morning I went up to the village plaza in Abiquiu to watch the dancers parade around the church with their saint who is also honored at this village festival held every year at the end of November.

This is one of the two Native American festivals that is honored each year by the genizaros who are mixed Spanish and American Indian people who embrace and practice the Catholicism that was once forced upon them.

This eclectic community is made up of descendants of Native American slaves. Those captured in warfare were brought here, converted to Catholicism, taught Spanish and held in servitude by New Mexican families. The young women and female children endured the usual atrocities perpetuated on captive females including rape at the hands of their captors. Some New Mexican male genizaros gained their freedom by serving as soldiers to defend frontier villages like Abiquiu from Indian raids. By the late 1700s, genizaros comprised one-third of the population of New Mexico. Ultimately these non – tribal peoples were assimilated into New Mexican culture.

The dances are beautiful to witness with the smallest female children dressed in predominantly white regalia some wearing a rainbow of ribbons, the young girls were dressed in red and white and had red circles of war paint inscribed on their cheeks, some of the older women also wore red, many carried turkey or eagle feathers in their hands. Most wore face paint.

Continue reading “The Feast of Santo Tomas by Sara Wright”