An Excerpt from Lynne Shoemaker's monograph, Beyond Chiapas.

CHAPTER 1: VISIT TO THE MAIN CATHEDRAL

     wherein our entire human rights
     delegation, twenty-one gringos strong,
     is given its first lessons in standing
     beside the poor, dancing with the indi-
     genous, by a short, lowly Bishop named
     Tatic.
 
 
 
 
 
 

The bird that cleans the world circled
and circled, making sure that the fallen horse
was really carrion. Then it swooped down grace-
ful as a darkening blade. It landed just a few
feet away from the horse's left nostril. By now
the horse had begun to stink. But the horse
could not smell itself, and the stink only ex-
cited the bird.
 

 *****
 

        OMENS: El sol de los pobres

       An old man prunes the demon shrubs.
       Snipsnip quiet, snipsnip hush,
       he's wearing a yellow hardhat.

       El sol de los pobres y los ricos,
       withering church doorway

       Child, little Mayan peddler,
       weaving us into your darkness.
       For sale: masked Zapatista dolls.
 
 

 *****
 

Sting branch in the face. A rash halfway around his neck. He was a stranger here, an outsider. Once, twice, everytime he came, the forest rejected him. Snakeroot across the the path,  grabbing a foot, sending his body into a spasdic's jerk and  jolt.
Of course his own stubbornness didn't help any. Wearing these shining black shoes, church shoes and church slacks.Why didn't he ever consent to wear work pants, boots, a sombrero's worth of shade?
The path cut and twisted its way into the mountains. Mist or no mist, he was beginning to sweat. He took off his silver-grey jacket. It was his favorite. Where had he gotten it? Ah yes, the Colonel and his wife, just after he had christened their baby. They had dropped it off at his office. He'd  thought about giving it back, but didn't. He smiled, rolled it up, tied it around his waist like an apron, a rebozo of  some woman dancer. Some dance, he told himself, plod and huff, one foot in front of the other.

Forest. La selva lacondona. He'd huffed by the place of  ferns, where he could poke with his walking stick, discover orchids, small-winged blossoms, white, fuchia, mariposas flying never to land on his hands. He'd passed the ceiba tree,  God's arm thrust out of the earth. Or maybe the Devil's, he'd thought. Then the stretch where the sendero lost itself in  the roots and rocks. And as usual, he'd ended up lost himself.

Three hours of trudging the eastern edge of his diocese.
But finally he neared the campesino's house. Uphill side of  the path, a little space cleared for the champa, a little more  for the life-giving milpa. He could see his new friend, headdown, beads of sweat dropping off his nose and chin. He could almost hear him, barefeet, shoulders, arms, chopping with the hoe, begging the ground to grow maiz, not more jungle. He stumbled a few feet into his friend's field. The campesino met him there, still with his hoe, still with his eyes cast down.

"Senor Tatic."

"Buenas tardes, Ignacio."

Perhaps "friend" was not the right word. He'd met him only last week. Ignacio had stopped by the Cathedral, mumbled   a plea for help. The priest was surprised. This indio had used Spanish, not Tzeltal. He'd understood clearly what Ignacio wanted. And he'd understood too that this was a chance, an opportunity to bring many of the Tzeltales closer. "I'll come on Tuesday," he'd said. That was today.
  Neither man moved. Together they made a kind of prayer. Who knows to what? Finally, the priest lifted his right hand,  ran his fingers through hair that was just beginning to thin. Ignacio took that as a sign, and led the way out of the field. The indian glanced back once to make sure Senor Tatic was following. The two men padded up the hill, a slow sweat, a groan.
  Ignacio's wife stood in the doorway of the champa, trying her best to smile a quiet welcome. But Tatic could sense the near tears. She said nothing, but her lips were quivering.  They stepped inside. She didn't point. Tatic could see the pallet and what looked like a pile of rags.

What could he do? He was a priest, not a doctor. He couldn't tell whoops from a cough. But he knelt down and reached out his hand to touch the baby's forehead. The bundle stirred. Tatic jerked back alittle, then settled and finally touched the skin. It was cold. He looked at the dirt floor.  He looked at this mongrel home, sticks, thatch, mud. What could any of this possibly do? This family belonged to a small band of squatters. What good could they do? What good could the coming trouble do? Slowly, half with his hand, half with a fist, he gave the last blessing.
 

 *****
 

       Song of the New Priest

        Ashes to ashes,
           dust upon dust,
        the poor shall inherit
           in God we trust.
 

  *****
 

He got up. Looked towards the door. His own lips were quivering now. But he refused to cry. Not in front of "blessed be the poor." He felt his own skin growing hot, then cold, as Ignacio's wife offered him a cup of coffee, dark, syrupy with sugar. Two sips. He almost gagged. He gave it back, mumbling his "gracias." Turned. Three steps to the doorway. Then outside. Leave them in the hands of the Lord. Leave them.

Another step. Too quickly. He tripped over a piece of firewood. No, it was Ignacio's hoe. He cursed. The first tears cursing too. He cursed that hoe and the earth underneath it. He cursed his own hands, breath, and every false sick word he had just uttered.
 

 *****
 

            Names: Senor Tatic
                                             Tzeltal for our father
                                           migrant worker's boy
                                       dark-suited son of El Papa
                                    Obispo Ruiz Garcia
                                   destabilizer
                              subversive
                      the red bishop
                    comandante in the pulpit
                  mediator
              Don Samuel
           Bartolome come back again
        Nobel Nobel
     la voz de los pobres

 
            "First comes solidarity and love for a neighbor. As a result of this love,
the neighbor's suffering become my own."                              Don Samuel
 *****
 

   Now, thirty years later,

   he is talking to us, seated, our backs

   shoved against the walls of this

   God's cathedral. Teaching, calling the spirits

   down, magic marks, diagrams,

   Zapatista and government
 
   strategies, the probabilities

   of more blood,

   webs and wings scrawled on a white

   plastic up-to-date easily erasible surface.

   Tones, what must be done soon,

   flocking to a common tree.

   His eyes singe, sing even more.

   "The angels won't land here tomorrow,

   not a single dead child's soul,

   nor the Mayan Heavenly Plumed Serpent.

   Work, we must work.

   But their shadows peck at our feet."
 

 *****
 

  I came to San Cristobal de las Casas to convert the poor,
  but they ended up converting me. (Bishop)

    How is it possible that a Bishop is going
    to visit the Indians? I am the "person of
    reason." (landowner)

  Our basic concern is how we can bring a little bit
  of Heaven to Earth. (priest)
 

 *****

   I am the one who stands at the door.

    I smile, offer my hand,

    because fear is a friend of mine too

    (let him go on ahead alittle),

    because the holy burns savagely around,

     because touched and touching, flesh

      loops a blessing thread, calle to corridor,

      kindlier dust across.

     I am the one.
 

     I am the balding Obispo, mediator Bishop,

      who leads you along the first corridor,

      suddenly into a gallery of Bishops,

      criollo faces, way back to de las Casas.

                  A nod of mine seats you, my Norteamericano
 
                  friends, on a circle of wooden chairs,

      because these chairs insist on shine, root,

      because this circle hallows our history,

          because here is the mouth of God.

     I am the one.
 

     I am the one who conspires with Nuestro Senor,

          talks story, loves to burn the questions,

          especially the questions, especially the ashes.

      So let us burn them, aqui y ahora,

      like the Zapatistas burned open the prisons,

          crack and burn open all the stones in our mouths,

         "la paz,""civil society,""la justicia,'

         "a day's hunger,""the massacres,"

         "la Sangre de Cristo."

      Because who knows what deathbones

      we will find? Because in ashes,

      ashes. Because in ashes, the taste of maize.

     I am the one.
 

      I am the one who strolls gabbing beside you,

        meanders into this smallish church garden,

        not big enough for even one row
 
        of a campesino's milpa, who cracks jokes,

        squints at your jittery cameras, at home

        in the grass and rather sickly roses,

        yellow, pinkish, because a garden makes

        our skin remember, because every plant

        is a cross made ready for our choices,

    because even the blurriest of fotos,

    mother and master of light,

    teaches us to resurrect our lives.

   I am the one.
 

   I am the one. I stand once more in the crossway.

    One last smile, a lasting handwaggle.

    I send you all into the world

    to see what has befallen,

    knowing that a small blossom of your flesh

    and blood and pain already has risen.
 

 *****
 

The soldiers scared off the priest, and took over his church
as their barracks. They leaned their swearing, brawling against
the church pews. Some of the recruits, the greenest ones, started
murmuring. They didn't like it. It wasn't right. But their sar-
geant strode up to the altar, emptied a full clip into the Host,
into the Blood of Christ.
 

     sanc-tu-ar-y (sangh choo er e),n., pl ar-ies.
      1. a holy place, as the part of a church
      around the altar. 2. a place providing refuge.
      3. the act of taking refuge in a holy place
      to avoid arrest by a profane authority.
 

        If our wounds can find no shimmering,
        if nothing serves,
        let nothing be our church.
 

 *****
 

     HISTORY: Los Angeles, 27 years ago.

     The only doors that would open,

     the only church that would take us in,

     Father Sam, longhair Episcopal priest,

     the only white man who could walk the ghetto,

     not be "offed", Watts, fire days of 1965,

     because he had listened,

     because he had shared the sweat of the streets,

     because on his feet, on his knees,

     he had held the whimpering of small hands,

     watched over eyes smogged in, boarded up, tasted,

     taken in the spillage, blood on blood, darkening away

     to heatgrime, nothing, or the next quick curse,

    "Nigger, I'm gonna cut your black ass."

             Sanctuary. We sat Indian-style,

     then chained ourselves to the altar,

     each other, to God's gentle 19-year-old,

     yea-sayer manchild, walking the angel streets

     chanting, "Hell no, not now, not ever, I won't join

     your Vietnam slaughterhouse army."

     When the US marshalls came with their 4-foot

             chain cutters, government paper

     that napalm judged, that "kill-the-Commie-

     bastards" judged us all criminals,

     we squirmed closer, linked arms, sweat,

     and "All we are saying is give

     peace a chance."

     Father Sam rose as a raptor

     above eagles, "This is God's house.

     You have no right to take Christ's child

     from the lap of your God."

     Father Sam, Don Samuel, Tatic,

     who walk amongst the poor,
 
     not to bless them,

     but to receive from them God's

     sacrament.
 

 *****

 
    I came to San Cristobal de las Casas to convert the poor,
    but they ended up converting me. (Bishop)

      Instead of proclaiming the Gospel and the Word
      of God, Bishop Ruiz and his priests have proclaimed
      the famous theology of liberation, they have proclaimed communism, and have encouraged
      the Indians to take, as their own, lands and goods that belong to us and that we legally
      earned with the sweat of our brow... (landowner)

    Twenty-four hours for Bishop Samuel [Ruiz] Garcia to leave
    San Cristobal, or we will burn the Bishop's house. (death
    squad)
 

 *****
 
 

     The fires are burning,

     effigy of Ruiz with a black Zapatista mask

     burned in front of the main cathedral.

     Bishop enters the desert of prayer.

     The fires are burning, Ruiz'

     coffin torched in front of San Cristobal's main

     cathedral doors.

     Ruiz kneels in the ashes.

     The fires are burning,

     Mexican Air Force bombs countryside.

     Ruiz prays and begins a fast por la paz.

    "Remove the Red Bishop."

     But the little madres face off,

     stare down the hollering mano blanca thugs.

    "Kill the son of Satan,"

     but 20,000 Indians converge

     on San Cristobal. "I have therefore

     decided to begin a permanent fast as a cry

     for justice." A cry for justice. All

     across Mexico, 28 states, aldea,

     ciudad, La Avenida Reforma in Mexico City,

     people fasted, telegrams, faxes, Argentina,

     Austria, Australia, the cry

    "justicia." One hundred

     Tzeltales walk as in the time of El apostol,

     miles to the cathedral, ceremonies

     in Tzeltal, candles, harps,

     marimbas, the mothers with their babies

     strapped to their backs, swaying

     for hours, the Bishop dancing

     and shaking his maracas, the Cathedral,

     Catholic, la tierra, la virgen, la madre,

     Dios, Hunahpu and Xbalanque, Cristo,

     ascended into the middle of the light,

     and they ascended straight on into the sky,

     where the sun belongs to one God

     and the moon to another.

     And now is the dawning and the shining of the light,

     sun, moon, and stars,

     their burning.
 
 
 

Autobiographical note by Lynn Shoemaker:

I grew up in a small South Dakota town next to the Missouri River. After wandering around the U.S. as an activist and student, I've settled in another small town, this one in Wisconsin next to two small lakes.My life circles around my teaching at the local branch of the University, being a father, my writing, and human rights work, here and in Central America. My latest book of poetry, out from Lynx House Press, is called Hands.

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