Lindsey Frye is a member of Laurel Street Mennonite Church in Lancaster, PA. She is currently living in Chiapas, Mexico with her husband Chris, and daughters Ramona and Ruthie. She works as an Ecumenism Promoter for an MCC partner organization, The Institute for Intercultural Studies. This blog was originally posted on her personal blog.
A few months ago, we had a friend over for dinner. She mentioned that a friend of hers was just getting in from Guatemala that evening. She had called on him to do a ceremony for her brother who is very ill. Ever the prepared Anabaptist, I had made plenty of food, so I told her to invite him along. Tomás is from a small Quiche village close to the boarder of Mexico. He comes from a long line of healers, and his family has been crossing this land to see patients for centuries (even before Chiapas was a part of Mexico). According to my coworker, the Guatemalans fought harder to preserve their traditions during the Spanish conquest, and so many of their traditions are stronger than the Mexican ones, which is why they are often invited to perform ceremonies.
Like many traditional healers, Tomás does not charge a fee for his services. He says when it has been a gift bestowed freely on him by God, how could he ask for money from others? Instead, the group of people who have invited him all chip in for the cost of his bus ride, and they agree to feed him and give him a place to stay during his visit.
When he arrives at my home, he has a visible look of relief on his face. He sits at my table, and he takes a deep breath. As we eat, he explains that a friend had advised a particular route, saying there would be no security check point. However, the route must have changed, and he was required to be part of a revision process.
You see, there is no wall on the Southern border of Mexico. In the border town of Comalapa, there is simply a gate everyone passes through, with no one watching to see who passes through. On the Guatemalan side, there is a little house you stop into if you want your passport stamped. On the Mexican side, the office is about a mile down the road. It is said that many Guatemalans walk over the boarder each day to come and work in Mexico, and they are legally allowed to do so. However, they are not able to pass into the city of Comitán. Thanks to US support of The Southern Boarder Plan, there is a security checkpoint just before entering the city, where the road veers off into a cumbersome one-lane tunnel. It curves out to a large military building where an armed guard opens the vehicle to ¨look for Central Americans.¨ I put that in quotes because as one can imagine, differentiating a Guatemalan Mayan from a Mexican Mayan, whose roots have been bound for centuries, is not a scientific process, it is a very human one. And as a result, Mexicans have been apprehended and detained in their own country because they look Guatemalan (read about a specific case here).
I am amazed by the grace with which Tomás tells the story of this surprise security check point, of the prayer he prayed, of the eyes that passed over him, of the way he is once more able to do the job he has always done. It wakes me up from the autopilot my body has been on the whole week. It makes my food taste better. Suddenly, our encounter feels like a bit of a miracle.
The other thing that strikes me is how drawn to him my children are. The three of them play jungle animals. My eldest insists on being the ferocious jaguar. My youngest crawls onto his lap and he lovingly names her tortuga. As the evening comes to an end, Ramona brings out one of her most prized possessions, a clay jaguar made in a neighboring town. He asks her if he could say something to it. He leans over and whispers in its ear, and then tells Ramona, ¨I just instructed her to protect your house.¨ I know we come at it very differently, but I couldn´t help but whisper my own prayer of protection over this person and his sacred work in this volatile place.