ABSTRACT
A consideration of two, historically unrelated shrines provides the opportunity to explore the "intertextuality" of icon, narrative, and behavior in the construction of those qualities of place that move it from a geographical location to a social reality.
INTRODUCTION
The construction of visual images of the holy, carving a figure, painting a picture, seeks to locate the ineffable component of the sacred in the world of our senses. At the minimum, locating the ineffable-literally, that which is not speakable--means establishing the geographic "where" of religious behavior, so that it becomes a location to journey to, a setting to worship within, and an experience rich in sound, sight, and especially, as we shall see, touch. In so doing, however, the location lays claim to a particular power distinct from other locations, both secular and sacred, and its claims draw upon narrative explanations of its unique visual attributes. At the maximum, through bringing together icon, narrative, and experience, locating the ineffable means communicating those qualities that embed in the transformation of where we are to who we are, those qualities that are essential to our existential being, in sum, those qualities that give place a presence.
A comparison of two shrines of the same Christian faith, Spanish American Catholicism, constructed to venerate the crucified Christ, but located far removed from one another, one in Guatemala, the other in Colombia (Figure 1), provides an opportunity to clarify how visualizing, in conjunction with narrative and experience, creates holy places. Of particular importance, in both shrines, the icon of the crucified Christ is black.
In Guatemala, the squat, four towers of the massive, white shrine of the Lord of Esquipulas are the first objects travelers see as they top the hills surrounding the small town of Esquipulas. Completed in 1759, the present structure stands at the edge of the town's grid pattern and at some [end p. 107] distance from the main plaza. Occupying the rank of basilica and currently under the care of the Benedictine order, the shrine likewise is administratively separate from the town's parish church. Pilgrims discharging from the buses that run every 15 minutes from Guatemala City approach the basilica through a mass of vendors, who offer both secular knickknacks, a key chain with a flash light, and images of the Lord of Esquipulas, some to fit in a wallet or a purse, others to hang on the wall above the home altar (Figure 2). Closer to the shrine, the pilgrims pass through gates that open into a landdscaped garden of shrubs and trees. From their niches in the facade of the colonial structure, St. John with an eagle, St. Luke with a bull, and St. Mark with lion, plus other figures not decipherable across the centuries, greet the worshipers as they pass through the huge doors and enter the cavernous interior.
The twin towers of the equally massive shrine of the Lord of Miracles rise above the roof tops of the regional city of Buga in Colombia's Cauca Valley. Also occupying the rank of basilica and under the administration of the Redemptorist order, the shrine stands several blocks south of the central plaza and not far from the present course of the Guadalquivir River. Earlier, it must have set on the periphery of the urban center, but now the city surrounds it, except in front, where a boulevard extends from the basilica to the main valley artery that carries the heavy flow of traffic up from metropolitan Cali. In the area immediately in front of the shrine, vendors from their permanent booths or from their smaller mobile stands offer pilgrims statues, portraits, and any item, such as paperweights, to which can be attached, or inserted, the Señor ---a feat that itself is a miracle of ingenuity (Figure 3). The facade of the early modem shrine is clear of colonial niches with their saints. Taking the place of the images are various plaques embedded in the pale pink brick veneer that announce important events in the lives of the Redemptorist order, such as the architect, who designed the structure builders completed in 1907.
While January 15, and to a lesser extent Holy Week, are major events in the ritual cycle at Esquipulas, all year pilgrims cross the plaza and climb the steps to enter the shrine. As is the case of pilgrims throughout Spanish America, many come to fulfill a promesa, a vow made earlier with the Lord of Esquipulas that if the Lord would cure the sick infant that lay near death in its mother's arms, or heal the wound festering deep in the leg of a worker, or save a sailor from sure death at sea, they would journey to Esquipulas to give thanks for the blessings received. Still others may come seeking relief from a contemporary misfortune, but regardless of past favors or current requests, they arrive from throughout Guatemala, Central America, and southern Mexico.1 Among the pilgrims are members of the region's many indigenous groups, who, upon entering the shrine during the many masses said throughout the day, give the appearance of following their own specific agenda of worship. At any [end p. 108] particular time, the white pilgrims, or ladinos, as they are called in Guatemalan Spanish, outnumber the native Americans, but they likewise pay little attention to the order of the mass and nor to the priest's words spoken from the altar and more or less amplified through loudspeakers placed here and there about the basilica. Both native Americans and ladinos move about the basilica with handfuls of enormous candles, purchased from the vendors outside, and eventually place these on trays near the front. Smoke from the candles creates the perennial task of cleaning the huge walls and high ceiling of the shrine.
In Buga, although the principal period in the shrine's ritual calendar is the month of September, pilgrims, in completion of their promesas, arrive at the shrine each day. On the weekends, buses, ranging from sturdy mountain "chivas" to more commodious, interurban behemoths, discharge individuals and families collected from the settlements all along the densely populated Cauca Valley. Corresponding to their absence in the composition of the surrounding population, few native Americans appear among the travelers. Once inside the round arched doorways, the pilgrims may read engraved on the walls of the anteroom the account of the first miracle credited to the Lord of Miracles. Overhead an electronic message flashes a welcome, a schedule of masses, and a warning to pilgrims about pickpockets. Inside, the pilgrims search for space on the many benches and once seated give the appearance of being attentive to the priest and to his words amplified effectively throughout the interiors. Pilgrims are prohibited from bringing candles into the basilica.
The two icons that compose the center of the pilgrims' questing vision display an array of similarities and differences. Standing high above the main altars and each encased in glass, both present a Christ whose earlier agony, depicted in vivid detail of slashed sides and spikes through the hands, has now given way to a slumped head, closed eyes, and death (Figure 4). Surrounding the death are florid embellishments. In Buga, gold borders the cross and from the border extends outward to form a golden "aurora." The crown of thorns on the Lord's head is gold with three vertical, sword-like extension (called potencias), and a golden cloth 'adorns his waist. In Esquipulas, a golden vine climbs the cross, and at the top, above the head a golden lettered sign announces "INRI." Earlier portraits of the figure depicted a gold crown of thorns (without the vertical extensions) and a gold bordered cloth around the waist (Garcia 1940), but both the crown and cloth have been removed from the present figure. At the foot of the crucified Lord of Esquipulas, their faces twisted in grief, crouch the three figures of Mary, Mary Magdalene, and John the Beloved Disciple. In Buga, although the Lord of Miracles hangs alone within the glass enclosure, in the immediate, surrounding space numerous saints and angels gesture out to parishioners from their niches as if to provide a glorifying host for the dead figure. Fresh flowers adorn the visual fields of each figure at both shrines.
While both figures measure a little less than life size, the sculpturing of each is distinct. The Esquipulas Christ is more round, fuller, and one might say, more delicate, and certainly less bloody. The Buga Christ is more angular, less full, and more [end p. 109] crude, with real hair hanging around his face. It is also more bloody, with red blotches on the chest and red flesh sticking through the knees. Despite the differences in sculpturing both statues present a figure colored a dark brown. Why dark? Given that other icons through out Christianity commonly depict a Christ, crucified or alive, as white, why are these two, one in Guatemala, the other in Colombia, black? To address that question, we turn to the explanatory narratives. The narratives range from sacred text to scholarly accounts.
As is the case with any shrine venerating the crucifixion, the principal sacred narrative is that found in the four Gospels of the New Testament. According to the Gospel of Mark, 15:15-37, which Matthew and Luke drawn upon and which John elaborates, the Roman judge, Pilate complies with the requests of the crowd to crucify Jesus. He orders Jesus whipped and turned over to a battalion of soldiers, who dress him in royal purple, place a crown of thorns on his head, kneel in mockery, and shout, "Hail, King of the Jews." They strip jim of the purple robe, take him to Golgotha, the place of the skull, where they crucify him. The priests mock him, "He saved others; he cannot save himself." Darkness comes, and on the "ninth hour," Jesus cries out, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me." He cries one more time and dies.
The two icons stand at varying distances from the different Gospel narrations. We see in both figures the slash in the side made by a soldier's spear that only John reports (19:34). At Esquipulas, we also see the sign nailed to the cross that all four Gospels mention-INRI, the Latin abbreviation for Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum, Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews. The scene of Mary, Mary Magdalene, and John at the foot of the cross is described only in John (19:25-27). In church tradition, the vine curling around the cross symbolizes the cross as a living tree (Klein 1990:391), but none of the Gospels mentioned it. While "darkness comes" at the hour of Christ's death [end p. 110] in all four Gospels, nothing in the Gospel narratives refers to Christ's color.
The narratives of the Gospels are the master narratives that every icon of Christ in every location addresses. Local narratives in Buga and Esquipulas tie the universal, master narratives of the Gospel to the particular places and icons. People often refer to the narratives as leyendas or histarias, legends or stories, and in so doing stress the antiquity of the narratives and their oral character. Like the master narratives of the Gospels, which presumably were oral before being inscribed, so the local narratives apparently were told before being recorded. It is important to note, however, that apart from people's present day retelling, the only narratives available to us today are the written ones. These written narratives today not only claim to repeat the original oral account but also lodge the claim of the icon in context of other claims.
In Buga, the account distributed by the basilica's book store, El Señor de las Milagros, Guía del peregrina (1990), refers to an account composed in 1819 by a Franciscan missionary, Fray Francisco Grueso y Rodríguez, and surrounds that account with a post-Vatican II commentary. The commentary attempts to tie the miraculous events of the shrine's origin with quotes from Gospels and from historical documents so as to reinterpret the shrine in a manner appropriate to a post-Vatican II audience in which scripture is strongly privileged over icons.
According to the cited Grueso y Rodriguez account, an Indian woman, who lived in a hut along side the river near Buga in 1550 and who made her living washing clothes, had saved sufficient money to send to Quito, Ecuador, for a "Santo-Cristo." On the very day she was to take the money to the parish priest, she encountered a man the authorities were taking to jail because he was not able to repay a usurious loan. The money that she had saved came to the exact amount he needed, and so she set aside her own wishes and paid his debt.
A few days later, the woman was washing clothes in the river when a wave broke in front of her and deposited a tiny crucifix of wood. She carried it home and placed it in a small box. One night, she heard a tapping from the box and opened it to discover the image had grown. The image grew to the size of a small adult. The local priest and other notables agreed that a miracle had occurred, and a chapel, or ermita, was erected at the home of the Indian woman to house the icon.
The basilica account shifts from the Grueso y Rodríguez history to a document purporting to be the testimony of Señora Luisa Sánchez de la Espada, daughter of a conquistador and a landowner who lived near Buga. She testified in 1665 that earlier in the century the Bishop in Popayán, the major colonial city in southern Colombia, having heard about the devotion to the Christ at Buga, sent an ecclesiastical inspector to Buga. The inspector held an inquisition in which he determined the image was the object of witchcraft and condemned it to be burned. In the fire the image began to sweat a clear oil. For two day it sweated, and people wiped the oil with cotton and conserved it for its miraculous potency. From that day, the Christ at Buga became known at the Lord of the Miracles (Figure 5). [end p. 111]
Nowhere in the basilica account does it describe the Christ as black, or dark. The assumption is, however, that the fire it endured turned it dark, and indeed, when asked about the color of the Christ, people commonly refer to the fire as the cause. The narrative of the Buga Lord is retold in several media: The testimony of Doña Luisa is engraved on the sides of the entrance foyer; a mural along a hallway in the basilica depicts the finding of the Christ, its burning, the arrival of the Redemptorist order, and the building of the basilica; and the basilica bookstore offers crucifixes, portraits, the printed guide, and a video. Thus, the message of the dark icon is explained and amplified into a number of different texts, both written and visual.
The local narratives of the Esquipulas Señor today draw upon an account published by a priest associated with the basilica in the first half of this century, Father Juan Paz Solórzano. In his history, first published in 1914, Paz Solórzano reports that in 1685 a document was discovered that purports to be a contract signed in 1594 between a Guatemalan ecclesiastical authority and an official sculptor, Quirio Cataño, to carve a crucifix for the pueblo of Esquipulas (Figure 6). Paz Solórzano proceeds to relate how the Chortí Indians in the area, now converted to Christianity, paid Cataño with money raised from the sale of that year's cotton crop and put the Christ in a small thatched chapel, an ermita, in Esquipulas. The fame of the Christ spread, and Paz Solórzano reports the first documented miracle occurred in 1603-approximately the date that the Buga Christ reportedly underwent its trial by fire. After a period of residence in the parish church, the icon was established in the structure where it resides today.
In contrast to Buga, the narrative of the Esquipulas Christ has fewer translations into alternative media. The basilica runs a store, where it offers images, portraits, and booklets, but not videos; likewise, the basilica walls are not painted with murals depicting the Chortí requesting the carving of a Christ to assist them in their veneration. The lack of a founding miracle at Esquipulas seems to stand in contrast to the colonial structure, with its many saints in their niches on the outside surfaces, while in Buga, the miraculous account contrasts to the remarkably plain exterior of the late nineteenth century building.
Both narratives emphasize colonial documentation in their claims. In Buga, it is the recording of Dona Luisa's testimony in 1665 that establishes the basis of the icon's endurance of fire and the conquering of ecclesiastical doubt. In Esquipulas it is the document that reports in 1685 the finding of the written contract between the church [end p. 112] and Catano that establishes the acceptability of the icon to the church hierarchy.
The narratives differ, however, in their depiction of the icons' appearance. To the anthropological eye, both icons have the same dark shade. In Buga, the narrative stresses the sweating of the icon as opposed to the darkening of its color. In Esquipulas, both oral and written accounts address the icon's color, and indeed, el Cristo Negro, the Black Christ, is the common name for the icon. This label so irritated Paz Solorzano that he declared in capital letters, "LA IMAGEN NO ES DE COLOR NEGRO" (1949: 15). He reviewed the usual explanations for the color---ones apparently heard in the early twentieth century, when Paz Solórzano wrote the first edition of his book, and ones that people still give today-that the smoke from the incense and the candles turned the icon black or that Catano carved the image from dark wood so that it matched the skin color of the Indians and therefore would appeal to them. He rejected these explanations and attributed the dark coloring to the manner in which Catano accurately imitated the dead blood, la sangre muerta, that covered the body of Christ as a result of the beating before the crucifixion and by the ordeal of the crucifixion itself. Likewise, an account published in 1940, while repeating the explanations for the color, deplored the designated of the icon as negro and implied that the term is a recent vulgarization (García 1940:2655267). Despite these literate protests, el Cristo Negro de Esquipulas remains the popular, vernacular term. Furthermore, the pictures and images the vendors offer to the tourists depict an ebony Christ, one blacker than the actual icon. Given the high salience of color in the narratives ofthe Esquipulas Christ, it is important to stress once again that to the anthropological eye the two icons have the same dark color.
Apart from the Buga and Esquipulas narratives, scholarly accounts of dark, or black Christs in Latin America commonly attribute the dark color to indigenous influence. This is particularly true in the case of the Lord of Esquipulas. Kelsey and Osborne (1939:45-50:220) state the Esquipulas cult is a survival ofthe veneration of the Mayan gods, either Ek Ahau, The Black Lord, who has control over death by violence or Ek Chuach (Ek Chu Ah), The Tall Black One, who was the protector of those who travel. Borhegyi (1954) gi ves an even more detailed argument on the significance of black to the Indians of Middel America, and given the significance of black, it is easy to see, he concludes, why the Black Christ of Esquipulas is so popular. In contrast, Nolan (1991) by pointing to a black Christ venerated in Lucca, Italy, apparently since the eleventh century, suggests that miraculous "dark Christ images are probably not an American innovation (1991 :32). Yet, she suggests there is "a Latin American propensity to venerate black or dark images of Christ." She adds, "Nearly 10 percent of the Christ-centered shrines I have found in Latin America focus on dark images and two-thirds of these figures are found at the shrines described as traditionally Indian" (1991 :31132). Thus, Nolan also appears to favor a native American contribution to the dark Christs.
Against the argument that black Christs are black because of ether indigenous retention or because the priests had the images darken so that they might appeal to Indians, one may point to black Christs in Europe, not only to the one in Italy that Nolan cites, but also to the black Christ in the Wawel Cathedral, Cracow, Poland, known as Queen Jadwiga's crucifix (Franaszek 1991) 2 (Figure 7). Other evidence against the native American origin of the dark color [end p. 113] of the Esquipulas Christ point to the white pilgrims at Esquipulas who outnumber native Americans at a ratio of approximately 60 to 40 (Kendall 1991), to the Chortf Maya of today who refer to the Esquipulas Christ not as the Black Lord, as Borhegyi might have it, but as "a God whose name is Milagroso" (Fought 1972:452), and, of course, to the dark Christ at Buga, and to other dark Christs in Latin America.
Both sacred narratives and scholarly accounts address the question of why are the dark Christs dark. The answers to this question pursue the assumption that the dark color represents something else-a miracle, native retention, priestly strategies, too many candles, etc. The procedure argues, quite logically, that symbols, either icons or words, point to matters external to symbols. While certainly reasonable, this procedure down plays how the evocative qualities of symbols emerge from the manner in which they point, not only to external matters, but to themselves. That the message of symbols, and of signs more generally, resides in their being an accomplice to other signs is central to the pervasive notion of "intertextuality" associated with poststructuralism. As explicated by Sarup (1993), poststructuralism argues that the meaning of signs comes to us from our reading of other signs which turn lead us to still other signs. No sign comes to us without the trace of previous indebtedness to other signs. In sense, to establish what they mean, signs cite one another. In their mutual citation, they communicate their meaning. For radical theologians, for example, a poststructuralist reading of the New Testament does not provide access to a biography of Jesus, a life external from the text, but instead conveys a message (Bonino 1984). If we can read the text of the Gospels not as a biography of a historical figure but as a message contained in the reading of the narration, we might likewise see the black Christ as an icon with a message, a message lodged in the "intertextuality" of behavior, narrative, and other icons. Without disappearing into the vortex of poststructuralism's "endless play of signification" (Derrida 1978:280) in which text points to text which points to text, etc., we might rephrase the question from: Why are the Esquipulas and Buga Christs black? to: How does black convey the Christian ineffable? What does the dark color point to?
Our consideration of the rephrasing is assisted when we grasp the poststructuralist's radical orientation toward the surface, which is that we take what we see and hear seriously-not bad advice for a descriptive geographer-ethnographer (Tuan 1989). In insisting that we take what we see and hear seriously, poststructuralism directs us toward the out-side rather than to the inside, toward the visible rather than to the inferred, and, most of all, toward the text---(spoken or written) rather than to the intended.
We may pursue the answer to the question, What does the dark color point to?, by first looking in the direction of other icons. In Spanish American Roman Catholicism, the figure of Christ is presented variously as a baby in the arms of his mother, as a miracle-working infant-the Child of Atocha in Plateros, Mexico, for example-and as an adult confronting persecution. In the latter case, Christ is depicted being tied to a post and whipped (Cristo de la Columna), on a mock throne with a crown of thorns and a scepter, carrying his cross (Jesús Nazareno), on the cross (Cristo crucificado), dead in his mother's arms, and in a tomb. Occasionally, but rarely, he is presented as ascending to heaven (Cristo resucitado). He has two other distinct images: the Sacred Heart (Sagrado Corazón), usually a fully clothed figure of Jesus with a lacerated, valentine shaped heart exposed on his chest and Corpus Christi, the consecrated host visually displayed in a monstrance. The vast majority of the images present a figure with a white skin color, and the host, the Corpus Christi, is white.
Compared to these figures, the dark icons at Esquipulas and Buga stand in sharp contrast. The figures have facial features conventionally associated with Caucasian portraits, such as thin lips, prominent cheek bones, and a projecting nose, but the skin color is dark. These are Caucasian Christs but with dark skins. To repeat, what does the dark color point to?
The dark color of the icons also points to words, particularly "negro." As in English, negro is a poly-semantic word. Among its usage, it may designate racial affiliation, as in la raza negra, the Negro race; it also describes color, such as cabello negra, black hair; and it may evoke a feeling, such as tristesa, sadness. Among its synonyms are oscura, dark, and sombrio, somber. Given the facial configuration of the icons, we can suggest the dark color points less toward racial affiliation and more toward the color spectrum and especially toward feeling. [end p. 114]
In addition to words, the dark color of the icons points toward the array of liturgical colors used in Catholic ritual. Prescribed by Pope Innocent III in the beginning of the twelfth century, the traditional colors are white, red, green, violet (purple), and black. Prior to the modern reforms beginning in the 1960s, black vestments were worn during the rituals of Good Friday. (Since the modern reforms of Vatican II, black has become far less common; Cance 1967, 1034; Cross and Livingstone 1974, 316; Broderick 1976, 123-124). The black of the icons, then, points toward the rituals of Holy Week and, particularly, to Good Friday. Even with the modern reforms, in Spanish America, Good Friday, Viernes Santo, remains the most solemn, the most observed, the most venerated day in the liturgical year. It is the day that commemorates Christ's crucifixion. Thus, the dark color of the icons points toward Viernes Santo and death. The slumped head and the closed eyes of the icons at Esquipulas and Buga give us, each time we view them, the instance of Christ's death.
For Christians, however, Christ's death is an anomaly, an outrage. For how can God die? While an anthropologist-geographer cannot pretend to claim the theological answer to that question, he might suggest the Christian logic of sacrifice demands God's death. Christ has to die, God has to become mortal, even only for the moment, so that his life may serve as a sacrifice. Thus, the dark icon points to the instance of God's mortality, to the Gospel narrative of the crucifixion, when "sobre toda la tierra vino una obscuridad ... A la hora nona, gritó Jesús ... Dios mío, Dios mío, por qué me abandonaste? (San Marcos 15 :33-34). Black color, el color negro, with its connotation in either English or Spanish of sadness and melancholy, seems most appropriate for this most Christian occasion. If, in European logic, white is associated with divinity and immortality, then humanity and mortality is addressed in black.3
In Buga, another icon of Christ points to the dark Lord of Miracles as an evocation of the instance of Christ's death. This is an image of Christ in the tomb, set in the wall, so that a kneeling worshiper may be at eye level with the figure. This Christ is the body laid in the tomb (Mark 15:46). The figure is pale white.
Here, in this one location, we have two Christ figures, one on the cross and one in the tomb. The first is dark; the second is white. The message being conveyed resides in the manner in which these two point toward another; consequently, we must read the message "intertextually," that is, we must take what we see seriously. As Pandolfo, drawing upon poststructuralist theory, makes clear in her study of a Moroccan (that is, Mediterranean) village, white is not necessarily the color of life and black death. On the contrary, white "is the drying out of a living body, the death principle that haunts life. Black on the other hand is the possibility of a new cycle. The color black is the death by decomposition/ fermentation that haunts the color white, while white is the death by desiccation/sterilization that haunts the color black. Both give way to their own forms of life, the one by polluting, the other by sterilizing" (1989: 19). Thus, in Mediterranean logic, black not only points to the instance of death but at the same time points, through decomposition/fermentation, to life-and to resurrection!
As is the case with religion in general, the juxtaposition of opposing categories features prominently in Christian discourse. In Gospel narratives, the soldiers ironically address Jesus as King of the Jews, and in iconic presentations, sumptuous ornamentation surround the all but naked, tortured figure. Standing in opposition, the categories direct attention to each another-the crucifixion points to the resurrection, death to salvation, and black to white. Juxtaposition of opposites and the reversal of conventional categories are conspicuous in pilgrimages, which by their very nature oppose the ordinary with the extraordinary.
In their well-known interpretation of Christian pilgrimages Victor and Edith Turner (1978) highlight the experiential component of pilgrimage by placing that experience in the context of changes in the pilgrim's status. To go on a pilgrimage requires the pilgrim to leave the everyday world of earning a living, travel at some distance to a place defined as miraculous, mingle with others whose only common denominator may be their individual quests, constantly push the now established clerical presentation to its limits, and terminate the experience with a return to everyday world. Within these movements, both social and physical, pilgrims experience a period of liminality, of being in the [end p. 115] betwixt and the between, in the neither this nor that. This relatively structureless state threatens to dissolve the conventional, encased definitions of self and permit a more intimate exchange among pilgrims, an exchange that is egalitarian, direct, nonrational, an I-Thou communitas.4
Direct, nonrational, but social, I-Thou communitas approximates the ineffable qualities associated with religion, and particularly the encounter between participants and the sacred. As ineffable, the movement toward communitas, however, is difficult to document ethnographically. How can the anthropologist-geographer, an outsider for all of his participation, demonstrate that the pilgrims experience moments of "unmediated communication" (Turner and Turner 1978:250-251) which liberates them from the conventional norms and permits the touch of pure possibility? Extended conversations with pilgrims about their experiences would surely assist the pursuit. Yet, even such detailed and lengthy engagements (with value far beyond that of one-shot interviews) would produce more text that might, in their pointing to other texts, hide as much as they disclose. Another, more direct path is to watch, in the phenomenological, empathetic sense, what the pilgrims do and search among their doings for occasions that suggest an I-Thou experience.
One instance in the pilgrims' quest seems a likely site, and that is the efforts by the pilgrims to touch the icons. In Esquipulas, while paying relatively little attention to the masses that the Benedictine fathers conduct through the day, pilgrims, both native American and ladino, patiently wait in long lines that circle around the patio outside the basilica. They enter the shrine from the rear, climb stairs that carry them above and back of the altar, and approach the crucified Señor from the rear. In the few minutes given to them by the basilica personnel, they each reach through a opening in the back of the glass to touch the Señor's body. Some manage to lean forward and kiss the flank of the Lord on his cross. They then descend the stairs to exit the other side. In Buga, at the end of each mass, and following a pledge in which the Redemptorist priest directs the worshipers to raise their right hand and recite the manner in which they love and praise the Señor de los Milagros, the pilgrims go to the left side of the basilica, climb stairs that rise to a space above the altar but beneath and in front of the icon. The figure stands too high to reach, and any case it is surrounded by glass. So for the most part the pilgrims have content themselves with pressing their hands against the glass; the more determined ones, however, stretch their arms upward through a small opening at the bottom and manage, just barely, to touch the pedestal that supports the cross.
To touch the icons constitutes the goal of many pilgrims. Touching culminates the quest to locate the ineffable in the sensory world of the pilgrim. At the minimum, viewing the icon establishes the geographic "where" of the ineffable; it locates the attending shrine within the field of the viewers, it discriminates the icon from other objects, and it centers the icon before the pilgrim's quest, but at the maximum, touching, "the most fundamental of all senses" and "the ultimate test of reality" (Tuan 1982: 117-118), brings the pilgrim and the ineffable into each other's presence.
Likewise, it is clearly the object of the ecclesiastical hierarchy to contain this populist, anti-structural quest. In both Esquipulas and Buga, the hierarchy, in its pursuit of order, controls access to the icons. The formation of well organized lines, always a challenge in Spanish America, and the smooth flow of people up to the icons and out attest to the hierarchy's success. In Buga, where priests have apparently achieved greater mastery in directing the pilgrims' attention to strictly church matters, the recitation of the pledge at the end of mass articulates the priests' desire to channel the pilgrim's concerns from a purely self-icon dialogue into a more "ecclesiastically correct" orientation to the problems of one's neighbors. In both Esquipulas and Buga, however, the glass enclosures most vividly reflect the manner in which the church organizes the pilgrims' access to the icons.
The liminal position of pilgrims moves them toward a confrontation of identities otherwise encased in shells-much like the glass cages enclosing the icons. This movement toward an I-Thou extraordinary intimacy, which of necessity must circumvent the structure imposed by the church, finds dramatic enactment in the efforts of the pilgrims to touch the icons, to go around or underneath the glass cages and contact the dark figures. The movement toward an I-Thou communitas, arguably the focal point of the pilgrim's quest, lies in the [end p. 116] movement of the pilgrim's hand as it reaches out toward the icon of God's death (Figure 8).
To conclude, rephrasing the question from why are the icons black to how does black convey the Christian ineffable has permitted us to address the "intertextuality" of behavior, narrative, and icon. We read a message composed in a circle of behavior pointing to narrative pointing to icon pointing to behavior. The circle, however, is not "the endless play of signification" of poststructuralism in which signs refer only to other signs; the circle is not closed. It is grounded in and perennially refreshed by the pilgrimage experience. The textual and iconic message of Christ's persecution, death, and resurrection plays in conjunction with the pilgrim's personal journey of departure, liminality, and communitas. The dark figure points to God's death, to the ineffable period in Christianity between human life and divine resurrection; likewise the figure points to communitas, the human experience of the I touching the Thou. The dark in the Black Christs points to divine death but also to human communitas,and thus to renewal.
EPILOGUE
Against the thrust of the agreement of this presentation, two objections immediately arise. First, not all pilgrimage shrines dedicated to the crucified Lord in Spanish America feature a dark Christ. Indeed, the majority, like the famous Lord of Chalma near Mexico City, are white. Second, not all Black Christs are shrine figures. In Guatemala, and especially in Honduras, as Dr. William Davidson and I have discovered in the course of several field excursions, a local Black Christ may become simply one saint among many and not be the object of pilgrimage. Undoubtedly, however, many of the Black Christs in Central America are local venerations of the Señor in Esquipulas. Consequently, it is safe to say that the majority of dark icons are in fact shrine figures or are derived from major shrines. In Buga, given the route of the Spanish conquest from Peru to Colombia, the Señor of Miracles, notwithstanding local claims, may be tied to the Señor de Temblores, the Lord of the Earthquakes, a dark crucified Christ in Cuzco, Peru, or to the Señor de Milagros in Lima, although the latter is a mural of a white Christ rather than a figure (Sallnow 1987). Interestingly, Puerto Rico, with no historical ties to southern Colombia, has a shrine devoted to the Buga Christ, al Señor de Los Milagros de Buga; the devotion appears to be a recent importation.5 The Black Christ of Porto Bello, Panama provides an additional puzzle, for it is the figure not of the crucified Christ but of Jesús el Nazareno, dressed in purple carrying his cross to Calvary.
Was there a period in the iconography of Christ that black became an ecclesiastically accepted color for the portrayal of Christ at the instance of his death? Paz Solorzano's attributing the dark coloring of the Esquipulas Christ to the genius in which Catano imitated the dead blood, la sangre muerta, that covered the crucified Lord would have us believe so. According to Siger and Leite, in their review in the New Catholic Encyclopedia, the icon of a dead Christ became a visual depiction of Christ's human nature during the early centuries in Christianity in the eastern Mediterranean and spread to Italy during the 13th century. Although they do not mention the color of the iconic representation, they do refer to the "many Luccan and Pisan" depictions and thus include the Lucca Christ Nolan cites as an early black Christ in Europe (Siger and Leite 1967:968). But at [end p. 117] that point, for this article, the question of an ecclesiastically approved dark icon for the instance of Christ's death must remain unpursued.
The post-structuralist notion of trace, in which any sign carries with it a string of citations to other signs, allows us to underscore how the shrine narratives we read today cite one another in a search for a fundamental grounding. Table 1 illustrates the search.
The Buga narrative of the floating cross, which we see today as a written text, points to similar (written) oral accounts, such as the Cuzco Temblorescross found floating off the shores of Callao, Peru (Foster 1960:203-208), and the crucified dark Lord of Otatithin in southern Vera Cruz, Mexico found floating in the nearby river (field data). In so doing, the narrative parallels the manner that Mark points to earlier, oral accounts.
As the chart makes clear, the search for grounding is a search for historical veracity, and the claim for veracity lies in citing official documents and reporting the spoken words of actual times. In brief, the historical dates and events the texts cite are rhetorical devices designed to convey a message and should not be accepted as empirically based dates and events.
The layering of one narrative upon the other relates to layering of temple construction and renovation. As even this brief article indicates, both temples and icons change. At Buga, Vatican II saw the removal of many of the statues, and at Esquipulas, the Señor is at the moment standing in front of the altar where people have greater access to it (Davidson, personal communication). These changes often find themselves at odds with claims for permanence and for the antiquity, and the authenticity, of miracles.
The argument, stated flatly and somewhat unfairly, that in Latin America dark Christs and Virgins are dark because Indians are dark carries with it much conventional wisdom and considerable ideological freight. However, the matter is far from simple. To take the case of the most famous dark Virgin, the brown Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico, for example, the social historian, William B. Taylor, makes a strong argument that at the early stages in the Virgin's development the colonial records suggest the priests were promoting a cult centered on the growing popularity of the immaculate conception of Mary among the Spanish laity rather than trying to catch up to a syncretic movement already under way. The entire Juan Diego story appears to be a later addition-not unlike perhaps the 17th century accounts in Esquipulas and Buga (1987). To be sure, the Mexican Virgin of Guadalupe today has an important role as symbol attempting to bring together the Mexican nation. But I suspect she is brown for the same reasons that the older Virgin of Guadalupe, the one in Spain, is also dark-but that's another article.
Finally, one may note that any reenactment that seeks to call forth a previous miraculous event, such [end p. 118] as a pilgrimage, seeks to place us in the miraculous past, but in fact, occurring as it does all around us, displaces the past into present.7 The reenactment, the pilgrimage, draws attention to itself, and its strength depends upon how deeply we become embedded in the transformation of the geographic "where," which we see, to the ineffable presence, which we touch.
ACKNOWLEGEMENTS
I am grateful to David Robinson for his interest in my work and for his editorial acumen. Likewise, I appreciate the comments made by two anonymous reviewers. I found their evaluations most helpful and have attempted to address at least partially their concerns. I am indebted to Mary Lee Eggart and Kerry Lyle for their assistance in preparing the illustrations, and I am especially appreciative of Ms. Eggart's interpretive drawing. Finally, I want to thank Bill Davidson, a colleague in the fullest sense of the word.
For Esquipulas, the material reported here draws upon an unpublished manuscript, "Earth as the Lord's Bread: The Cultural World of Geophagy in Esquipulas, Guatemala" by Miles Richardson and William Davidson. In addition to incorporating archival material on the founding and developing of Esquipulas, the manuscript reviews much of the literature on the Esquipulas shrine and associated geophagy, including the recent work of Hunter, Horst, and Thomas (1989). Copies of the manuscript are available to interested scholars. For Buga, the paper is based on fieldwork in the summer of 1992. Biblical quotations in English are from the Revised Standard Version and in Spanish from Ediciones Paulinas, XX Edici6n.
NOTES
1 During the late colonial period and continuing into the nineteenth century, a developing regional market at Esquipulas drew merchants from all over Central America and southern Mexico. Presently, the international market has disappeared, but drawn by the pilgrims, vendors flock to Esquipulas in January.
2 I am grateful to the Reverend Carol Brody for material on this black Christ. The most famous Polish black icon is, of course, the Black Madonna at the monastery of Jasna Góra, Czestochowa.
3 I am indebted to Jodi Brandehoff-Pracht for her discussion which helped me clarify this point.
4 The Turner and Turner study is not without its critics. Nolan and Nolan (1989) fault its developmental typology of European pilgrimages, and Sallnow (Sallnow 1981) wonders if communitas applies to Andean pilgrimage groups who, while egalitarian within, are fiercely competitive with each other.
5 First reported to me by Karin Martin-López and subsequently by Luis Galanes and his mother, Señora Galanes.
6 Such as the Q Gospel (Mack 1993).
7 I am much obliged to David Madden, Director of the United States Civil War Center, Louisiana State University, for this observation, which he made in discussing Civil War reeenactments.
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RESUMEN
Un consideración de dos santuarios sin contacto histórico nos permite explorar la "intertextualidad" de ícono, narrativa, y commportamiento en la construcción de las cualidades de lugar que lo transportan de una ubicación hacia una realidad social. [end p. 120]