Last year, his wife Yelimar joined us for this annual trek. But this year she walked, with tiny Tiffany in her arms, to repay the Muertico for curing their baby's whooping cough.
Bebe is about the age of the Little Dead One when he was forced by soldiers to dig his own grave. Bebe's handicap in life is being unable to read or write, and the Little's Dead One's handicap was being deaf and thus unable to answer the question of where he was going when asked by the soldiers patrolling the mountain road.
That was 60 years ago. Or 80. Or maybe a hundred. Everyone in my village is hazy on the dates but totally clear about what ensued. The Little Dead One, or El Muertico in Spanish, was shot by the soldiers for not having an answer to their questions, buried in his self-dug grave, to be forgotten. No one even knew his name.
Except that he wasn't forgotten. Farmers began to place a rock on his burial site as they passed, adding a prayer. Through the years the rock pile grew along with the list of miracles performed by the Muertico, until the town decided to build a small chapel on the spot and hold a yearly remembrance in late January. He even got a name: Jose Maria, but everyone still calls him El Muertico out of affection. During my first many years in Palo Verde, I paid little attention to the El Muertico. His story seemed grim and his name was magically evoked in almost everything done in town. May the soul of the Muertico help us to..... build a new bathroom ....pass chemistry......cure my son's asthma......... win the refrigerator raffle.
Actually, it was that last wish that first led me to Muertico several years ago. Bebe's mom, Franzuly, had won a refrigerator, thanks - apparently - to her prayer to the Muertico. She needed to pay return the favor with a candle, and invited me along. I grabbed my cuatro and followed her and her 8 kids and their friends up and over the mountain. At the chapel in a cool bend of the mountain, the kids reverently took off their hats, and lit their candles in prayer.
Then, we retreated to a clearing in front of the chapel, and spent the day eating rice, playing tag and telling stories.
As Fabi took my hand to leave she declared: This was the best day the Muertico has had in a long time. And, I'm pretty sure the same was also true for Fabi and her friends.
And that, I realized, was the magic. The miracle of the Muertico was that he brought people together, and brought out the best in everyone. I was hooked, and thereafter invoked his name with every fruit tree I planted, with every wattle and daub cabin I built, with every one of my three children I sent off to build their future. I became a solid attendee of the Muertico's annual celebrations such as that of last Sunday.
After Bebe and I arrived, we joined a procession to light our candles in the chapel, intoning chants that seemed to hail from the Middle Ages. We watched as young and old danced the ancient tamunangue, with passion and grace, sweeping babies and children into their arms to ask for the Muertico's blessing and cure. And then we sat in the shade and ate from Franzuly's enormous soup pot which fed the 300+ pilgrims lavishly.
Here, there was no hunger. Here, there was no despair. Here, there was no loneliness. Here, only community, compassion, abundance, music, dance, tradition, pure magic.
A few days after my town invoked the powers of perhaps the world's least known saint - the Muertico - to heal their children and community, Venezuela's self-proclaimed President Juan Guaido invoked the powers of perhaps the world's most powerful person - Donald Trump - to save his nation. Hmmm, I wonder whose super powers will do the trick.
So far, the Muertico seems to be ahead. Trump's sanctions and threats have only multiplied the economic disaster hurled onto the Venezuelan people by the Venezuelan government itself. Meanwhile, with little fanfare, four million Venezuelans have slipped away to almost everywhere on the globe, working in almost anything, sending home millions. And it is these millions of dollars in the hands of millions of family members here that is slowly restarting Venezuela's economic motor. It is not because of but in spite of Trump's actions that this minor miracle is happening. A miracle not unlike that worked by the Muertico of community, unity, sharing, caring,
I'm betting that the Little Dead One will be of much more help to Tiffany than Donald Trump, but time will tell.
