Despedida

Do not let the title of today’s post fool you. I am not leaving Bolivia today, and neither is Brother Scott. But we are having a little party tonight courtesy of the Mennonite lay volunteers who have become our friends since we studied together at Maryknoll. The despedida gets rolling at around 7 o’clock with tacos and potluck contributions from all. We are having the farewell tonight because a few of the Maryknoll language school friends we invited are going to La Paz tomorrow. We are having the farewell this week because Brother Scott is departing on Monday. I have joked that this despedida will be like a living funeral for me, because I’ll still be around through next Saturday! But it doesn’t matter much—the timing, that is. We are simply behaving like Bolivians, who are more than happy to put on a party whenever the time is right.

We did have that excursion to the town of Tarata today. It was Profesoras Liliana, Vicky, and Viviana with Brother Scott and me and Padre Marcin, a Polish priest who has been brushing up on his already-very-good Spanish these last six weeks in preparation for his ministry in La Paz. I wish I could have enjoyed it more—it was a brief visit of one hour! That’s because it’s about an hour and 15 minutes one way in either direction between Cochabamba and Tarata. It felt a bit like driving for hours to the Grand Canyon, only to stop for 15 minutes to behold it. Oh well. What we did see, we appreciated very much. Walking through the main plaza of town and threading narrow brick roads made me feel like I was on the set of some movie where they were filming a revisionist Western set in the late 19th century. The high sun, the dusty streets, and the adobe facades of 150-year-old buildings with crumbling whitewash and boarded-up windows put me in a different time and place, if only for a moment.

We had enough time to pay respects at two churches. The first was the church of the Parish of Saint Peter the Apostle, founded 1605. By now the spirituality of Spanish colonial Catholicism, as demonstrated by the statues and figures within the church, has become quite familiar to me: all Good Friday, hardly a trace of Easter Sunday. Oh well. The peoples of Latin America have been a crucified people, and that goes for both the indigenous peoples and the criollos whose post-revolution dreams of liberty, prosperity, and strength degenerated into nightmares as stronger imperial forces conquered the conquistadores and liberadores. A brick path led us from the center of town to the Shrine of San Severino. This is the church maintained by our Franciscan brothers, whose adjoining convent and retreat center I visited early in March the day before Ash Wednesday. I didn’t see the church when I visited in March, so my Franciscan tour was completed today. San Severino, the patron of Tarata, is not a Franciscan saint but an ancient Roman martyr from the third century, a soldier who apparently renounced his loyalty to Caesar for the sake of Christ. He was reportedly beheaded for his disobedience to Caesar. The Franciscans who have long ministered in Tarata obtained relics of the martyr and keep them safe in their convent. San Severino, patron of the military, is also patron of the rains, and a great festival attends his feast day, which is observed in November in Tarata. Check out this Facebook group for details. 

Okay, nothing more to report here. On to the despedida; on to tomorrow!