Desmond Tutu and Reconciliation

 

Desmond Tutu was once invited to preach to a white congregation in South Africa. He told them that Africans were deeply grateful to them for the gift of the Bible. He added that “The only difference between us is that we believe in it.” The archbishop told this impishly humorous story in a talk at St Paul’s cathedral in the 1990s which my father-in-law and I attended. My limited experience of clergy is mostly of Anglican sermons in British churches, which somehow manage to detach Christian beliefs and morals from the personal and often avoid challenging personal behaviours. Tutu, by contrast, spoke from the heart with a simple, uncomplicated, utterly sincere belief in right and wrong, and in humans’ potential for good. At the end of his address in St Paul’s, he spoke of prayers ascending to heaven and lifted his hands and gaze upwards to the great dome with a look of joy on his face in an almost child-like manner which no learned British cleric could manage.

 

My other connection to Tutu was an indirect publishing one. In 2000 I published the international edition of The Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa, which Tutu chaired. For the first time in my career, I consulted a libel lawyer who told me that the report contained multiple libels. Puzzled, I asked him what he meant. “Well, it accuses many people of murder, torture and other crimes. It could damage their reputations.” I protested that they had confessed to the crimes in public tribunals and had no reputations to damage. The lawyer was unmoved and advised against publication. Fortunately, my boss shared my opinion that this was ridiculous and we decided to publish. We did take one precaution against a lawsuit, however. The former President of South Africa, F. W. de Klerk, had attempted to sue the Commission over two references to him in the report. We decided to publish with those passages ostentatiously obscured with black ink and referred readers to the South African edition.

 

The launch of the Report at South Africa House, Trafalgar Square, London

We launched the Report at an event at the South African High Commission. One of the speakers was Dullah Omar, South Africa’s Minister of Justice, who survived an assassination attempt by the Bureau of State Security (BOSS), which substituted a placebo for his heart pills. He collapsed in the street but was saved by a doctor who happened to be nearby. Two other speakers came from South Africa, including a High Court judge. The campaigner and journalist Trevor Phillips, chaired the presentation of the Report. Behind the speakers was the banner, bearing the slogan “Truth. The road to reconciliation”, that the Commission had taken around South Africa to the places where it heard testimony.

 

The speakers: Dullah Omar second from right, Trevor Phillpis centre

After the event, the High Commissioner, who had been a young anti-Apartheid activist herself, hosted a dinner for the speakers at her residence. Those attending included three or four Labour Party members of the House of Lords who had supported the Anti-Apartheid Movement, my boss, me and Mike Terry, a secondary school physics teacher who sat next to me. Mike told me that he had been secretary of the Anti-Apartheid movement. When I asked him why he was now a teacher, he explained that campaigning was exhausting. He would come home to find Special Branch officers sitting in a car outside his home and his phone was tapped. Nevertheless, he led the campaign for 20 years. As the speakers and the High Commissioner chatted among friends, they clearly relished being in charge and able to make their own decisions, rather than being told by white people what they may or may not do.

 

As I read the Commission’s report, I was struck by the gratuitous, depraved cruelty, of the security forces of Apartheid. It was clearly not enough simply to kill and eliminate their opponents; they must be humiliated and subjected to unimaginable pain. The men (they were I think all men) who carried out these acts, presumably had families to whom they returned after a day of murder and torture. The report suggests that acts of oppression damaged not only the victims but the oppressors and torturers themselves. Thus, the Apartheid regime not only damaged its opponents but its servants also.

 

Archbishop Tutu’s sense of humour and enjoyment of dancing have been mentioned repeatedly in news coverage, but I have been thinking of him in front of the Commission’s banner listening to testimony of countless acts of state-planned human depravity. He must also have been a man of profound seriousness of purpose and of compassion for the victims of Apartheid, perhaps even for some of the perpetrators whose moral being it corrupted.

Who hanged Father Christmas?

 

On Christmas Eve 1951 250 children gathered outside Dijon cathedral to see Father Christmas. But these children would not sit on Santa’s knee to hear a ho-ho-ho and receive a gift, for they had come to see him hanged and burned (in effigy of course). The clergy of the cathedral explained:

 

Representing all the Christian homes of the parish eager to fight against the lie, 250 children, grouped in front of the main entrance to the cathedral of Dijon, burned Father Christmas. It was not an attraction, but a symbolic gesture… A lie cannot wake up religious feelings in a child and is in no way a means of education. May others say and write that they want to make Father Christmas the counterweight of the Bogeyman. For us Christians, the festival of Christmas must remain a celebration of the birth of the Saviour.

 

The Archbishop of Tolouse declared: “Don’t speak to Father Christmas, for the simple reason that he never existed.” The formal position of the French church was:

 

The Father Christmas and the Christmas tree were introduced into the public schools although they are the reminiscence of pagan ceremonies related to the worship of Nature which do not have anything Christian; whereas in the name of outrageous secularism the crib is scrupulously banished from the same schools!

 

However, despite the opposition of the clergy of Dijon, Father Christmas was resurrected by the secular municipal authorities outside the town hall.

 

This event was the subject of an essay, Le père Noël supplicié (Father Christmas tortured) by a young anthropologist, Claude Lévi-Strauss. Lévi-Strauss argued that Christmas represents the glory of life, once one has made peace with the dead. He linked the Christmas celebrations to Roman Saturnalia and celebrations of the solstice.

 

I learned about the sacrifice of Father Christmas this morning from a BBC Radio 4 programme, Something Understood, hosted by Mark Tully, a former Indian correspondent for the BBC. These kinds of programmes are one of the glories of the BBC, whose independence and very existence is threatened by our malevolent, autocratic Conservative government. Our current rulers are just the kind of autocrats who would hang Father Christmas if he disagreed with their politics.

14,000 residents, one Virgin and 3 million pilgrims

 

To reach Talpa de Allende from the Pacific coast, you wind your way through the pine forests of the coastal highlands for a couple of hours. Briefly, the road descends across the broad, heavily cultivated Valley of Mascota, and then climbs again on its way to Guadalajara, Mexico’s second largest city. At intervals you pass roadside shrines, some of which have concrete benches and tables for weary pilgrims to rest and take refreshments. A right turn takes you on to the only road into and out of Talpa. The first glimpse of the town is a parking area on a high cliff above the valley. Here stands a chapel dedicated to a priest who died on his way to worship in Talpa. The road winds its way down to the valley and directs you to the main street, Independencia. The first-time visitor is surprised by the number of hotels on Independencia. Most Mexican towns of this size have one or two modest hotels, but Talpa has quantities – at least 31, of which 20 are classed as “economical”. Those that advertise a double room for 250 pesos (£10/$12) per night must be very economical indeed. But we had reservations at the brand-new Doña Francisca Boutique Hotel, Talpa’s equivalent of the Ritz.

 

Downtown Talpa

Before Spain colonized Mexico from 1521-1821, Talpa was a Nahua (the same ethnic group as the Aztecs) town called Tlalipan. Tlalipan’s residents were lucky enough to be left alone by the Spaniards until 1532 when a lieutenant of the thuggish Nuño de Guzmán appeared in the valley. However, nobody showed much interest in Tlalipan until silver was discovered in nearby Aranjuez. Suddenly, Spanish families arrived and the administration in Mexico City converted Indigenous Tlalipan into the Spanish municipality of Santiago de Talpa. Little more of note happened until, in a now independent Mexico, Talpa’s most prominent citizens sided with the anticlerical Liberals in the 1850s War of the Reform. In 1885 Talpa ditched its religious name and became Talpa de Allende in honour of one of the heroes of Independence, Ignacio Allende.

 

An ice cream shop on Independencia

A short walk to the main plaza tells you all you need to know about modern Talpa’s economy and society. There are restaurants aplenty. Shops selling huaraches stock huge quantities of leather sandals, surely more than enough for every one of the 14,000 inhabitants of the town. The sweet shops sell rollos, sausage shaped sweets of guayava or of a local bitter/sweet fruit called arrayán, some filled with cajeta (a caramel made from milk) or cajeta de guayava, and rompope, a sweetened alcoholic drink of various flavours There are also a few neverías (ice cream shops), so the Mexican sweet tooth is well catered for. Then, of course, there are the souvenir shops selling memorabilia – reproductions in various sizes of the Virgin of the Rosary, and assorted other religious items – for the business of Talpa is pilgrimage and little else.

 

Rollos and rompope for sale

The Famous Lefty retaurant, specializing in birria (a meat stew flavoured with chiles, a Jalisco speciality)

The plaza is dominated by a not particularly attractive basilica in Neoclassical style. At the entrance gate you put on your obligatory cubrebocas (face mask) and a polite gentleman checks your temperature. Once inside, you notice – sign of the times – that many of the pews are draped with the kind of tape you see at accident or crime scenes to limit the number of faithful able to sit down. Above the altar stands the diminutive (she is also known affectionately as La Chaparrita or “Shorty”) dark-skinned figure of the Virgin who, when there is not a pandemic, brings 3 million people a year to Talpa. The most devout among these walk 117km. along La Ruta del Peregrino (Route of the Pilgrim), particularly to celebrate the Virgin’s birthday on 7 October or at Easter.

 

The Virgen del Rosario on the altar

The parish church of San José de Talpa

The story of the Virgin begins in the 17^th century, when Spanish priests walked or rode on muleback from church to church in their large parishes scattered across the mountains of modern Jalisco state. An indispensable element in a priest’s baggage was a lightweight, easy to transport Virgin. One priest carried a small Virgin made of corn stalks and orchid glue in Michoacán. After many years the Virgin was installed in Mascota, but it seems that she did not want to stay there, and persuaded her custodian to take her to Talpa. The people of Mascota recovered her, but again she persuaded her attendant to carry her to Talpa. By this time the poor little figure was badly decayed and it was decided to bury her in a well in the parish church of San José de Talpa, around the corner from the plaza. However, rays of light emitted from the well and the Virgin of the Rosary arose, no longer a figure of worm-eaten corn stalks, but a splendidly attired stone image. The miracle was witnessed by an Indigenous woman. [Miracles associated with Virgins are generally witnessed by an Indigenous person in Mexico. The most important of them all, the Virgin of Guadalupe, made herself known through an Indian man called Juan Diego.] A sign draws one’s attention to the miracle: “In this place the holy image of Our Lady of the Rosary was renovated. As she was not buried, the well remained as testimony of the miracle. Talpa, 19^th of September 1644.” 

The altar of the chapel where the Virgin of the Rosary was transformed, now watched over by a copy of her image

 

 

La Chaparrita carried in procession

A tourist bus offers various excursions: to a coffee plantation, to the nearby maple woods, unique in Mexico apparently, or to the “Olmec” petroglyphs. Since the business of Talpa is Catholicism, we opted for the tour of seven chapels and Cristo Rey (Christ the King). Devotion to Cristo Rey would be a normal focus of worship in most Catholic countries, but in Mexico he attracts a fierce devotion rooted in the country’s history. For in the late 1920s the hierarchy of the Mexican church decided to oppose the laws of the revolutionary regimes that had restricted religious activities and nationalized church properties. Many libraries and archives in contemporary Mexico are housed in former churches as a result. Finally, the bishops decided to strike. Churches were closed, there were no masses, baptisms, religious marriages or burials, except for those carried out in secret by clandestine priests at great risk to their safety. For those who would like a flavour of these turbulent times Graham Greene’s account of his travels in Mexico, Lawless Roads, or his novel, The Power and the Glory, about a priest pursued by the regime and racked by doubts about his faith, are good and evocative reads.

 

The monument to Cristo Rey

The faithful responded by taking up arms, especially in western Mexico in small towns like Talpa. On a hill above the town, our guide told us, the federal forces executed captured cristeros. On that hill now stands the grandiose monument to Cristo Rey, a huge concrete obelisk topped with a blue half-dome on which Christ stands looking across the town. Behind him are two small chapels and a larger building for exhibitions or events.

 

In the Chapel of St Michael, the saint "throw[s] into hell Satan and the other malign spirits that wander the earth to damn souls."

We had dinner one evening in a cenaduría (dinner only restaurant). The business model is to serve a limited range of antojitos (delicacies/snacks) at inexpensive prices. We shared a table with a brother and sister. Their family, all natives of Talpa, but most now living and working elsewhere, had gathered for a one-year anniversary mass for their late mother. The brother now works at a huge cattle feed lot in California. His job is to drive up and down long lines of cows dispensing food so that they fatten up as fast and as cheaply as possible. Since COP26 was scheduled in Glasgow, I could not help thinking of the CO² emissions produced by this charming man and his employers. However, the feed lot gives him a living he could not hope for in Talpa, and his sons were born in California so are now US as well as Mexican citizens. I thought it best not to discuss the environmental impact of his work. Moreover, he made it clear that he would much prefer to return to his terruño, and that his employer was muy codo (literally “very elbow”, meaning very mean, a phrase usually accompanied by tapping an elbow with the hand). Our conversation reminded me of our guide on the tourist bus, a young graduate in engineering from the Centro Universitario de la Costa or CUC in Ixtapa, Puerto Vallarta. Mexico produces plenty of well-trained professionals, but few professional jobs.

 

Huaraches for sale

Late in the afternoon, as we strolled round the downtown streets shopping for huaraches, we noticed a small group standing to the side of the basilica with loudspeakers, and then a number of municipal policemen descended from a van carrying firearms. This caused us some alarm. Were the officers going to suppress a small demonstration? Was a criminal about to be arrested in a shoot out? However, the police officers, formed disciplined ranks clutching their weapons at attention. The civilians also stood to attention opposite them, their right arm across their chest, while an officer slowly lowered a large Mexican flag as the national anthem (“Mexicans, when called to war, prepare the steel and the bridle”, etc. Stirring bellicose stuff.) blared out of the speakers. Civic patriotism is the other religion of Talpa, the ceremony organized by a descendant municipal government of the state against which the cristeros once battled.

 

The flag is lowered

The pandemic has, of course, been an economic disaster for Talpa – no 3 million pilgrims. Our hotel, opened just in time for the lockdown measures, had only three occupied rooms: our two and the room of a couple from Oakland, California. They had requested a room overlooking the street, not realizing that at night the streets fill with people dining on tacos and other delicacies served by mobile vendors, traffic and the noise of music blaring from restaurants and bars. We had seen the man loudly protesting to the receptionist that his wife could not sleep. We met at breakfast next morning when we helped them to understand the breakfast options. I explained to them that social life in Mexico is always noisy, and in the centre of town much of it is conducted on the street.

 

Making galletas de nata (cream biscuits), another local delicacy

Talpa is not a particularly picturesque town, but its setting in a valley surrounded by verdant hills is stunning, the intense devotion to the Virgin is very Mexican, the tostadas, enchiladas, tamales, tacos and sopes served in the cenadurías are excellent, and the people hospitable. And the sandals are a bargain.

Rollos, Rompope Doña Chayo (vanilla, hazelnut, coffee and almond flavours), and furniture for sale