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Religion
- Callaloo
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 27, Number 1, Winter 2004
- pp. 111-113
- 10.1353/cal.2004.0031
- Article
- Additional Information
- Purchase/rental options available:
Callaloo 27.1 (2004) 111-113
[Access article in PDF]
Religion
[Versión Español]
ROWELL: Do you go to church here in Coyolillo?
INOCENCIA: Yes.
ROWELL: Every Sunday?
INOCENCIA: Every Sunday.
ROWELL: Do all the people make it to church on Sunday? Everybody?
INOCENCIA: Yes.
ROWELL: What is the difference between Sunday and Saturday in Coyolillo? What do people do different aside from going to church?
INOCENCIA: Nothing more than work on Saturday. On Sunday they rest.
ROWELL: You mentioned a godmother? Whose godmother is she?
FIDELA: She's my godmother, because of a little necklace she gave me. She and her husband accepted my children, and I am very grateful for that. I looked for them as godparents for his first communion. And now in May, God willing, they're going to baptize the girl, because I haven't been able to do that yet. Here for a baptism or something like that, we always have to do it, and the godparents invite people over. You have to make food, give a little to drink, sodas and that sort of thing.
ROWELL: Is that a tradition?
FIDELA: Yes, it's tradition. And that's why I haven't baptized her, and she's already five.
ROWELL: Are you a Catholic?
FIDELA: Catholic, yes. I think about going to the United States again. I want to go there again, but life there treated me very badly. Sometimes I regret it. I think, if I leave [End Page 111] I'll take out a mortgage on my house. But then if I can't pay for it, they'll take it away. I'm not going to leave my children wandering the streets. When I start wanting to leave, I start to think about them.
JONES: Are there only Catholics here or are there other religious groups?
ANTONIO: A lot of us are Catholic, but there's a little of everything including Protestants. I've got all these Bibles here that the Protestants just brought me so that people can come pick them up. They go from house to house sticking their nose in other people's business, and why, if they already have their own people. They should stick to their people. We give them a hard time.
We don't like this. We've already got the belief we've had since we came into this world, and I think we'll probably die with this one. Because we can't grab on to another religion on top of the one we have. There've been a lot who have come to live here. And this guy came, and we had a little fun. And I told him, well then you have your belief and I've got mine. Don't you believe in God? Then, what God do you believe in? Who do you come into this world for, for this one or for the other. But that's not right, because we all came into the world for the same thing. Yes, it's true because I've never known another God. There's always some who run away. There are some that say they work in that, with the evangelicals, but they should have been here before, when we were only two or three.Then some of their friends from Xalapa came to teach the people, to tell them how they should do things, singing and everything.
So this guy was here, and he was telling the father of the Almolongas what he should do. And he realized it and sent his posse after them. They ran them out of here and three or four died from here, from Coyolillo, because they couldn't believe that he didn't want their beliefs, and he was going to force his on them. And since they didn't listen he brought them down. He was always the one that kept the whole settlement together because the settlement was falling apart a good bit. The settlement wasn't working like it should. He picked all the workers, and he treated us all well, but when someone didn...