LITMIR.BIZ

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Not to win souls but to earn money. The liturgy for the dead? Well, the dead were already buried so people didn’t come to them for this. They were already dead! So the priests taught people that the spirits were in purgatory, their children in limbo. So people had to come and confess their sins so they wouldn’t end up like that. Then they administered the Eucharist with little round cookies—the fruit of the crucifixion of Christ.” He rolled his eyes. “The cookies are called ‘hostias’ [communion wafers]. When people confessed, the priests gave them the Eucharist [comulgación]. But they were just cookies. They had coloring, but people didn’t know that. They had no idea everything the Franciscans did. The hostia is just a colored cookie,” he insisted, making a tiny “o” with his fingers to emphasize just how insignificant they were.

      “What did people think the hostia was?”

      “They thought the Father was pardoning their sins. That’s why they confessed everything. The priests asked them, ‘What have you done? What have you done? What have you done?’” Vidal drilled in an imperious tone, drawing his tiny self up and throwing out his chest in inquisitorial fashion. “So people confessed all of their sins. People believed salvation was coming because in the altar there were these imágenes [images of the saints].”

      “What do you think of this practice of praying to the saints?”

      Vidal shrugged. “Well, I didn’t know any better. I thought the same way back then. In your heart you’re accustomed to that. They don’t show you the Bible.”

      I could see a memory flicker across his face. “You know, in the convent there was this young man. He grew grapes from Italy, and they made them into wine for the Eucharist. The priests had those grapes, but no one else could. Only them. They had so many grapes in the convent—they could have filled the streets with grapes,” he marveled. “And there were always priests arriving, leaving, arriving, leaving,” his head moving back and forth as though following their trail.

      “Where were they from?”

      “Spain—all of them were from Spain.⁴ I started to study with them. They told us we would be sacristans, that we’d play the organ. Several of us went to study, and we worked. We helped the masons build classrooms. Oh, we worked hard! Well, one time we were really tired and thirsty. I kept looking at those grapes. I finally grabbed some to eat.”

      “Oh, I’d have done the same thing,” I assured him.

      He nodded. “Of course. But inside his room, through a window with bars, someone was watching me. I didn’t even see him. He came out and asked me what I’d done. ‘So you just came to the convent to steal, or did you come to work and learn?’ He made me go with him to the boss. ‘This young man stole grapes!’ Oh, that priest scolded me so much.” Vidal held his face in his hands as he remembered how sternly the priest had spoken to him. ‘You came here to rob. You’re a thief.’ That’s what he said to me! It was so ugly the way he attacked me. My heart couldn’t stand it. They talk about love, but where was their love? I started to think about that.”

      “How old were you?”

      “I was sixteen. It was a parochial school and I entered to be a priest. But I couldn’t stand much of it. They played all sorts of tricks on me,” said Vidal, with an incredulous look on his face. “Once, without permission, I started to read the Bible. Well, one of the priests saw me and practically killed me.” Sitting upright in his chair, Vidal assumed a pompous, booming voice: “‘Uncivilized men shouldn’t touch this book. Only educated men can read the Santa Biblia.’ That’s how he scolded me. It was forbidden to touch the Bible.” Vidal slumped back in disgust. “So one day when we finished work, all of us students went in and Father Zaguán closed the doors behind us. Well, I had an empty sack—it was from the sand we were using. I threw all of my things in the bag and had it waiting at the door before we came in.” Vidal leaned forward, his voice lowering into a conspiratorial tone. “I had everything ready and that night I escaped. I never went back. But in the convent I’d learned to make the imágenes and firecrackers. So when I came back here, I went to the selva. I went from church to church making money from the imágenes and firecrackers for their fiestas. I was working for this one church and I got to know the priest. So one day—I didn’t ask permission—I started to read about the birth of El Señor Jesucristo. That priest saw me and almost killed me! He was angry! ‘This book is not to be touched. Only los doctorados [the highly educated] can read this book. It is the Bible.’ That’s what he said.” Vidal shook his head, as though still perplexed by the priest’s outrage.

      “So it was forbidden to even touch the Bible?”

      “Yes. After that,” Vidal clasped his right hand to his chest, “my heart was wandering, and I knew it was better to leave.”

      Vidal’s critique of the priests and their elitism was a constant in our conversations. It is also a recurrent theme in the literature on Evangelismo. Among the attractions of Pentecostal Christianity are the promise of an unmediated, personal relationship with God and the alleged egalitarianism of a religion in which virtually anyone can learn to preach or evangelize.⁵ In his research on postwar Guatemala, Kevin O’Neill refers to the “spiritual intimacy” that characterizes religious practice for neo-Pentecostals who eschew the distancing formality of the Catholic Church and its ornate structures in favor of gathering around the kitchen table in a neighbor’s modest home.⁶

      It was to his own home that Vidal returned, his heart still wandering. But then, unexpectedly, a friend’s wife died and the family found themselves preparing for the fifth day.

      “Pichqa punchaw? The day to wash the clothes?”

      “Exactly. I went to say good-bye to her, and because I had been with the priests, people thought I was a priest too. So on the fifth day they asked me to pray. We spent the night praying, smoking, and in the morning a friend—well, I told him the priests had their book that I wanted to read but they wouldn’t let me. He asked me if I really wanted to read it and I told him of course I did. He told me he had a Bible, so I asked him to sell it to me. ‘How much does it cost?’ I asked him. He told me to just take it, but I traded a bottle of trago for it.”⁷

      I laughed at the irony. “So you traded trago for the Bible?”

      “Yes,” he said, his face breaking into a big smile. “I read it, but I didn’t understand much. So I wrote a letter to my brother-in-law in Lima with the verses I didn’t understand and asked him to come and visit. He came right away. Here, I had my chacra and worked alongside everyone, chewing coca and drinking. But my brother-in-law was an Evangelical and he didn’t like that. So one afternoon we were talking about the Bible and he showed me his. I opened it to the New Testament and he started to teach me. Well, I had my chacra and had plenty of hens, duck, yucca. So we made a pachamanca and I invited all the neighbors.⁸ While we were preparing everything, he shared the word of El Señor. The time came to open the pachamanca and we started to eat chicken and meat—there was enough for all the neighbors. We just kept inviting people, but there was still more food. The food never ended.”

      Vidal closed his eyes as though relishing the moment. “I delivered myself to El Señor.”

      I nodded as he spoke, thinking about the transformation of the fish and loaves into an abundant Andean feast. There were numerous miracles in the life history Vidal related, and the endless pachamanca was one of them. Those miracles paved the path to his conversion.

      “We decided to build a temple right there. Then people started thinking, ‘We have lots of young men and women and they need someone to marry them. We need to baptize people, and who’s going to baptize them?’ So we decided to vote and send a group to the Bible Institute. I was elected.”

      “Did you go back to Lima?”

      “No, here in Huanta. I came and interviewed with don Nicholas Cochran. ‘We’re starting an institute here,’ he told me.”

      I had

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