I’m from the Southwest. I, like most Manitos, can put together a reasonable claim to being part of “los primeros pobladores de Nuevo Mejico.” I'm a "local" out there, i.e., I'm a mestizo with indigenous and European roots. Unlike the East, the borderland outlook is rooted more in terms of the person rather than their class origins; a notion derived from a non-Eurocentric sense of self.
Hijole there I go, tirando rollos, at any rate, I must admit that part of growing up in Nuevo gave me a fondness for eccentricity and los loco religious loonies. I mean after all, Nuevo was filled with bien locos like El Hermito Juan Maria Agostiniani et al. Consider this, ‘Burque [Albuquerque] and Nuevo itself are on Route 66 and with all loose screws rolling down to S. California; well inevitably quite a few of them ended up staying in NM.
For example, I’m partial to the strange names that Anglos would create for their churches y sects. I remember one of my uncles used to live just around the block from the Primitive Baptist Church. The name of that church always brings a smile and a chuckle to these old bones. I note this because well, they are trapped in a solipsism of their own making, making them Baptist but hardly primitive, i.e., practitioners of the faith of the early Church. IFor the most part they they view Rome as Babylon; at the same time they accept the canonical gospels created by the Roman Church – go figure; but they do drink wine - but I don't think they can dance. The result is that they cannot be really primitive and venture forth into the really weird hermenutical world of folks in the Jesus Seminar or Gnostic territory like the one revealed in the Nag Hammadi Library; one of my favorites is “The Thunder, Perfect Mind” in which God is viewed as a feminine principle.
At any rate, the burned over district [Upstate NY] is hardly home any longer to the weirdness found in places like West Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, etc. I mean, you’ll every now and then, run into readers of the Left Behind series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins – but, you have to look hard to find authentic fundi Bible thumping true believers around here waiting for the rapture.
I find it odd and slightly off-putting that the Times and other papers of note fail to read the fundi code spoke by our Commander in Chief and Condi; after all, Condi has been talking “birth pangs” in the Middle East when referring to the current bronca in the Middle East. Now any self-respecting fundi knows immediate that Shrub and Condi are saying they are trying to sheppard in the END TIMES. The funny part is that some folks are saying Shrub is the Anti-Christ while others, including the fundies, are wildly searching for him.
Meanwhile, both sides continue to blow themselves to smithereens and I keep thinking it is time for an inconvenient truth -- our childhood has come to end. We’re destroying each other and all the creatures that live with us on this planet. And I don’t think we’ll be able to say “Gort! Klaatu Barada Nikto” and save our bacon. I’m for creating a posse of Gorts to end the useless and savage bloodfeuds concocted by humans; but for now -- I just imagine.
Paz
