Eating Dirt

Sign on the wall of El Santuario de Chimayo, New Mexico T his place feels old beyond human recollection. The carvings and paintings were surely done by human hands, but no one remembers whose hands those were. The work is striking, especially in the apse behind the altar. There, the colors of surrounding hills have been transferred onto nearly luminous wooden reredos full of Catholic symbolism. Above the altar hangs a most intricate ancient Christ crucified on a green cross. Overhead, the roof is held in place by massive carved wooden beams, big around as human bodies and blackened by nearly two centuries of incense and candle smoke. The air is rich with the memory of thousands of benedictions and baptisms. Threadbare trousers have polished the pews to a high varnish that this afternoon ripples with a low orange glow from dozens of votive candles burning purposefully in back of the church. This is El Santuario de Chimayo, an old adobe-brick and stucco structure in the hills of northern New Mexico. This chapel was built in 1816, but a sanctuary has been at this site for much longer. The locals offer many legends about its origins, fanciful tales of miraculous crucifixes and Santo Niños. But the truth is buried beneath the murk of time. One thing is clear though, as beautiful as the sanctuary is and as striking as the crucifix (El Sefior de Esquipalas) above the altar is, nearly none of those in the pews today have come to see the sanctuary or the crucifix. Instead, they have come from all over the world to this place in New Mexico to eat the dirt that lies beneath the adobe floor. According to legend, that dirt is sacred, consecrated by Christ himself. Crutches cast off by the newly healed fill the anteroom, and on some days, the line of pilgrims stretches for blocks. Some call this place the Lourdes of America, but in Chimayo the miracle can be seen each day by anyone who peers into a low-ceilinged room off the main entrance. There, a hole (the posito), half a meter across, pierces the floor. Beside it, someone has left a plastic spoon to aid the faithful. Beyond the spoon, beneath the opening, lies only dirt, only the deep-red dirt of Chimayo. Most of the faithful here today have come to eat that dirt. This religious tradition is practiced, as …