The account I just gave you about those ladies of the colonial era, the ones who defied the Inquisition, marks an exceptional moment in our history because in reality the power of the Catholic Church is irrefutable, and now with the strength of fundamentalist Catholic movements like the Opus Dei and the Legionarios de Cristo behind it, that power is even more unassailable.
Chileans are very religious, although in practice that has a lot more to do with fetishism and superstition than with mystic restiveness or theological enlightenment. No Chilean calls him or herself an atheist, not even dyed-in-the-wool communists, because the term is considered an insult. The word agnostic is preferred, and usually even the strongest nonbelievers are converted on their deathbeds since they risk too much if they don’t, and a last-hour confession never hurt anyone. This spiritual compulsion rises from the earth itself: a people who live amid mountains logically turn their eyes toward the heavens. Manifestations of faith are impressive. Convoked by the Church, thousands and thousands of young people carrying candles and flowers march in long processions giving praise to the Virgin Mary or praying for peace at a deafening decibel level, screaming with the enthusiasm teenagers in other countries exhibit at rock concerts. It used to be enormously popular to say the rosary as a family, and the celebrations of the month of Mary always scored a great success, but recently the television soaps have boasted more fans.
As you might expect, an esoteric strain runs through my family. One of my uncles has spent seventy years of his life preaching about the encounter with nothingness. He has many followers. If I had paid attention to him when I was young, I wouldn’t be studying Buddhism today and trying fruitlessly to stand on my head in my yoga class. When it comes to matters of holiness, however, that poor demented hundred-year-old woman who disguised herself as a nun and tried to reform the prostitutes on Calle Maipú can’t hold a candle to my great-aunt who sprouted wings. They weren’t wings with golden feathers, like those of Renaissance angels, that would have attracted everyone’s attention; they were discreet little stumps on her shoulders, erroneously diagnosed by doctors as a bone deformity. Sometimes, depending on where the light was coming from, we could see a halo like a plate of light floating above her head. I recounted her drama in the Stories of Eva Luna, and I don’t want to repeat it here. It’s enough to say that in contrast with the Chilean’s general tendency to complain about everything, she was always content, even though she had a tragic fate. In another person that attitude of unfounded happiness would have been unpardonable, but in such a transparent woman it was easy to tolerate. I have always kept her photograph on my desk so I will recognize her when she slips slyly into the pages of a book or appears in some corner of the house.
In Chile there is a plethora of saints of all stripes, which isn’t strange, considering it is the most Catholic country in the world—more Catholic than Ireland, and certainly much more so than the Vatican. A few years ago we had a young girl, in appearance very like the statue of Saint Sebastian the Martyr, who performed amazing cures. The press and television swarmed all over her, as well as multitudes of pilgrims who never gave her a moment’s peace. When she was examined more closely, she turned out to be a transvestite, but that did nothing to detract from her prestige or put an end to her marvels. Just the opposite. Every so often we wake up with the announcement that another saint or new Messiah has made his or her appearance, which never fails to attract hopeful throngs. In the seventies, when I was working as a journalist, I happened to write an article about a girl who was credited with having the gift of prophecy and a faculty for curing animals and restoring dead engines to working order. The humble little house where she lived was filled with the country folk who came every day, always at the same hour, to witness her discreet miracles. They swore that they heard an inexplicable rain of rocks on the roof of the hut, rattling like the end of the world, and that the earth would tremble and the girl would fall into a trance. I had the opportunity to attend a couple of these events, and I witnessed the trance, during which the young saint displayed the extraordinary physical strength of a gladiator, but I don’t recall any rocks from the skies or quaking earth. It’s possible, as a local evangelical preacher explained, that these things failed to occur because I was there, a skeptic capable of ruining even the most legitimate miracle. No matter, the phenomenon was reported in the newspapers, and people’s interest in the saint kept rising until the army came and put an end to everything in its own way. I used her story ten years later in one of my novels.
Catholics form a majority in Chile, although there are more and more Evangelicals and Pentecostals who irritate everyone because they have a direct understanding with God while everyone else must pass through the priestly bureaucracy. The Mormons, who are also numerous and very powerful, serve their followers as a valuable employment agency, the way that members of the Radical Party used to do. Whoever is left is either Jewish, Muslim, or, in my generation, a New Age spirtualist, which is a cocktail of ecological, Christian, and Buddhist practices, along with a few rituals recently rescued from the Indian reservations, and with the usual accompaniment of gurus, astrologists, psychics, and other spiritual guides. Since the health care system was privatized and pharmaceuticals became an immoral business, folkloric and Eastern medicine, machis or meicas, our Indian healers, and self-taught herbalists and purveyors of miraculous cures have in part replaced traditional medicine, with equally effective results. Half of my friends are in the hands of a psychic who controls their destinies and keeps them safe by cleansing their auras, laying on hands, or leading them on astral journeys. The last time I was in Chile, I was hypnotized by a friend who is studying to be a curandero, a healer, who led me back through several incarnations. It wasn’t easy to return to the present, however, since my friend hadn’t reached that part of the course, but the experiment was well worth the effort because I discovered that in former lives I was not Genghis Khan, as my mother believes.
I have not succeeded in completely shaking free of religion, and when I’m faced with any difficulty, the first thing that occurs to me is to pray, just in case, which is what all Chileans do, even atheists . . . forgive me, agnostics. Let’s say I need a taxi. Experience has taught me that once through the Lord’s Prayer will make one appear. There was a time, somewhere between infancy and the age of fifteen, when I nursed the fantasy of being a nun as a way of disguising the fact that I most surely was not going to find a husband, and to this day I haven’t completely discarded that fancy. I am still assailed by the temptation to end my days in poverty, silence, and solitude in a Benedictine order or a Buddhist convent. Theological subtleties are not what count with me, what I like is the lifestyle. Despite my unconquerable frivolity, the monastic life attracts me. When I was fifteen, I left the church forever and acquired a horror of religions in general and monotheistic faiths in particular. I am not alone in this predicament; many women my age, guerrillas in the battle for women’s lib, are similarly uncomfortable in patriarchal religions—can you think of one that isn’t?—and they have had to invent their own cults, although in Chile even cults have a Christian bent. However animist someone may claim to be, there will always be a cross somewhere in her house, or around her neck. My religion, should anyone be interested, can be reduced to a simple question: What is the most generous thing one can do in this case? If that question doesn’t apply, I have another: What would my grandfather think about this? None of which relieves me of the compulsion to cross myself in my hour of need.
I used to say that Chile is a fundamentalist country, but after seeing the excesses of the Taliban, I have to moderate my opinion. Maybe we’re not fundamentalists, but we’re close. We have been fortunate in that in Chile, unlike other countries in Latin America, the Catholic Church—with a few regrettable exceptions—has almost always been on the side of the poor, which has gained it enormous respect and sympathy. During the dictatorship, many priests and nuns took on the task of helping the victims of repression, and they paid dearly for it. As Pinochet said in 1979, “the only persons going around crying for democracy to be restored in Chile are the politicians and one or two priests.” That was the period when the generals posited that Chile was blessed with “a totalitarian democracy.”
Churches are filled on Sundays, and the pope is venerated, although no one pays any attention to his views on contraceptives because it’s thought that there’s no way an aged celibate who doesn’t have to work for a living can be an expert on that subject. Religion is colorful and ritualistic. We don’t have Carnival, but we do have processions. Every saint is noted for his or her special power, like the gods on Olympus: restoring sight to the blind, punishing unfaithful husbands, finding a sweetheart, protecting drivers. The most popular, however, is undoubtedly Padre Hurtado, who isn’t a saint as yet, though we all hope he soon will be, no matter that the Vatican is not noted for swift action. This amazing priest founded a center for good works called “The Home of Christ,” which today is a multimillion-dollar enterprise devoted entirely to aiding the poor. Padre Hurtado is so miraculous that I have seldom asked him for something that hasn’t been granted, after I have made some significant sacrifice or contributed a fair sum to his charitable works. I must be one of the few people alive who have read the three complete volumes of the ageless epic La Araucana, in rhyme and old Spanish. I didn’t do it out of curiosity, or to pretend to be cultured, but to fulfill a promise to Padre Hurtado. This man of good heart maintained that a moral crisis is produced when the same affluent Catholics who faithfully go to mass deny their workers a dignified wage. These words should be engraved on the thousand-peso note, so we never forget them.
There are also various representations of the Virgin Mary, which compete among themselves: those faithful to the Virgen del Carmen, patron saint of the armed forces, believe that the Virgen de Lourdes or the Virgen de La Tirana are inferior, a sentiment returned with equal delicacy by the devout followers of the latter Virgins. Regarding La Tirana, it’s of interest to mention that in the summertime her festival is celebrated in a sanctuary near the city of Iquique, in the north of Chile, where various followers dance in her honor. The fiesta is a little like Brazil’s Carnival, but on a much more sedate scale: as I’ve said before, we Chileans are not the extroverts of Latin America. The dance studios prepare all year for the festival, practicing choreographed dances and making costumes, and on the scheduled day dancers perform before the statue of La Tirana, the men made up as heroes, like Batman, for example, and the girls wearing revealing blouses, skirts that barely cover the buttocks, and boots with high heels. It is not too surprising, therefore, that the Church does not sanction these demonstrations of popular faith.
Not satisfied with a huge and multihued bevy of saints, we also have a delicious oral tradition of evil spirits, interventions of the devil, and dead who rise from their tombs. My grandfather swore that he saw the devil on a bus, and that he recognized him because he had green cloven hooves like a billygoat.
In Chiloé, a group of islands off Puerto Montt in the south of the country, they tell tales of warlocks and malicious monsters: of La Pincoya, a beautiful damsel who rises from the water to trap unwary men, and the Caleuche, an enchanted ship that carries away the dead. On nights of the full moon, glowing lights indicate sites where treasures are hidden. It is said that in Chiloé there was for a long time a government of warlocks called the Recta Provincia, or Righteous Province, which met in caves by night. The guardians of those caves were the inbunches, fearsome creatures that feed on blood, and whose bones have been broken, and eyelids and anuses stitched shut, by witches. The Chilean’s imagination for cruelty never ceases to terrify me.
Chiloé’s culture is different from that of the rest of the country, and their people are so proud of their isolation that they oppose the construction of a bridge that will join the large island to Puerto Montt. It is such an extraordinary place that every Chilean and every tourist must visit it at least once, even at the risk of staying forever. The Chilotes live as they did a hundred years ago, dedicated to agriculture and the fishing industry, specifically salmon. Buildings are constructed solely of wood, and in the heart of each house there is always a huge wood stove burning day and night for cooking and for providing warmth to the family, friends, and enemies gathered around it. The scent of those houses in winter is an ineradicable memory: blazing, aromatic firewood, wet wool, soup kettles. The Chilotes were the last to cast their lot with the republic when Chile declared its independence from Spain, and in 1826 they tried to join with the crown of England. They say that the Recta Provincia attributed to warlocks was in fact a shadow government in times when the inhabitants refused to accept the authority of the Chilean republic.
My grandmother Isabel didn’t believe in witches, but I wouldn’t be in the least surprised to learn that she had attempted to fly on a broomstick because she spent her life practicing effects with paranormal phenomena and trying to communicate with the Great Beyond, an activity that in her time the Catholic Church regarded with a jaundiced eye. Somehow that good lady managed to attract mysterious forces that moved the table during her séances. Today that table is in my home, after having traveled around the world several times, following my stepfather in his diplomatic career only to be lost during the years of exile. My mother recovered it through some burst of inspiration and shipped it to me in California, by air freight. It would have been cheaper to send an elephant because we are talking here about a massive, carved-wood Spanish table that has a formidable foot at the center formed of four ferocious lions. It takes three men to lift it. I don’t know what trick my grandmother performed when she made it dance around the room by stroking it lightly with her index finger. That lady convinced her descendants that after her death she would come to visit whenever they summoned her, and I suppose she has kept her promise. I don’t claim that her ghost, or any other, is at my side every day—I expect that they have more important matters to attend to—but I like the idea that she is ready to come in case of some compelling need.
That good woman maintained that we all have psychic powers but since we don’t use them they atrophy, like muscles, and finally disappear. I must clarify that her paranormal experiments were never a macabre experience, none of the dark rooms, mortuary candelabra, and organ music that we connect with Transylvania. Telepathy, the ability to move objects without touching them, seeing the future, and communicating with souls in the Great Beyond may happen any hour of the day, and in a very casual manner. For example, my grandmother didn’t believe in telephones, which in Chile were a disaster until the day of the cell phone, and used telepathy instead to send recipes for apple pie to the three Morla sisters, her bosom friends in the Hermandad Blanca, Sisterhood in White, who lived on the other side of the city. Whether or not the method worked was left unproved, because all four were terrible cooks. The Hermandad Blanca was composed of those eccentric ladies and my grandfather, who was a total nonbeliever but nevertheless insisted on accompanying his wife so he could protect her in case of danger. The man was a skeptic by nature, and never was persuaded that the souls of the dead moved the table, but once his wife suggested that it might not be spirits but extraterrestrials, he embraced the idea enthusiastically because he considered that a more scientific explanation.
There is nothing strange in all this. Half of Chile is guided by the horoscope, by seers, or by the vague prognostications of the I Ching; the other half hang crystals around their necks or follow feng shui. On the lovelorn advice programs on TV, problems are resolved with tarot cards. The greater part of former militant leftist revolutionaries are now dedicated to spiritual practices. (There is some dialectic link between the guerrilla mentality and the esoteric that I can’t quite put my finger on.) My grandmother’s sessions seem more rational to me than vows made to saints, buying indulgences to guarantee heaven, or pilgrimages to local holy women: buses bursting with people and stands selling sausages and miraculous color prints. I have often heard that my grandmother moved the sugar bowl without touching it, using only her mental powers. I’m not sure whether I witnessed that feat or if from hearing it so often I’ve convinced myself it’s true. I don’t remember the sugar bowl, but it seems to me there was a little silver bell, topped with an effeminate prince, that was used in the dining room to call the servants between courses. I don’t know if I dreamed the episode, if I invented it, or if it truly happened: I see that little bell slide silently across the tablecloth, as if the prince had taken on a life of his own, make a stunning Olympian turn, to the amazement of the diners, and return to my grandmother’s place at the foot of the table. This happens with many events and anecdotes in my life: it seems I have lived them, but when I write them down in the clear light of logic, they seem unlikely. That really doesn’t disturb me, however. What does it matter if these events happened or if I imagined them? Life is, after all, a dream.
I did not inherit my grandmother’s psychic powers, but she opened my mind to the mysteries of the world. I accept that anything is possible. She maintained that there are multiple dimensions to reality, and that it isn’t prudent to trust solely in reason and in our limited senses in trying to understand life; other tools of perception exist, such as instinct, imagination, dreams, emotions, and intuition. She introduced me to magical realism long before the so-called boom in Latin American literature made it fashionable. Her views have helped me in my work because I confront each book with the same criterion she used to conduct her sessions: calling on the spirits with delicacy, so they will tell me their lives. Literary characters, like my grandmother’s apparitions, are fragile beings, easily frightened; they must be treated with care so they will feel comfortable in my pages.
Apparitions, tables that move on their own, miraculous saints and devils with green hooves riding on public transport make life and death more interesting. Souls in pain know no borders. I have a friend in Chile who wakes up at night to find tall, skinny visitors from Africa dressed in tunics and armed with spears, specters only he can see. His wife, who sleeps right beside him, has never seen the Africans, only two eighteenth-century English gentlewomen who walk through doors. And another friend of mine lived in a house in Santiago where lamps mysteriously crashed to the floor and chairs overturned; the source of the mayhem was discovered to be the ghost of a Danish geographer who was dug up in the patio along with his maps and his notebook. How did that poor wandering soul end up so far from home? We will never know, but the fact is that after several novenas and a few masses for him, the geographer left. He must have been a Calvinist or a Lutheran during his lifetime and didn’t like the papist rites.
My grandmother claimed that space is filled with presences, the dead and the living all mixed together. It’s a fabulous idea, and that’s why my husband and I have built a large house in northern California with high ceilings, beams, and arches that invite ghosts from various periods and latitudes, especially those of the far south. In an attempt to replicate my great-grandparents’ large house, we have aged it through the costly and laborious process of attacking the doors with hammers, staining the walls with paint, rusting the iron with acid, and treading on the plants in the garden. The result is rather convincing: I believe that more than one distraught spirit might settle in with us, deceived by the look of the property. During the process of adding centuries to the house, the neighbors watched from the street, open-mouthed, not understanding why we were building a new house if we wanted an old one. The reason is that in California you don’t find much in the way of Chile’s colonial style, and in any case, nothing is truly old. Don’t forget that before 1849 there was no San Francisco. Where it stands now was a village called Yerba Buena; it was populated by a handful of Mexicans and Mormons, and its only visitors were fur dealers. It was gold fever that brought the hordes to San Francisco. A house that looks like ours is a historical impossibility in these parts.