Santa Fe, NM – A single Easter week Tradition is drawing thousands of Catholic Pilgrims to a small adobe church in the hills of Norte de New Mexico, on a trip on foot through the bad lands of the desert to reach a spiritual whale.
During generations, people from the Valle del Alto Río Grande and beyond they have walked to reach El Chimaó sanctuary to commemorate Good Friday.
The pilgrims, some walking for days, were on the way to arriving on Friday in the middle of a forecast of cold temperatures and rainfalls.
Some travelers are attracted to an inner land well that is believed to have healing powers. Throughout the year, they leave crutches, orthopedic devices and canes in acts of prayer for children and other sick, and as evidence that miracles occur.
Easter week Visitors archive through an adobe arc and narrow interior passages to find a lord of Esquipulas of our crucified on the main altar. According to the local tradition, the crucifix was found on the site in early 1800, a continent away from its analogue in a basilica in the Guatemalan city of Esquipulas.
Chimago, known for his handmade fabrics and crops from Chile, rests above the Rio Grande Valley and in front of the National Defense Laboratory in Alamos That arose in the race to develop the first atomic weapon.
The iconic Adobe church in Chimio was chosen from the local mud to sunset of Spanish domain in the Americas in early 1800, in a site already sacred by the Native Americans.
Amid narrow streets, curiosities and streams that flow rapidly in spring, the Chimioó sanctuary has been designated as a national historical milestone that includes examples of Hispanic popular art of the nineteenth century, frescoes and religious saints carved in wood known as packages.
A votive room is full of gratitude notes of those who say they had cured ailments.
A separate chapel is dedicated to the Holy Child of Atocha, a patron saint of children, travelers and those who seek liberation and an appropriate devotion figure for Chima -lia’s pilgrims on the march.
Hundreds of children’s shoes have been left in a prayer room there by the faithful in tribute to the Saint Child who wears footwear in miraculous errands. There are even small boots glued to the ceiling.
The townspeople that inhabited the Chimaóda area long before the Spanish settlers believed that they could find healing spirits in the form of hot springs. Those springs finally dried, leaving behind the land attributed with healing powers.
Photographer Miguel Gontart grew up in the Spanish Valley under Chima and made the pilgrimage when he was a child with his parents.
“Everyone went to Chima. “People simply went there because it was a powerful and spiritual place.”
The scenes of that pilgrimage, on exhibition in the New Mexico History Museum in Santa Fe, include children who eat snow cones to stay fresh, men who load large wooden crosses, babies wrapped in blankets, cyclists in leather and tired pedestrians who rest on the rails of the roads for smoking.
A generation later, the pilgrims of Good Friday still transport to cross the way to Chimaó, while the families leave the cars, push the strollers and allow time for major hikers. The multitudes of visitors often wait for hours for a turn to be presented in the Chimóó sanctuary to commemorate the crucifixion.
It is only one of the hundreds of adobe churches that anchor a unique Mexican way of life for their communities. Many are at risk of falling apart on the ground in poor condition as the congregations and traditions fade.
The pilgrims of the nearby peoples went to Chimaó in the hours of Predagen. Some have walked 20 miles (32 kilometers) from Santa Fe, while others traveled for days from Albuquerque and other places.
Sellers sell religious baratijas, coffee and sweets. State transport workers, the law enforcement agencies and other volunteers are parked along the road to guarantee the approximate traffic safety, the elements outdoors and exhaustion.
The pilgrims cross a arid landscape mottled with juniper and piñón and cholla cactus that finally give way to lush ovules and green pastures in the final descent to Chimaó.
The magnitude of the religious pilgrimage has few or rivals in the United States, many participants say that their thoughts live not only in Jesus Christ but also in the suffering of family, friends and neighbors with prayers for relief.
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