Manuel Dexterity
Oct 17, 2009, 10:06 AM
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This past week I was asked by my wife to take her mother to Talpa de Allende, Jalisco in order for her to pagar una manda. It was as good an excuse as any to take a road trip.
We took a less direct route on Hwy. 80 instead of the shorter drive through Ameca. The drive through Cuautla takes you, in my opinion, through some of the prettiest scenery in the state of Jalisco. It had been a number of years since I had been to Talpa. In the 1970's I worked for a hardwood lumber dealer in Guadalajara and we had harvested a large amount of Mexican walnut in the area. Unfortunately, as was far too common in those days, it was overlogged and this fine wood has become next to impossible to acquire. But fortunately in the past 30 some years the tree has made a noticeable comeback and hopefully will be better managed once it is again allowed to be harvested.
While my suegra paid her debt to the Virgin, my wife and I visited the cathedral's museum. On display were numerous retablos, or devotional paintings. These paintings depict some sort of calamitous event in a person's life that led them to ask for a favorable resolution through divine intervention, in this case, that of the Virgin de Talpa. The painting is their way of giving thanks to the Virgin for favorably resolving the problem.
The painting will usually show the petitioner in some sort of dire circumstance (several were being hovered over on the operating table by a surgical team), the image of the Virgin or other sacred being and a short description of what took place. The art work is usually crude but descriptive and the text filled with grammatical and spelling errors reflective of the person's level of formal education. Words run together or syllables seperated....por averme o poraberme
One retablo told the story of deliverance when they were "sosprendidos" por dos tigres (caught by surprise by two large cats) as they passed over the mountains near Tuxpan.
Another gave thanks for her daughter finally marrying after living in sin (despues de vivir en mal estado!!) for 7 years!!!
Others tell of serious illnesses or accidents in which a family member survived. And quite a few giving thanks for finding valuable farm animals that had wandered off. Alcoholism and violence are also common themes.
This is a unique art form in both the primitive execution of the painting and text and also insight it gives into the Mexican culture through the eyes of the devotee.
(This post was edited by Manuel Dexterity on Oct 17, 2009, 10:17 AM)
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