A coffee with parishioners from San Sebastian / Elena Poniatowska

I live in Plaza Chimalistac, next to the chapel of San Sebastián Mártir; a long time ago, and although it is now dead due to the pandemic, parishioners would knock on my door and I would always offer them a coffee in the scent of sanctity. With the pandemic, the dialogue ceased, but I remember that two tall and handsome young priests (one of them answered to the name of José Mendoza) knocked on my door with an encouraging smile:

–Come in. Can I offer you some coffee?

–Teacher –José Mendoza told me–, have you ever been to the universities that President Andrés Manuel created when he was head of government? He founded my school in Cuautepec, very close to the Reclusorio Norte, and the creative writing course is taught there with very good results: good teachers and very talented classmates, who became fond of reading…

–Yes, I have been to some conferences and I was amazed at how well the students expressed themselves.

–We had a literature teacher that you surely know, the writer Hugo Hiriart.

–Yes, Hugo Hiriart is a man of faith. He teaches workshops that are accessible to everyone. It is very easy to understand him, because he speaks slowly, although due to his age he has to use a microphone, but his classes are really very entertaining, very seductive. My teacher was also Monica Lavin, excellent and more punctual in arriving to her class than Hiriart.

(Suddenly, the priest rummages through his backpack.)

–I brought you a gift, teacher. It is a scapular that represents the Sacred Heart of Jesus, handmade by a group of nuns. Well, it is armor against the enemy and the prayer goes like this: Stop, enemy, for the Sacred Heart of Jesus is with meand I give it to you with much love, teacher. Would you like me to open it for you?

–I can do it slowly because I have poor eyesight.

–I am extremely nervous now and you are impressing me a lot.

–Don’t pretend, I don’t impose myself on anyone, I’m the size of a sitting dog… Are you a priest?

–Yes. I arrived in a community almost nine years ago and I am dedicated to teaching.

“And you too?” I ask the other young man, who out of modesty does not give me his name.

–No, no, I am a layman. You studied with some nuns in the United States, right? I read that in an interview.

–Yes, the Sacred Heart Convent, whose high-walled building was part of a small town called Torresdale, in the state of Pennsylvania: the nuns of the Sacred Heart had a great sense of humor. Thinking about it now, we practically lived in the chapel, we knelt a thousand times a day. Even to help our school team win a hockey game against another school, also from the Sacred Heart, for example Kenwood, we knelt on anthill stones.

–And you were never interested in religious life, teacher?

–Oh, of course! At the convent, the teachers dressed in habits were very persuasive and made us coco wash. I earned the right to be green band, blue band, Daughter of Marybut I was more crafty than pious. Since I am very short, I had to go to the chapel with the primary school girls, and since the first in the class were the first to enter, I did everything to get 10, so my reason was pedestrian and self-interested, but not so pious. My sister, who has more character than me, could not stand convent life, the cold water at six in the morning and refused to attend the third year of high school. high school. She returned to Mexico to dance and then to marry Pablo Aspe.

–And the nuns couldn’t convince you to become a nun?

–Yes, at first, yes. I thought about returning as a candidate to Manhattanville College in New York, but in Mexico there was a devaluation of the peso in 1949, during the six-year term of Miguel Alemán Valdés, and it fell a lot against the dollar, even though there was talk of the devaluation. Mexican miracle. Miguel Alemán Valdés’s six-year term was better, but I remember that when Luz Aspe was asked what to wear to a costume ball at the Jockey Club, she replied: Why don’t you dress up like Ali Baba and the 40 thieves?

“So, in Miguel Alemán’s time, my parents could no longer afford to pay for the plane ticket, so I learned shorthand typing at an academy in San Juan de Letrán (today Lázaro Cárdenas). I missed visiting the Eden Hall chapel three times a day, and my father told me that I could be a secretary in three languages.

–But I understand that the Empress of Romania toured the United States to raise money to save her country in the 1940s.

–Yes, the nuns chose my sister and me to deliver a bouquet of flowers to Empress Zita: You are going to approach her because you have a title and you know how to bow well..

“That Hungarian empress made a tour “She went all over the Sacred Heart convents in the United States to ask for money to get Hungary out of its dire situation. The Empress, already quite old, appeared covered in black veils, in a black dress down to her ankles, and gave her sad speech in an even sadder voice from the great Study Hall. The Reverend Mother asked us (telling us that it was a great honor for my sister and I to approach Empress Zita of Bourbon Parma of Romania), bow deeply (for which one has to bend one’s knees almost to the floor) and offer her the bouquet without changing our posture and with our heads bowed.”

–Yes, teacher, but I read later that you wrote: The Empress accepts the bouquet of flowers that my sister and I hand her without smiling. Thin and emaciated, she squeezes it in her bony hands. Then she takes the floor to discuss how horrible it is to be an Empress and to assure us all that there is no worse seat on the face of the Earth than a throne.You write: “…only veils remain that follow her like her shadow; the Empress Zita travels from Romania to tell of her miseries, which I cannot understand or accept.” Don’t you think that, for example, there are those who continue to profit from the issue of violence?

–It seems, José Manuel, that you are more interested in the monarchy than I am, but we can meet again next time and I promise you that you will find me more up to date…

–Yes, of course. There is still that part of being a mercenary in terms of profiting from pain.

–There are those who continue to impose this vision that the worse things are for the country and for others, the more profit they have.

–Yes. I think it is difficult to get out of that state of mind that we can call depression until we manage to rise socially. As long as there are these blockages, depression and sadness will remain. As long as the manipulation of information continues, since not all of us have access to a library or a newspaper, then we grab onto the first thing that is told to us and we stick with that negative information that does not help at all.

–Is it very difficult to get out of the established?

–Yes, it is difficult to get away from what has already been established for us, because it is what the majority believes. I do not think it is impossible, but it is very difficult to achieve. To resume the work of this administration, they have already begun to lay the foundations for the situation to change. I am of the opinion that these changes will not be seen in one or two six-year terms. It takes many years for such a change to be reflected on a social scale. For the poor to actually come first, how many years have to pass, how many modifications, how many huge reforms have to happen so that the poor really come first, so that we are no longer profiting from the pain, not seeing photos on social networks of: Oh, look, I found a little boy on the street, I took a photo with him, help him. If you really want to help someone, you do it and you don’t spread the word.

–Yes, from a religious perspective, Jesus says, whatever your right hand does, your left hand should not know. Politicians love it; they profit from pain, even religion itself, sometimes. For example, inclusive language, but it is a bit difficult for us ministers of public worship to talk about inclusion, isn’t it?

–I have heard that vocations have dropped significantly. Tlalpan used to be one seminary after another, one convent after another.

–In Mexico there is the Conciliar Seminary of Mexico and some other groups of other religious orders, and the priestly vocation, the desire to serve, has decreased a lot. For example, I told you that where I am 20 minutes from the capital of Puebla and, not being a Roman Catholic church, but an independent Catholic community, there is persecution to a certain extent. A few days ago, a note circulated that some Roman Catholics expelled a group of evangelicals in Oaxaca, attacking Jesus’ principle of loving one’s neighbor as oneself. When I arrived in that town, almost nine years ago, we started a cultural festival to bring art, music, theater to the community. We brought the Banda de Tlayacapan for the first time, to inaugurate our festival. It cost us a lot of work to get people to come and enjoy these activities and to keep young people away from violence.