Deconstructing Paradise by Reagan Patricia E.;

Author:Reagan, Patricia E.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Lexington Books/Fortress Academic
Published: 2012-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Perhaps this mystery did not fit into their simple understanding. Either he was God and therefore could not die. Or he was a man, but in that case his blood was shed uselessly on their heads to redeem them, since things had only changed for the worst.

The villagers view the wooden Christ as “harapiento . . . burlado, escarnecido y muerto” “ragged . . . mocked, ridiculed and dead”; 40) just like they are and they have been. The wood-carved Christ is both rudimentary and unattractive. He looks as if he too suffers from leprosy because of spots on his wood. As the narrator, Miguel Vera concludes, the villager’s impression of Christ suggests “una inversión de la fe, un permanente conato de insurrección” (“An inversion of faith, a permanent attempt at insurrection”; 40) for which Ítape is already well known, as Vera reports.

In subsequent chapters, it is revealed that the Christ figure was discovered in the hut of Gaspar Mora, a recluse leper, who had likely carved him to keep him company in his dying days. Indeed, as Urte Lehnerdt indicates, for this reason, the wooden Christ figure can be seen as symbolic of the search for solidarity on the part of Gaspar (68). When the villagers discover him after Gaspar dies, they carry the Christ through the woods to the village. As they arrive it begins to rain—the first rain of a terrible period of drought—no doubt a miracle, one that the villagers attribute to the wooden Christ. The priest claims that the devil may be trying to manipulate the villagers with Christ’s image and he rejects the wooden Christ. However, the villagers defend him immediately, as if they have finally found a savior in whom they want to place their faith. As David William Foster asserts, “Their acceptance is spontaneous and overriding, despite the vociferous and violent objections of the town’s priest, the representative of organized religion so bitterly denounced by Roa Bastos” (“The Figure,” 19). Similarly, as Mercedes Hijo-Robles suggests, by the very fact that the wooden Christ-figure emerges outside of the Church, he becomes a “popular emblem of self-expression and cumulative grievances” (199) and not a religious or sacred emblem.

Feeling helpless about the reaction of the town’s people, the priest demands that the teenage sacristan burn the Christ, which drives the young sacristan to hang himself from the rope of the Church bell. Finally, seeing that the popular opinion on the Christ figure would prevail, a priest from Asunción is brought in to ordain the Christ. This priest names the hill where his cross is hung Tupá-Rapé, meaning Way of God, but Macario asserts that it should be called Kuimbaé-Rapé, meaning Way of Man (67–68). He tells the story:

El hombre . . . tiene dos nacimientos. Uno al nacer, otro al morir. . . . Muere pero queda vivo en los otros, si ha sido cabal con el prójimo. Y si sabe olvidarse en vida de si mismo, la tierra come su cuerpo pero no su recuerdo.

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