Fire in the Canyon by Leah M. Sarat

Author:Leah M. Sarat [Sarat, Leah M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Religion, General, Social Science, Anthropology, Emigration & Immigration
ISBN: 9780814759370
Google: GnUVCgAAQBAJ
Publisher: NYU Press
Published: 2013-11-11T05:24:14+00:00

6

Shielded by the Blood of Christ

Alejandro was in his early thirties when he survived the border accident that cost three others their lives. His wife was pregnant with their third child. Alejandro had been returning to his home of ten years in Las Vegas after a visit to El Alberto. The van that he and his companions were riding in was hit several miles north of the Arizona border, in what was apparently a chase by Border Patrol agents. Alejandro was in a coma for five days. When he awoke, he found himself paralyzed from the waist down. He was surprised that he had survived, for although the van was hit close to where he was sitting in the front, those in the back were killed. Among those who died were another man from El Alberto and two men from a neighboring town.

While he was in the coma, Alejandro recounted, he entered a different place. It was a wonderful place. Everything was clean, and nothing was lacking. It was peaceful. Many people had gathered for a banquet. Their clothes weren’t like the clothes people wear here. They dressed in—“You know what God wears?” he asked me. “Like, dressed in white?” I answered. “Yes, something like that.”

At some point, God came behind Alejandro and gently touched him at the back of his head. God showed him two places. One was the clean and wonderful banquet. The other was a place where everything was dirty. God told Alejandro that He still had work for him to do in the world. He was going to send Alejandro back to life, to choose the good path and to serve him. “There are only two paths,” Alejandro stressed, in a phrase repeatedly echoed among Pentecostals. When Alejandro awoke, he says he felt a warmth moving up from his feet, through his body, and out through his head and shoulders. “It was the Holy Spirit,” explained his aunt, who was listening by his bedside. Alejandro told us that God had put him through a trial. Now, he insisted, he had a message to spread. He wanted to share the message of salvation in evangelical churches throughout Mexico and, if possible, the United States.

Days later, about a hundred people gathered outside of Alejandro’s house to fast. Most were evangelical, but a few Catholic neighbors and relatives joined the crowd. Alejandro sat in a wheelchair. The presence of his broken body beside the visibly pregnant belly of his wife and the couple’s two small, rambunctious sons posed a sharp reminder of the promise and vulnerability of new life. Over the course of four hours, those gathered sang with Alejandro, prayed with him, recited Bible verses, and embraced him one by one. The pastor preached and pounded out songs of praise on his omnipresent electric keyboard. At last, the fast was broken with a feast of chicken mole and corn tortillas prepared by Alejandro’s non-Pentecostal relatives. For a moment, the lavish banquet scene of his near-death vision had become an earthly reality.

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