Is Chimayo actually in America?

Yesterday, we left the United States for Chimayo.

The journey started with some evil darkness when we couldn’t help but observe cross after cross after cross along the road passing through the Sangre de Cristo Mountains indicating someone had died. 

El Santuario.de Chimayo

We also passed up people who seemed like pilgrims walking along the desolate highway far from any town. Pilgrims in the USA!? Upon reaching Chimayo, we were certain that we’d crossed a magical portal into a foreign land. The Santuario de Chimayo is the type of church you might find in Chiapas, Old Mexico. It’s humble, personal, and reverent. The pilgrims along the road were indeed coming there, as do 300,000 per year, some crawling.

Room of magic dirt at El Santuario.

El Santuario has magic dirt. It is from the ground beneath the church, which was placed in that location when a priest followed a bright light to a spot in the ground where he dug up a crucifix.  The dirt is reputed to have healing qualities.

While we don’t share the Catholic faith, the visceral faith that you can feel and unpretentious nature of the holy site is uplifting and you can feel the spirituality as you walk around the church, which is very salt of the earth compared to the grand cathedrals of Europe or modern edifices of the US.

Patricia Trujillo-Oviedo, Chimayo historian

We then had an amazingly gracious visit with Pat, the wife of the late artist Marco Oviedo. Their family moved to New Mexico nearly 400 years ago and his sculpture is very Catholic from a Spanish heritage. Besides selling his remaining art, Patricia raises Mammoth Donkeys whose ancestors hail from Catalonia, and also found the time to publish a book on the history of Chimayo. She generously offered us one of her books so we could learn more, which we are enjoying.

There are pottery makers and local weavers with Hispanic and native traditions or just mixing them up. Chimayo is chock full of artists and crafts people scratching out a living. So were we in the US? Spain? Mexico? Hard to tell but it’s part of what makes New Mexico special.

Postscript: The number of crosses remains a bit of a mystery, although we suspect that what is evidently a serious drug problem in Northern New Mexico plays a role. It’s a reminder that New Mexico being a poorer state has social consequences.