A Prayer to Toribio

By ART CULLEN

Dear Toribio Romo,

We think you’re out there somewhere, in a red pickup where water pours from an apparent mirage in the Sonoran desert. People have told us you directed them here. They wear your picture on medals and scapulars with those piercing blue eyes that met those of the soldiers who murdered you in the Cristeros War for being a priest, playwright and patriot. You exhorted the young men of the Los Altos region of Jalisco to stay home and fight for freedom in the wake of the Mexican Revolution, until the government came to muzzle you in Tequila at the close of the 1920s.

They say you kept on. That you are keeping on. That you continue to guide people to safety. You and Our Lady of Guadalupe, who appeared to the least among us, Juan Diego, and she insisted that he make those high-minded bishops take him seriously. He had to make roses grow in snow. Just a couple weeks ago, the people who believe danced the story right into the church that bears her name.

We were cooped up at home on Christmas with COVID while Clarence made a visit upon George Bailey. A lot of people believe in some spirit riding shotgun in their lives. We have no other explanation why we lived to tell about it but for Uncle Joe Cullen watching over us. We are Irish, raised to respect such possibilities. Ours came over on cattle boats. Someone was riding on Biddy Mulroney’s shoulder in steerage from Kilkenny so she could watch Chicago burn. (They blamed the fire on the Irish immigrants, of course, not that Chicago was built of sticks.)

So we have an inclination toward the mystical and a disposition for the immigrant because they built this country after we stole it from the likes of Juan Diego, who had just been minding his own business.

Exhausted from holiday movies and bad football, we turned to the Panic News Channel. Immigrants are flooding the USA. Joe Biden doesn’t know what to do. Donald Trump would only make it worse. People are dying. Children are suffering. Politicians go with their armed guards to the border to talk tough while babies sleep in a tent city at Juarez. But for the grace of God it could have been that cute kid from El Salvador next door. Where was the grace of God for the one who didn’t make it? We thought a lot about how we need you right now.

For mercy and guidance.

Mercy for those who drew the short straw, guidance for those of us who are trying to do what’s right.

The same forces that drove you to write your play, “Go North!,” which drew the government’s aim, remain at play: oppression by government and gangs, guns made north of the border, extreme poverty and racism toward the indigenous. (“They’re poisoning our blood,” Donald Trump repeats.)

Mercy should be our instinct and freedom must be our guide.

They are coming to escape authoritarian governments. They flee gang violence inspired by our demand for opiates seeded by US pharmaceutical companies. Help us recognize what the root causes are. The closer you get to the equator, the tougher it gets to survive. It’s going to get pretty tough south of Kanas City in a bit. Climate change is driving migration as drought starves peasants in nations built on plantation economies. Leaders of nations will pledge to work together, to build more walls among people and soldiers to guard them. It may bring order but not justice. Isn’t that what you were, or are, about?

This is not a challenge but a cry for help in opening eyes and hearts in a season devoted to a poor family in transit amid a despotic system.

We are not religious in a hierarchical sense. Neither was Our Lady. She did not appear to a prelate or politician but to a campesino like you. The point of it was peace. Millions of men with her image on their backs cannot be that wrong. Keep us on the right path, Padre. We need you about now. There are deserts all over the place where people need to see a friend in a cowboy hat who can talk sense. We were all born with inalienable rights. That is what you were preaching during the revolution. So were Zapata and Martĩ on the battle fields, and Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta in the produce fields, and so were Jefferson and Franklin. We need to hear it now.

We don’t know much about prayer, honestly. It’s more effective than cursing into a December rain. What we do know, for sure, is that when you set your mind to what is real and right — and who do we think we are to declare that you are not out there? — that we can make roses grow in snow. That’s our entreaty on this Fifth Day of Christmas. The Epiphany, curiously on the calendar for Jan. 6, is upon us. That’s when the Wise Men show up. Remind us all. The fight for freedom never ends.

That’s it. Thanks for listening. Our regards to all the saints. Especially Uncle Joe.

Amen.

Art Cullen is publisher and editor of the Storm Lake Times Pilot in northwest Iowa (stormlake.com). He won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing in 2017 and is author of the book “Storm Lake: A Chronicle of Change, Resilience, and Hope from America’s Heartland.” Email times@stormlake.com.

From The Progressive Populist, February 1, 2024

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