Los senderos de la fe, Espinazo, Nuevo León © Lorenzo Armendáriz

Walk. Keep on walking without being able to see your destination. Walk encouraged by singing, praying, or the uncertainty inspired by the same road, which is nothing more than the horizon. The pilgrims walk in the desert and it seems that where they come from there is nothing, nor is there anything where they’re going, just an immense backdrop, the land they tread on, a changing sky, but they keep on walking…

“What’s exciting about the journey is not the destination itself, but the road that takes you there”, states Lorenzo Armendáriz (1961) as a foundation for the project El viaje, dos realidades: una propuesta documental (The Journey, Two Realities: A Documentary Proposal), which earned him a three-year fellowship from the National Roster of Artists. The project has two elements: the Pueblo de Dios (God’s Town), which provides continuity to his research on gypsies, now in South America, and Los senderos de la fe (The Paths of Faith), which evolves around the religious pilgrimages in the north, center and south of Mexico.

This essay is now complemented by pictures resulting from his investigations in the north, which document pilgrims traveling to the sanctuaries of the Niño Fidencio (The Child Fidencio) in Espinazo, State of Nuevo León, the Santo Niño de Atocha (The Holy Child of Atocha) in Plateros, State of Zacatecas, and the Virgen de la Sierrita (the Virgin from the Sierrita) in the Sierra de Gamón, State of Durango.

Los senderos de la fe, Espinazo, Nuevo León © Lorenzo Armendáriz

The use of different cameras, formats and films have a complex aesthetic intent which seeks to transmit the true complexity of underlying cultural traits in different peoples’ conception of the world.

We know that Mexico is one and many at the same time. From the onset we would affirm that geography is cultural and that the division between Mesoamerica and Arid America has been relegated when Mexico is the subject (the country prefers to be identified with the first category, drawing it closer to the image of the horn of plenty: water, greenness, fruit, towns, civilization).

Almost unknown in the central areas and rarely seen or registered elsewhere, Arid America beats to the pulse of the boiling sun and dryness, the breadth of the land, which becomes wider as you move to the north, and the spectacle of light lines up in varicolored clouds and reflections when not tinted by the sky blue sky or by creating upside down seas with beaches and waves when the white clouds turn into purple, violet, red, orange, lilac and pink ones. Here there is sweet acacia, waxy sponge, and creosote bushes growing, as well as land and dust, piles of dirt and dust storms. The desert.

This sets the scene for a town of believers (most of the time hidden by distance and climatic conditions) whose rituals, ceremonies and practices are little known.

Armendáriz has walked like any other pilgrim, so his vision is that of someone who formed part of a common and shared experience by those who march in search of not going from place to place, but passage from an emotional state to a mystical experience, to take your body to the utmost state of exhaustion, to contribute a little of yourself to the collective state; to give in with an “I can’t go on”, only to join once again in the walk (in spite of blisters, pain and thirst), which changes your perception and conception of things.

Los senderos de la fe, Espinazo, Nuevo León © Lorenzo Armendáriz

Due to this, by capturing his surroundings (the sky and the land and how these aspects change as the pilgrim moves on), he would also be concerned with the surrounding bodies and their changes: the pilgrims change, their way of walking changes, their faces reflect different emotions, attitudes, and the look on their faces is not the same, their skin is tightened by the sun, dust and tears, and just as the panoramic view can serve to fit into a far-off and uninterrupted horizon, now Armendáriz breaks down his narrative by proposing an ongoing discourse interrupted by perpendicular lines (the flagpole of a banner, for example, a cross), to place a face at the forefront, followed by the scene of a repentant on his knees, as though these were two different images. It is through this resource that he captures the serene look of a young man who doesn’t seem to be aware of the sacred heart or the tricolor flag facing them because he is looking on an angle that blends the outline of an awning with other elements. A fine-textured mud pool or the shadow of the decorative paper cuttings divides the scene in two: on the one side the chubby teen-ager is submerged in his own shadow, and on the other, in the opposite direction, the little boy takes his hand to his face in the presence of two little girls and the one standing divides the plane once again.

Espinazo, in the county of Mina, is known as the Mecca of pain, and this is where those with aches and pains go, and also where we found the soul of the Niño Fidencio (José Fidencio Constantino Síntora, 1888-1938) who, during his lifetime made miraculous cures and who has continued to help through the so-called Materias or Cajitas, which are the materialization of the spirit of the child. In the case of other persons, walking is part of penitence and reaching the sanctuary is true bliss.

Referring to this cult, arriving in Espinazo is the beginning of the hardest part of penitence. The pain is unspeakable because people arrive in pain from the trip and must exasperate self-humiliation by seeking even more pain to offer in exchange for cure.

The faint heart of the repentant seemed incapable of more suffering, yet they received even more from the land they crossed and they themselves turned into dirt (the word humiliation comes from humus, ‘land’ in Latin). It is this contact that unleashes the culminating experience of feeling and knowing that one is part of the land itself, precisely of that thirsty land incapable of providing food and where poverty and misery are crushing. It is upsetting for those who witness this and moves them to compassion. It is the territory of the cult (in the Cerro de la Campana, in the leprosy colony, disseminated along the road where there are an endless number of crosses decorated with flowers or ribbons that mark the sacred places where ghosts have appeared or where the Materias do their curing.

Los senderos de la fe, Espinazo, Nuevo León © Lorenzo Armendáriz

Some of these vestiges were captured with a stenopeic camera that shows the central role of the cross and dissolves the remaining elements. To come closer to this unreachable atmosphere of suffering and catharsis, Armendáriz uses the Holga camera, whose vignettes come to the aid of suspended time or paradoxically, time in flight, such as the rituals that take place in this primitive corner of the world and in the mud (where we come from and where we’re headed), to marry during the saint’s festival, to roll in the dust, to walk almost dragging oneself (hands and legs bandaged), to hurry everybody together (clay men and women), the healing immersion, to be born again and emerge purified from this uterus which is a mixture of water and land. Far off we hear a murmur that cradles us and the singsong tune of Pávido Návido, an old song of with accents on the antepenultimate syllable familiar to the people from the North.

The pilgrimage is carried out in stages. There are stops to eat, to rest, to recover and to care for health problems. Not everybody goes on foot. They also use horses, carts, and trucks for transporting people, utensils and supplies. Exhausted, the travelers reach a point where they literally fall on the ground to sleep. The next day, before the break of dawn, the sound of a sky rocket awakens them to continue their journey and the illusion of continuing their trip, their songs and praises, having shared their food and with the sky as a roof, leaving one’s own body to join the collectivity, they continue building a brotherhood which is hard to explain, but it can be felt and is expressed as a form of help, in smiles, in showing their will not to succumb, passing this on to others, especially the enthusiasm to keep on walking.

Los senderos de la fe, La Sierra de Gamón, Durango © Lorenzo Armendáriz

Armendáriz has worked on this series with 4 or 5 cameras that he carries on vehicles and changes at each stop. It is likely that this number of cameras will increase on later trips (right now he is making, with the aid of Rubén Pax, a circular stenopeic device designed from a cookie tin since at any moment during the pilgrimage many things happen that touch upon the basic need to document these events in a purposeful aesthetic way which, by using different forms and techniques, makes explicit the wealth of images, feelings, perceptions and emotional situations. In this sense the use of black and white is constant as a way of making abstractions of a trip full of penitence, abstention and suffering. For obvious reasons, color shots are not shown here. The photographer has saved them for “La Gloria” (the moment of glory), arrival at the sanctuary, which is when the pilgrim obtains his compensation: the end of his journey, the chance to stop the trip, to satisfy his hunger, to begin the festivities.

At times the photographer goes on foot, sometimes on horseback, sometimes he looks at you at eye level, sometimes with his camera at his waist, but his shots always bear in mind the logic of displacement, and this is how he obtains series like those of the buffoon who keeps the pace of the walk with his rattle, while for another series he simply turns to see who is behind him, walking on his knees, escorted by a group of dancers and onlookers, unique scenes that take place in the vastness of space, a space that is built according to the pilgrimage that fills it. Far off you can only see the space which will serve as a backdrop to stage the basic images: the cart that will try to cross the dip in the road over a very small wooden bridge, the ears of the horse Armendáriz is mounting, in space, before and after the conquest that will continue to take place timelessly in history. The same thing happens with people who are strangers and yet who turn into an iconographic member of the founding family of the territory, much like imagining the arrival of Christopher Columbus, the pilgrims who kneel down before the Materia and who in that moment of inspiration (there, in the middle of nothing) blesses them. The banner is witness to their occupation the arrangement of the bodies gives rise to the spirit of Fidencio and speaks through this incarnation.

Los senderos de la fe, Espinazo, Nuevo León © Lorenzo Armendáriz

And the march continues… the different cults are disseminated through this and other homestead. From the Villa de Coss to Plateros we find the people moving to see the Santo Niño de Atocha, this small child who is also dressed as a pilgrim (a wide-brim hat, a walking stick, a canasta, and a gourd with water to quench his thirst and who serves as a road guide and who miners venerate). Faith takes on moving traits when the image of the Niñito is evoked, and in the tragic world of adults the sweetness of his face is enough to begin the journey once again. In the midst of the atrocious cold of the winters in Zacatecas, which cuts through your skin with bursts of icy winds and cuts through your bones down to the quick, pain comes directly from the cold.

During the freezing morning hours women line up covered from head to foot with a hat on their back to later protect them from the sun that will beat down on them, which is another timeless scene. They are so wrapped up that you can’t see their faces or identify them, the sum of bodies, one after another, will persist this year and next with new pilgrims who once again will march in the midst of the same cyclic cold.

Repentance has its rewards, the beauty of nature adds to the exalting of the senses, making headway on the journey, reducing the distance, penetrating into space with your own body is jocular in its own way. To catch a glimpse in the distance of another pilgrimage about to join yours to strengthen it, to make it more powerful, larger, more visible, makes you explode with joy. The flag bearers run to meet and wave the lábaro patrio banners, and the banner of the brotherhood and the clouds dance around delighted, the pilgrims greet each other with a bow, lowering their heads with a gesture of understanding that each encounter is not just finding other human beings, but the manifestation of a deity that wants to compensate them for the communal solitude of the journey.

Los senderos de la fe, Castaños, Coahuila © Lorenzo Armendáriz

The Virgin of Guadalupe is perhaps the most venerated in the country, the one who holds all the cults in all languages in all places on the map. She is the queen and the patron saint, and as such appears wherever and whenever she pleases because the whole territory is her dwelling. “And then you have to pretend that she appeared on the cliff and that she’s going to go and sing Las Mañanitas” to you. Now she’s in Durango as the old guardian of the white hills than turn reddish at sunset. The pilgrims go to the Sierra de Gamón to meet up with the Virgin of the Sierrita, depicted on a wall that you can only reach by hanging onto a scaffold. Those who can’t reach the exact site where she appears mill about in a confused state in the face of not being able to kneel, but there they are, body against body, surrounded by the mountain, listening to their own noise and the detonations of firearms that show the believers’ love for the Virgin of Guadalupe. Looks get lost in space. Before arriving there was a sense of direction, but now everything is a restless jumble. The beauty of the evening will mean specific formats, speeds and film. To touch down in a town brings back your strength and even the weakest is able to walk, welcomed by a sea of merchandise and many other pilgrims. The recent arrivals become part of the flow and rhythm of the site that received them, but this change of rhythm can be disconcerting and some just become inert to show their uniqueness even in this milling about, such as the young man who looks aside doesn’t seem to have the same destination as those who carry the stem of a nard and blend into the stream of bodies, textures, lights and decorations.

The dancer who momentarily glances up without missing a step, no longer follows the beat and falls into abstraction here and there outside that instant. The essence of the journey is moving as is what is built over time and space during travel. The final destination is only an excuse. During the pilgrimage the deity is found and introduced into the heart of the pilgrim, who doesn’t need to see this to believe it. To go to the same sanctuary (precisely to see it) is to know oneself part of something larger, of cosmic dimensions, and to prove during the journey that this divine presence (so common for others) has a unique meaning for him and makes him unique. Lorenzo Armendáriz is of a transhumane nature and he knows that making these rites evident will reduce human solitude to an extent.