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Another true story from Florence Co. history. Taken from the booklet Camp and Plant, titled Los Penitents, dated May 23,1903, Pueblo Colorado.
The pueblo of Mexico existed, right in this very spot, into the late 1800 's and early 1900.'s. Try to visualize when laughing happy children were playing right here, with dogs, goats, cats, tame coons, tame antelopes, tame buffalo calves and donkeys. The adobe homes, have long since melted back into the earth. They were earth friendly dwellings with kivas built in the thick walls to keep homes warm in winter and cool in summer.
But there is another side to this happy remembering.
Many of the adult residents of the village belonged to an order of Roman Catholic faith called the Order of St Francis of Assisi. St Francis was born in Assisi, Italy in 1182. He had vowed himself to a life of poverty and austere mortification of the flesh. He established the Order designed for penitents whose rituals included self-flagellation and fasting. Many people belonging to that order lived right here and participated in severe ceremonies conducted to atone for sins.
Self flagellation was accomplished with leather whips which had either metal balls or cactus that had stiff and sharpedged leaves woven in and attatched to a Spanish bayonet.
On Ash Wed. each fervent member ( male and female) either tattooed or cut himself with a 'cross' on some part of his body. The wound was kept open until the forty days of lent were over. All during lent, meetings were held at special houses 'morado' or churches where the fanatical members would flagellate themselves with the special whips.
Even today blood can be seen on the rafters of old chapels in both New Mexico and Southern Colorado as the thongs struck and wet blood splashed from the enthused penitentents. Prayers were offered at all hours and fasting was kept up until exhaustion set in.
They showed themselves in public during the last week of lent, in out of the way places, marching to the mournful music of a fife played in a minor key. At every step the swish of the long whip could be heard striking the naked back of the participants, first over one shoulder, then the other. Imagine a long line of men dressed in cotton drawers, the upper part of the body bare, shoeless and hatless, paying no attention to the cacti on the path, rivulets of blood flowing down their backs as they marched.
Insensible to pain, beating themselves unmercifully for up to two miles. Finally falling exhausted at the 'special house'. This was kept up until Good Friday when the passion play was reenacted. Not Make Believe! but the real thing. One penitentent represented the Savior and two others the thieves. The Way of the Cross procession wound its way to the improvised Calvary. The local populace represented the Roman soldiers. The Savior carring a heavy cross and wearing a crown of sharp thorns of a prickly pear. Falling three times and scourged by the local populace as the journey proceeded.
At a preselected 'Calvary' the Savior is tied to the cross which is raised and dropped into an already dug hole, where he hangs for three hours. When taken down he either revives and recovers or he dies, in which case he recieves a distinguished burial.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
nabgure rnfl bar. Cyrnfr uryc zr xrrc vg pnzb'rq.
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