When life teeters on the razor's edge of disaster and through intense prayer and the intervention of a saint tragedy is avoided, gratitude is often expressed in a small work of art usually painted on a piece of discarded tin and placed as an offering behind the altar of the church. In Mexico this is a tradition that extends back 500 years.
The ex-voto painting - from the Latin 'ex voto sucepto' meaning "from the vow made" - is a tradition of folk art that acts as a tribute to divine intervention in personal calamities. The term ex-voto implies a bargain agreed upon, an agreement reached. In times of trouble we're all prone to making such promises in an attempt to avoid the inevitable. Who among us hasn't said. "Please, God, just get me out of this situation, and I promise to ..."
_____
But the details of the bargain are not divulged in the ex-votos. How long the supplicant prayed or how ardently, whether other commitments and promises exist remains confidential, but the supplication and the personal journey through calamity become a public profession of faith and the answer to the pleas in turn becomes an evangelical call to prayer, a testimony of redemption.
_____
Scenes of everyday life are endowed with a magical realism, a mysticism that seems to hover in that nebulous world between reality and illusion, between the mortal and the divine. As in a dream, the veil is lifted on a surreal world where time and distance have no meaning and the real and the sublime meld into one. We witness the terror and the tragedy unfolding, the supplication and prayers for intervention, the appearance of the savior, and the thanks and praise for a miracle performed as if in a single stop-motion frame from a much longer movie.
Often heroic in the scale of the tragedy shown, in an era before mass media they conveyed the enormity of the salvation and a testimony to the greater glory of God.
But despite the multitude of people on this earth, salvation occurs one soul at a time, and consequently these paintings evolved to depict individual journeys ranging from epic tragedy to the merely annoying, but with no less fervor and devotion. Narratives were added describing the details of the ordeal and often included the name of the petitioner and even the date that their prayers were answered.
These very personal invocations include the one presented in thanks to The Virgin of Dolores, also known as Our Lady of Pain and Sorrows, by Guillermo and Matilda Kahlo for saving their daughter Frieda after a street car accident in 1925. Although she suffered severe injuries that left her in near constant pain for the rest of her life, her parents believed that, were it not for the intervention of divine providence, she would likely have died. And so they presented to the church an expression of their thanks.
In others, the story is less clear although no less frightening. As in the ex-voto pictured below we're left to wonder if Rufina Estrada was attacked by a very skinny cat or whether this is a manifestation of death and had some other personal meaning. All we are told is that she was saved from death on January 11, 1939.
_____
The tradition of Ex-Votos in Mexico traces its history to the 16th century when wealthy Spaniards would commission artists to create small devotional paintings of saints. These panels were often displayed behind the altar of a church and came to be known as "retablos", from the Latin retro tabula meaning behind the altar. It is said that Hernán Cortés, having survived a scorpion bite, presented a bejeweled and golden scorpion as an ex-voto to our Lady of Guadalupe.
But the space behind the church altar is finite while human suffering and expressions of faith have no end. Over time, old retablos were removed to allow space for the new. Some churches began to fill entire rooms with piles of the discarded promises of the faithful, others were simply cast aside. But some churches relocated the ex-votos, dedicating entire walls to the presentation of miracles.
_____
A wall of miracles is difficult to ignore or refute. Where walls were built, they became pilgrimage sites, a communal shrine to hope, bearing witness to the power of faith and community. When we witness the tragedy of others we realize that our own lives are not so different and that hope, and possibly redemption, are perhaps within reach. These are testimonials, endorsements of the saints, community recognition of suffering and a realization of how lucky we are - Gracias a Dios! - that we were not the one who suffered such a great tragedy.
_____
In an age when illiteracy was not uncommon, like the stained glass windows of churches and the stations of the cross, the visual images were understood by all. On most retablos the picture is everything. Although the written story is long and involved, the first sentence on the retablo below tells us all that we need to know, "On the way down the hill I realized that my truck had no brakes..." and even that short statement is unnecessary to understand the tragedy about to unfold.
The Mexican people have taken the traditional Spanish ex-voto and made it their own. What were once formal, somber, and elegant portraits of saints donated to the church by the Spanish nobility in order to gain favor, the Mexican people have now converted to something uniquely Mexican.
_____
Ex-votos also function as an historical record that inadvertently also becomes a catalogue of human misfortune. Churches along the U.S.- Mexico border have become the repositories of miracles, documenting in ex-votos the Mexican migrations to the United States. The retablos, left anonymously at churches along the way, vividly illustrate the encounters with border patrol, the struggles, betrayals, and hazards endured, the illnesses and accidents that befall those who have attempted the long and perilous odyssey. It's a testament to the extraordinary power of hope that so many find time on this arduous and uncertain journey to stop and give thanks.
_____
These are the personal histories of martyrs and saints, the magical, and the mundane. They mix low humor with metaphysics, the stark reality of everyday life with deep stirrings of the soul. Viewing them is observing a strange dream, a magical world viewed through the amber lens of a magic lantern.
_____
The gods always arise from a place larger and deeper than the present moment. These small pieces of tin and cardboard seem like emissaries from The Time Before. A simpler time when it was easier to believe, a time when saints still walked the earth, a time when miracles were still possible. But miracles, the ex-votos remind us, are indeed the stuff of everyday life, and with such passion and awe in abundant evidence one wants to believe.
_____
History is usually viewed as a series of grand episodes presented by scholars and academics as a connected series of events that comprise a sweeping view of the world. The enormous walls of ex-votos provide us a more personal and spontaneous view of the history of Mexico over the past 500 years in the voice of her own people.
With the resurgence in the popularity of Ex-Votos and the recent global concerns about immigration, perhaps there's an opportunity to turn the vast and forbidding U.S. - Mexico border wall into something more than just a barrier to people's hopes and dreams.
______________________________
Bill Sheehan
November 25, 2021 - Ajijic, Jalisco, Mexico