(PNS reporting from LATIN AMERICA) Millions of Latin Americans are on vacation this week to celebrate Semana Santa, a festival to commemorate the desecration of the region’s native cultures and the Spaniards’ forceful imposition of Catholicism through celestial acts such as rape, pillage and genocide.
Holy Week, where children are off school and adults binge drink, gives Latin Americans time to reflect upon Jesus Christ’s selfless sacrifice for humanity, despite the fact that 500 years earlier no one on this side of the world had heard of him and worshiped far cooler Gods of the sun, rain and maize. Catholic cathedrals across the region are certain to be packed with Aztec, Mayan and Inca descendants, all to give thanks and praise to a merciful God coerced into their societies by armed, greed-fueled colonialists spreading the heavenly message of El Espíritu Santo.
“Had the Word and story of Jesucristo not been brought to us hundreds of years ago, we would likely still be living in advanced agrarian societies rife with communal harmony and enlightened thinking,” Juanito Pascua, a priest at Mexico City’s Catedral Metropolitana de la Asunción de la Santísima Virgen María, said at mass Sunday. “Imagine how doomed we would have been without our Lord and Savior!”
Pascua, who regurgitated the unproven story of a Jewish guy resurrecting from a cave to a congregation in Mexico City’s Zócalo, reminded the audience that the cathedral was constructed using the stones of a nearby sacred Aztec pyramid destroyed by the ever-pious Spaniards. The power of God’s will, combined with gold-lust and weapons, can move mountains, he said.
A similar message was bestowed upon the former Pachamama followers turned Catholics at a mass in Cusco, Peru, situated in the shadow of the unimpressive Incan empire, which would never have thrived without the arrival of the Spanish and Dios, according to Padre Leonardo Llamas.
“Had it not been for the arrival of our Almighty Father to Peru, we would never have seen the economic prosperity enjoyed today,” Llamas said as a tuk-tuk taxi drove past a street urchin selling cooked guinea pig. “Gracias a Dios for bringing good fortune to this land!”
[Image via World Future Fund.]
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