Volume 13 (1997)
The Caribbean(s) Redefined
Article I
THE CULT OF THE GODDESS
MITA
ON THE EVE OF A NEW MILLENNIUM:
A SOCIO-ANTHROPOLOGICAL LOOK
AT A CARIBBEAN URBAN RELIGION
Erik Camayd-Freixas
Florida International University
"They say Mita is immortal, they call her goddess, and on Fridays those poor ignorant folks sign over their paychecks to her, to get back only what they need." That was the word on one side of the invisible boundary between the two San Juan neighborhoods where I grew up in the late 60's. Floral Park was then an affluent middle class subdivision which had been upper middle class over twenty years earlier, when the grand Catholic church building of the Holy Spirit was established in its midst. On the margin, one street over from my house, began the poor neighborhood of Cantera (Quarry), itself on the outskirts of Barrio Obrero (Workers' Town). Three blocks in was the Temple of Mita, an old and humble two-storey house converted for worship and always freshly painted. Most of the little houses on the way bore the word "MITA" in small block letters over the front door, their dwellers always wearing white from their hat to their shoes.
It came to pass that the immortal Mita died in 1970 after a long illness. She had become so prominent that the island's Senate suspended its sessions for three days in her honor (Javariz and Krüger). She was buried with great pomp and ceremony after she failed to rise on the third day as some had expected (Reguero and Rojas). The Catholic side rubbed it in with a triumphant "You see!", writing off her cult as dead as well. Six years later, I, like other Floral Park kids, was bound for a U.S. college. My family, like others, moved to the newer suburbs of San Juan. When I recently returned to my old school and neighborhood twenty years later, Floral Park had aged indeed. The church of the Holy Spirit was still there, somehow less grand than it once seemed. On the way to Barrio Obrero, the little houses, as humble and neatly kept as ever, now read "MITA en AARÓN" over their doors. The small temple, though still standing, showed little activity. But down the street, in stark contrast with its surroundings, rose an ultra-modern, multi-storey, marble and glass building, bearing large M's in golden calligraphy over its many doors. It was the new temple of a "Congregation" which now has chapters in major U.S. cities, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, Costa Rica, Mexico, and the Dominican Republic; it also owns furniture and cinder block factories, cattle ranches, farms, stores, supermarkets, credit unions, and a lot of real estate. From its own cable TV program, the prophet Aarón, Mita's heir, preaches fire twice a week into the hearts of thousands. Since financial independence, they no longer accept donations during services (an issue they proudly point out to the Catholic side), but instead give housing and jobs, and pay dividends to their members, as collective owners of their profitable business ventures.
Behind this success story, is the fascinating personal history of Mita herself, and a simple but compelling theology. Born Juanita García Peraza in 1897, "Mita" was raised a Catholic in a small town. Facing impending death from incurable ulcers, the 8-year-old was visited by a saintly old woman who nurtured her back to health through prayer, and ushered her into the charismatic Pentecostal church. Later, a wife and a mother of four, Juanita was visited by the Holy Spirit, who announced to her that her body was needed to carry out God's work on earth. She accepted and was given the choice of persecution or illness as a life trial. She chose the latter. Shortly after, she was looking out of her bedroom window at a clear starry night, asking why she had been chosen, when a shooting star moving in the distance suddenly approached her and landed on her forehead, filling the room with light (Cruz). She had become the living incarnation of the Holy Spirit, who at that moment revealed to her the name of God in this new era: "MITA" or "Spirit of Life." For it had been prophesied in Revelation 2.17 that "He who has ears, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches: To him who overcomes, I will give... a white stone, and on the stone a new name written, which no man knows except he who receives it."1 Thereafter, she began to "speak in tongues" and perform healings.
As she became more outspoken, problems arose with the Pentecostal leaders. One day, in a rapture, the Holy Spirit, acting through her, anointed a young boy as the First Prophet of God in the new era. Teófilo Vargas Seín, renamed "Aarón," was to become thirty years later Mita's heir and is still today, at age 75, the spiritual and material leader of the congregation. But back then, a woman taking on the authority to anoint and passing judgement upon the patriarchal elders brought her a trial for blasphemy in front of the whole Pentecostal assembly, whereupon the Holy Spirit began to speak through her and led her out of that church with eleven followers (herself being the twelfth apostle), to found in 1940 a small congregation initially named "The Free Church." A subsequent series of visions signaled the spot, in the middle of metropolitan San Juan, for the "Temple of Mita" that was to become, in 1949, the seat of the growing cult (the near-by Catholic Church of the Holy Spirit being only a coincidence).
A unique theology would set the Mita apart from Christian sects, as a new religious movement.2 Following an ancient church dogma regarding the Trinity, Mita theology divides universal history in three eras: that of Jehovah, God the Father, acting through His prophets; that of Christ, God the Son, acting through Jesus of Nazareth; and that of the Holy Spirit, God the Mother, whose newly revealed name is "Mita," acting through the person of Mita (Juanita García) and, lately, through her prophet Aarón. As "Christ" was the revealed name of God acting through the person of Jesus of Nazareth, the faithful distinguish between "Mita" (God, Spirit of Life) and the "person of Mita" (the woman born in 1897, deceased in 1970). Indeed, after the person of Mita died, the faithful were stricken by fears that the congregation might fragment or dissolve. Then Aarón, anointed 30 years earlier, became infused with the Holy Spirit and spoke thus after their return from the funeral: "It is I, Mita. I have not forsaken you." Mita is said to live in Aarón much like Jehovah lived in his prophets and Christ in Jesus. Hence, the mystery ciphered in the phrase "Mita en Aarón" which marks the doors of the chosen.
Thus, while Jehovah created the world in an act of love, and Christ's redemption brought freedom from sin, the work of Mita, the Holy Spirit on earth, is to gather the herd, the dispersed children of God. Hence, the three pillars of the Mita religion: Love, Freedom, and Unity. "The Mita" (as they call themselves) do recognize the divinity and teachings of Christ, for they hold that Christ, the God of Abraham, and Mita are all the same person, "Mita" being only the last revealed name for the ultimate dispensation in God's universal plan. Much like Christ superseded Jehovah, the Mita, nonetheless, see the teachings of Christ as pertaining to a bygone era of human history. They constitute, so to speak, a "post-Christian" religion. Purportedly, a new era has begun --by coincidence or not-- on the eve of a new millennium.
This positively hopeful idea of a new beginning distinguishes the Mita from the many charismatic sects which share the apocalyptic view that the end is near, that these are times of reckoning with the impending second coming of Christ and Judgement Day. For Mita's followers, the work of the Holy Spirit on earth has just begun. Yet, this is different from the Adventist belief in the Millennium of righteousness promised in Revelation, which some believe will precede, and others that it will follow, the second coming of Christ (Miller). For the Mita, the second coming has already occurred, precisely, in Mita herself. They claim that traditional Christians have misread the Scriptures, that Christ did say he would return, but not in the same form, not in the person of Jesus. They quote John 14-16, where Jesus says: "And I will ask my Father, and he will give you another Comforter to be with you forever" (14.16); "But the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, whom my Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of everything which I tell you" (14.26); "It is better for you that I should go away; for if I do not go away, the Comforter will not come to you; but if I should go, I will send him to you (16.7); "I have many other things to tell you, but you cannot grasp them now. But when the Spirit of truth is come, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak from himself, but what he hears he will speak; and he will make known to you all that is to come" (16.12,13). The Mita find evidence that God would in fact return in the form of a woman, in verses such as Revelation 12.1,2: "And a great sign was seen in heaven, a woman clothed in the sun, with the moon under her feet and upon her head a crown of twelve stars; and she being with child cried, travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered." That woman is interpreted as the person of Mita, in her role as God the Mother.
The Virgin Mary, who enjoys a preeminent role as an advocate in the Catholic tradition, plays no part among the Mita, who consider her an instrument of God whose role was fulfilled in the times of Christ. They pray to Mita herself, with no advocates or mediation. When they heard Mita speak, as when they hear Aarón today, the faithful hear the Holy Spirit directly, not just an interpreter of the Scriptures who urges them to believe in deeds that happened over two millennia ago. This sense of immediacy, of the sheer presence of God today before them, is difficult to overestimate as a most powerful allure of the Mita cult. The thousands who knew her feel as spiritually fulfilled as if they had shaken hands with the Virgin or with Jesus himself, both of whom have in a sense been replaced with the presence of Mita, in the spiritual imaginary of the people. The same sense of immediacy is reflected in every aspect of their cult. Their temples bear no images, no saints, no cross, except the photographs of Mita and Aarón. They practice no symbolic rituals or sacraments. Baptism has been long discontinued, since they believe that the faithful are baptized by hearing the living word, which is also their Communion. Even marriage is seen as a civil institution left to a justice of the peace, after which the newly-weds come to Aarón for a blessing.3 Large numbers of believers have come to Mita through an immediate personal vision or revelation they call "life experiences," or through miraculous healings from AIDS, leukemia, and other infirmities. Of their three weekly services offered from 7:00 to 9:30 pm, Tuesdays are devoted to the youth, Thursdays to testimonials of such "life experiences" brought forth by dozens from the audience, while on Saturdays Aarón speaks prophecy and performs acts of healing. The age of miracle and wonder continues today as in Biblical times, for the Mita live and interpret their daily lives, as well as world events, in constant parallels to the ancient deeds and prophecies of the Scriptures.
"Social scientists, following assumptions rooted in Marx and Durkheim, tend to study religion solely in terms of its fulfilling a certain social function. In so doing, they neglect its popular and informal expressions outside the mainstream" (Peterson 237). While I will consider the congregation's socio-economic structure, I first wish to look at its cultural function, in terms of what it contributes to the individual and what it tells us about its host society, the popular classes of Latin America and the Caribbean. If one thing has become evident to me in my study of the Mita, it is its spontaneous popular character. This is not a phenomenon that can be replicated at will, but one which is "naturally" born out of specific cultural circumstances, which it at once reflects. Thus, the Mita cult offers a unique opportunity to study the origins and growth of a religion which is both recent and mostly home-spun. While it maintains traits of its Pentecostal origins, it owes nothing to the wave of Latin American Protestant missions issuing from the United States in recent years. The Mita call themselves "the only truly Puerto Rican religion," while at the same time affirming its universal character among Latin Americans and U.S. Hispanics. Within these cultural parameters, I am particularly interested in two things: the matriarchal origins of the cult and the utopian underpinnings of its current social mission.
The motherly aspect of the Goddess Mita undoubtedly exercises a powerful attraction. Women have reason to feel vindicated in a society often portrayed as machista, where both Catholic and Protestant traditions have equally denied them a place in the hierarchy. But men too have gained something, as both genders learn to relate to the divinity as mother. This relationship calls to mind Octavio Paz' cultural analysis in The Labyrinth of Solitude (1950), where he observes that a sense of orphanhood, of having been torn from the origin, from the divine womb, is the preeminent existential condition of modern man, and particularly of the poor and the colonized, twice torn: first from their indigenous gods and, after Independence, from the tutelage of Catholic Spain, the mother country, by the empty promises of the civil state.
Certainly, the figure of Mita has parallels in the non-Western tradition of the Caribbean, such as with the Taino Indian matron, Anacaona, or with the neo-African water deity, Yemayá, variously represented in syncretic Western symbols as a mermaid and as the Virgin. Regardless of its origin and explanation, matriarchal spiritual authority, acting overtly or latently under a patriarchal material structure, has a strong prevalence in Latin American societies. The figure of Mita taps into this cultural source, the religious substrate of its host communities being its only link to indigenous and neo-African traditions.4 Theologically, however, the cult of Mita issues entirely from the Judeo-Christian biblical tradition, and its closest analog remains the (displaced) figure of the Virgin Mary. Hence the parallels: the distinctive "M" anagram, the annunciation of the Holy Spirit, the shooting star reminiscent of Bethlehem, and the expectant woman with the moon under her feet from the Revelation of Saint John which traditionally belonged to the Catholic iconography of the Virgin.
Indeed, Mita's immediate precursor was the enigmatic Catholic figure of Mother Elenita, a beautiful young woman who appeared in the mountains of Puerto Rico when the person of Mita was only a child. Hundreds of disciples affirmed that Mother Elenita was the Virgen del Carmen, patroness of Puerto Rico. But this was no plain apparition, for Elenita actually lived in the mountains for 10 years, between 1899 and 1909, preaching and performing miracles of healing. She initially lived as a hermit under a rock; then in a hut built for her by neighbors. Memorial chapels were later erected near the site. Her origin, family, and real name are unknown. Some claimed that she washed ashore on a wooden plank after the San Ciriaco hurricane devastated the island in 1899, although I suspect this may be an assimilation of the Yoruba water deity, Yemayá, since there were several families of former coffee plantation slaves who lived around Elenita's "holy mountain." The young woman died of "weakness" (probably malnutrition) and was buried in 1909. Toward her final days she distributed locks of hair and other relics to the faithful. Years later, an ecclesiastical investigation attempting to exhume her remains found that her body had disappeared (Reyes).
Elenita identified herself as "Thy Mother Redeemer" --a daring title which anticipated the personal revelations received by Maria Valtorta in Italy during the 1940's. Accordingly, the Virgin Mary is said to be the co-Redeemer and, perhaps, even the agent of the second coming (Valtorta). But the roots of these Puerto Rican phenomena go way back. Mariolatry, the "divinization" of the Virgin, has been a notorious trait of folk Catholicism in Spain since the Middle Ages, sanctioned at times by the official church (Miller). In the Spanish colonies, Mariolatry was strengthened not only by syncretism with indigenous and neo-African female deities. Spanish settlers experienced a severe absence of white women with which to establish a European descendance (and, hence, their very legitimacy) in the New World. This led to a fetishization of woman in her role as mother, which --sublimated from a genetic to a spiritual plane-- served to reinforce the cult of Mary. The legitimacy for Spanish colonial rule continued to rest solely on this spiritual claim, the conversion of the heathen. Unable to provide them genetically with a white mother, the Spaniards did so symbolically and spiritually, by instilling in the "orphan" Indians and mestizos the veneration for the Virgin Mother which, after all, ran so deep within Spanish religiosity. In time, a syncretic iconography would develop, as in the cult of the mestizo Virgen de Guadalupe, revered in Mexico since the 16th Century, and honored in Ponce, Puerto Rico, where a cathedral was erected in her name.
Again, regardless of origin and explanation, the "divinization" of the Virgin is a fact of folk Catholicism repudiated by Protestant sects. Thus, the arrival of Pentecostalism to Catholic Latin America, as experienced by the person of Mita herself, signified for the converts a new orphanhood: the loss of the quasi-divine mother figure of the Virgin they had been raised to revere. It is this void that the figure of Mita has filled and perfected, by replacing the symbol with the person, the advocate with the judge, and the "unlawful" worship of the woman with the "legitimate" worship of the goddess. For the rest, Mita, the Mother, supplied that important dimension in the anthropomorphic conception of God, which had been missing in the Judeo-Christian patriarchal tradition, completing the Father-Son-Mother triangulation suggested in the hypostatic union of the Trinity.
Significantly, if one follows Octavio Paz' concept of historical orphanhood, Mita's birth (1897) and Elenita's apparition (1899) coincide with Puerto Rico's loss of her mother country in the Spanish-American war of 1898. The orphan island's relationship with her North American stepmother, not always a smooth one, need not be recounted here. It suffices to say that adapting to the tutelage of a predominantly Protestant foreign power, its culture and language, meant a certain loss and confusion of identity. The transition years were marked by social anarchy, as administrative control proved slow and ineffectual beyond the capital city. The ministry of Catholic priests, who traditionally had come from Spain, declined sharply after political ties were severed and administrative support from the church became increasingly difficult. Thus, as her biographers point out, Mother Elenita appeared at a time when the Puerto Rican countryside had been "spiritually abandoned" to moral anarchy (Santaella, Reyes). The island needed a spiritual mother, its very own Virgen del Carmen, but Elenita's holiness was never recognized by the Roman Catholic church. Her cult virtually died with her. In turn, Mita prevailed as redeemer from social and spiritual orphanhood. Far from a hermit, she was a gifted organizer who recognized early on the importance of moving to the capital city and, later, of expanding to New York, following the Puerto Rican diaspora.
Thus, while Protestantism spread in the island's countryside and Catholic parishes retreated to city affluence, Mita, rather masterfully, found a niche among the urban working class. As I walked now through my old neighborhood, the familiar landmarks became icons, vessels of time, in a semiotic map which told a story all too easy to read. Behind the outline of the old Catholic Church of the Holy Spirit, one can see the skyline of the nearby Hato Rey banking district which once flourished alongside Floral Park. In the opposite direction, after two blocks of aging houses, one finds my old Catholic school of the Holy Spirit, now completely fenced-in, "bunkerized" against inner city elements. Another two blocks and one arrives at the old boundary, América Street, my old street; then, on the other side, as a sort of mirror image, come the smaller houses of the Mita, leading to the new magnificent temple, surrounded by congregation businesses and the Mita school. To the right, the oldest section of Cantera, small turn-of-the-century dwellings of what was then the middle class, now fit only for the poor. Down across Barbosa Avenue, yet another layer of poverty: the tenements of squatters who eventually received property deeds from the government under one of those amnesties which were common near election time. How these layers came to be is the subject of René Marqués' famous play, The Oxcart: as San Juan began to embody the promise of modernity, the peasants left the fields and began to swell the city slums. First came the landless, then the dispossessed who could not pay their taxes, then the hungry who sold cheap to both native and foreign opportunists. Many stayed in the slums, many went to Spanish Harlem, but many rose to the fast-growing San Juan working class, from which Mita drew her constituency. For some, the Mita congregation was a way out of poverty.
Mita arrived in San Juan in 1949, with the wheels of change: growth, industrialization, modernity, and rural exodus. The U. S. military occupation of the first quarter century had led to the Platt Amendment protectorate in the second quarter, with its bizarre form of limited colonial democracy, and a political stability which primed the island for economic growth after the Great Depression. But the 1940's saw the formation of the Commonwealth, the modern Puerto Rican "Free Associated State," a political middle ground between independence and full statehood, which made possible an attractive economic formula: no federal taxes and full state tax exemption for industry. It was during this time that Floral Park became established and that a Catholic mission from the U.S. came to develop the parish church and school of the Holy Spirit. In the meantime, the turn-of-the-century middle class moved to newer and bigger homes, making space for some newcomers. The Mita congregation grew with the working class, and became an echelon in the social layers that went from the countryside, to the tenements, to Cantera, to Floral Park, and beyond. Mita had become such a prominent figure, that the founder of the modern Commonwealth and long-time governor of Puerto Rico, Luis Muñoz Marín, often came to visit her and seek her advice.
As Floral Park aged and became more affordable for the prosperous Mita, the old boundary began to break down. Today, several houses with the distinctive "M" on the door can be seen spotting the semiotic map on the Catholic side. This is not merely an economic crossover. Traditionally, the Puerto Rican working class had been much closer to the poor, separated from the middle and upper classes by a sharper boundary that was not only economic, but cultural, racial, educational, and even religious. Many factors of modernity have since made this boundary less rigid; but in any case, the Mita crossover can be considered a social one, in the broadest sense. While the congregation remains anchored in the working class, it now has members from all walks of life.
As soon as Mita found her niche among the urban working class, she quickly addressed the material needs of the community. Social activism has been common among Pentecostal and other religious communities in Latin America (Boudewijnse et al.; Levine; Haynes; Loreto). Yet, Mita went a step further, organizing her followers socio-economically into a cooperative. This mixture of religion and business is often criticized by Catholics. The once politically powerful Catholic Church, excluded from state business since the 19th Century, has maintained a policy of limited socio-economic involvement in parish life. Latin American liberation theology, which has had to wage a philosophical battle with the Catholic Church for decades in order to justify its social activism, has never taken solid root in Puerto Rico (Silva). Yet, the Mita congregation takes care of both worldly and spiritual affairs in a parallel and pragmatic fashion, allowing a time and a place for each. As long as business, politics, and other "facts of life" remain outside the temple, they see no contradiction. They do not preach a liberation theology nor any social reform beyond their own community. They do not even criticize the social system nor support "in block" any political party or particular agenda. Thus, they feel no need to reconcile the eternal and temporal aspects of salvation or to justify their involvement in both. Aarón has continued this philosophy and led the congregation through 25 years of impressive growth. His international ministry operates through a non-hierarchical network of anointed pastors, sharing the same rank and significantly called "workers," all of whom hold regular jobs whether in congregation businesses or in society at large. Even Aarón himself has a dual role: when he is not ministering as a prophet, he is presiding over the board of directors of Congregación Mita, Inc., the holding company for a diversified array of cooperative ventures.
A look at the types of businesses the congregation has established through the years shows a long-term planning whose strategy is clearly that of community self-sufficiency. Their inland farms and cattle ranches supplement the name brands in the congregation's supermarket, drugstore, and community restaurant. Their cinder block factory, hardware store, and furniture outlet--plus residential real estate holdings which include a modern apartment building and dozens of single family homes-- address construction and housing needs. Shoe and garment workshops supply the congregation's own department store, which also handles uniforms and school supplies. The rank and file, who began by putting their paychecks together, now share in the profits. They have access to congregation housing, jobs, and dividends, as well as financing, venture capital, and insurance through their own credit union. Their community outreach center is staffed with professional nurses and social workers from their own ranks, providing primary health and counseling services to the community, including programs against drugs, alcohol, and smoking, all of which are outlawed by the Mita. An "orientation office" coordinates social, educational, and charitable events, as well as public relations. Indeed, the congregation provides a lifetime of services and ties to the community, from a modern school for the children to a high-rise nursing home for the elderly. The diverse array of stores, offices, and buildings, surrounding the Temple along Duarte and Los Mitas Streets, gives the community a sense of cohesion and autonomy. Yet, these are only the more visible signs of a socio-economic fabric in which a myriad of goods and services are exchanged informally as well, in the marketplace, through flyers, advertisements, bulletin boards, and personal contacts.
This unique congregation, intent on carrying out God's work on earth, does not segregate itself from society as utopian communities do. Instead, it has succeeded in forming a semi-autonomous network in a modern urban setting, remaining spiritually, socially, and economically integrated, and yet with no visible boundaries of its own (except, perhaps, the all-white dress code still adhered to during services by the more devout). There are no fences, no "bunkerization" of public buildings; rather, volunteer guards in plain civilian clothes patrol the neighborhood. The neatness of the buildings, the meticulous upkeep, the evident communal pride for what they have built out of very humble origins, mark the only true physical separation from the neighboring neglect of the adjacent streets and congested thoroughfares of this poorer section of metropolitan San Juan. Their social organization may indeed be described as a non-insular utopian cluster, one which has clearly empowered a formerly disenfranchised community.
The word on the Catholic side is now: "As soon as they join the Mita, you see them prosper" --a comment suggesting they join for the money, not the soul. The Mita simply claim they endeavor to live like primitive Christians. There is, however, nothing primitive in their strategies. Their original San Juan community serves as a developmental model for the newer congregations abroad which, in turn, communicate with the center through all modern media. Active members have swollen to over 30,000 world-wide. The new San Juan temple alone seats 6,000; but actually the largest following is in Colombia, which has now surpassed Puerto Rico as a whole; the Dominican Republic ranks third, with 65 congregations.
In the face of increasing institutionalization, it remains to be seen what will happen to the cult's allure: the sense of immediacy and hopeful new beginnings, the mother figure's deliverance from orphanhood, the empowerment of the poor --and, of course, the issue of Aarón's succession.5 I posed these questions to minister-worker Ramón Díaz Reyes in a two-hour meeting. He said that, man or woman --for the Holy Spirit of God has no gender-- Mita's next heir would not be picked by a council, a bureaucracy, or other human institution, but by a sign of divine revelation. It seems, however, that just like religious fervor has been good for business, fostering loyalty and spurring productivity, so will the sheer material force of their socio-economic fabric ensure the spiritual cohesion and continuity of their cult. Brother Ramón simplified it for me: "We are a simple, happy people. We live in plenitude and face the new millennium without fear."
Notes