Pilgrimage for profit

CANINDE, Brazil — For miles around, you see nothing but Brazilian sertao: scrub, desert, vultures and a blistering heat that is hard to overestimate.

Then you descend into chaos.

Caninde, at first glance, seems a bit like a religious Brazilian version of Las Vegas this time of year. But turn the temperature up a few degrees, substitute gambling for churches, and add in a few hundred thousand northeast Brazilian pilgrims dressed like saints.

For the rest of the year, Caninde is quietly nestled within the sparsely populated, largely impoverished northeastern interior.

For 10 days in late September and early October, it becomes the prime destination for 1 million northeasterners seeking to pay homage to St. Francis of Assisi, the Italian saint who, 800 years ago, eschewed all earthly possessions to live in poverty.

Brazilians traditionally make the pilgrimage to Caninde to make a votive, or promise, to St. Francis. Some come to pray for miracles while others come to attest, or give thanks for, a miracle granted, often having to do with a physical or mental ailment.

Many such pilgrims, called romeros, dress in dark brown robes tied with a loose-fitting rope belt, in the style of and in solidarity with St. Francis.

The relatively small city lies in a dried-up valley, flanked by a small, pink church perched atop a hill and a skyscraper-sized metal statue of St. Francis.

Pilgrims head to several spiritual focal points within Caninde. At the House of Miracles, wooden limbs and sun-bleached layers of tattered Polaroids of families and faces line the walls: stories are told of pilgrims past, of miracles both desired and granted.

In between Mass and shopping, pilgrims head to the Gruta, a grotto that spews out water believed to be blessed by St. Francis. At any given time throughout the celebration, a veritable stampede surrounds the Gruta, filled with people hoping to harness a bit of Francis for their homes.

Then there’s the central church, raised to basilica status by the Catholic church, impressive in its architecture and the moving frescoes within.

St. Francis has a rich history in the region. In the mid-20th century, Franciscan priests populated the area and reshaped Catholicism, speaking a new interpretation of the Bible based on St. Francis’ teaching 800 years ago.

This new reading empowered the impoverished to question the economic basement to which they had been relegated and to question the notion that it was sinful to rebel against societal inequalities. It linked Christianity to social justice and change. They called it liberation theology.

So if Francis was this radical who not only questioned materialism but flat out rejected it, why is Caninde literally overflowing with bootlegged DVDs, tiny statuettes of just about every saint and glow-in-the-dark rosary beads sold on the cheap by literally hundreds of street vendors?

This contradiction hits hard: While blasting music about the virtues of non-materialism, vendors aggressively shove stickers, buttons, shirts, jewelry, mugs and more into pilgrims’ faces — with Francis’ face plastered on each trinket.

Guilherme Ramos, a vendor selling rosaries near the Basilica, talked about the often corrupt, disheartening process of selling ones’ wares during the festivities.

"But what are my choices?” he asked. A Caninde native, the profits he makes during these 10 days must sustain him through most of the year.

For northeasterners like the Dos Santos family, who paid 200 reais ($115) per person for the transportation between their home state of Maranhao and Caninde, the pilgrimage represents a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to leave their isolated hometown.

"We all came with a promise," said 63-year-old Maria Dos Santos, the grandmother of the family. "I have been three times in my life to Caninde; I feel extremely lucky. Each time it recharges me for years to come, gives me a new purpose."

Lembrancas, or physical remembrances, form an important part of Brazilian culture. Trinkets brought back home to those who could not make the pilgrimage are coveted.

During the past 30 years, Brazil has seen a dramatic movement toward coastal urbanization, sucking people, capital and jobs out of the interior and concentrating them in port cities. Caninde — glow-in-the-dark rosaries and all — represents an annual, if brief, reversal on that screen.