Angel Guaman, left, and Zoila Tene visiting the tree.
“This is witchcraft; you are worshiping devils!” bellowed Dante Domenech, 50, of North Bergen, New Jersey.Rico says it might be nice to have such a perfect delusional structure running your life, but he don't get it...
That remark prompted Maria Cole, one of dozens of people from West New York and nearby areas who had come to pray and lay flowers and votive candles by the tree, to charge at Domenech.
“We don’t want Satan!” Cole, 57, shouted in Spanish as a ninety-year-old woman with a long-stemmed white rose walked up and hit Domenech on the head and shoulders with the flower until three police officers asked him to move along. (The flower-wielder gave her age, but not her name.)
At the site of what some believe is a miracle, prayers of the faithful and shouts of the skeptical have grown louder as word of the tree’s distinctive knot has spread since its discovery this month. Mayor Felix Roque said his town was spending a thousand dollars a day for police officers to prevent vandalism of the tree, defuse confrontations, and keep traffic moving on the busy strip of Bergenline Avenue between 60th and 61st Streets in West New York, New Jersey.
Those gathered at the tree on Sunday say that the passion over the knot, which is about four feet up on the flagpole-size trunk, comes from its resemblance to Our Lady of Guadalupe. Roman Catholics in Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America believe that the Virgin Mary appeared to Juan Diego, an Aztec convert to Catholicism, in the sixteenth century. According to tradition, she filled his cloak with roses and left an image of herself on it. That image— the name Guadalupe comes from a shrine— has long been a powerful religious and cultural symbol that resonates among immigrants and children of immigrants in the United States.
Many say that a dark outline around the edge of the knot depicts the cloak the Virgin Mary wore when she first appeared in the New World. “You can tell it’s the Virgin of Guadalupe by the way she is dressed in a cloak,” Maria Julieta Baez, a West New York resident, said in Spanish. Baez, 35, originally from Puebla, Mexico, has stayed close to the tree, breaking only for a few hours of work and sleep, since 12 July.
“This has united all the Hispanic communities,” Roque said as he stood by the tree Sunday morning, accepting the thanks of several worshipers. “I have to allow them to express their faith.”
Priests from the Archdiocese of Newark examined the tree and determined that the knot was a natural occurrence, said James Goodness, a spokesman for the archdiocese. “We’re hopeful that, even though this is just a knot in a tree, it will spark people to examine themselves and find a deeper understanding of their faith,” he said.
Carmen Lopez, of Passaic, New Jersey, noticed the knot on 5 July while car-pooling to her job at a perfume factory in Edison, New Jersey. She brought it to the attention of two priests, the West New York police and finally the mayor. “Here it’s perfectly clear,” she said in Spanish. “It’s the true one.” Lopez said that, in 2003, she was one of thousands who saw a tree stump found in a Passaic junkyard that many believed also looked like Our Lady of Guadalupe (that shrine was vandalized in May of this year). Lopez added that the difference between the two is that the one in West New York is more vivid.
Still, many are unconvinced. One woman, who declined to give her name, scowled at the worshipers as her companions shouted at them. “We are evangelical Christians and we believe the Bible forbids idol worship like this,” she said. “What these people are doing is a sin.”
With all the commotion, Roque proposed transplanting the twenty-foot tree with fan-shaped leaves to a nearby park. In response, members of a group standing vigil around the tree said they had gathered five thousand signatures on a petition demanding that the tree stay put. Roque said he would appoint a commission this week to discuss how to proceed.
The police have built a barricade around the tree and set up barriers to protect the overflow crowds from traffic. Dozens of vases with brilliantly colored floral bouquets, and many more votive candles, sit beneath the leaves. On one of the barricades hangs a large tapestry showing Our Lady of Guadalupe. On the back of it is a Mexican flag.
Maria Alava, 50, a butcher from Union City, New Jersey, who works in Manhattan, snapped photographs after Mass on Sunday. “It’s the shape of the Virgin Guadalupe,” she marveled. “I see it clear.”
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