The book Pedro Páramo, by Juan Rulfo, is filled with themes relating to the Mexican culture mixed with the rising genre of magical realism. One theme that I found particularly informative and relevant to what I might find during my field study was that of religion in the community. The overall theme of religion seems to be negative. The author seems to display a pessimistic attitude toward the role of religion in the people’s lives. While the author may not feel that religion has merit, I feel that the way in which he describes the role of religion in the lives of the members of the small rural village, Comala, will be similar to what I will find in the rural villages, the Ranchos, that I will be in.
One way in which religion is displayed is the setting of a purgatory type state in the beginning of the book. The narrator has gone to the village of Comala to find Pedro Páramo and while he is there he meets many people who he realizes are ghosts. These people are in a state of unrest and stagnancy. They do not seem to be going anywhere. When they were alive they thought that they would go to Heaven, but instead are stuck in the town they died in. The author seems to be commenting that though the people believed in Heaven and Hell, there really is no such place. While I am in Mexico this summer, I’m not sure how many people I will find who will have this attitude about religion, but I think that I will find many people who sincerely believe in it, as some of the characters did before their deaths.
The importance of the priest or Padre in the town also reflects the importance that religion plays in the lives of the people, as well as the power that this one man has in the community. He essentially determines their eternal state after death. There are several moments within the work when the Padre is asked to give the last sacrament or judgment on a recently deceased person. On two occasions he considers the people sinners (one was an alleged rapist and the other committed suicide) and condemns these two people to hell. In addition, the people of the community constantly look to the Padre for advice and judgments of what is right and wrong. They seem to regard him with more authority than any other person within the community. This is something that I felt connected with something that Natalie said about the people in the Ranchos. She said that when the actual Padre came to town more people would go to mass, whereas most of the time it wasn’t a Padre but some sort of assistant who conducted mass and so fewer people went.
Although I said earlier that I’m not sure I’ll find people who have a negative attitude about religion (as the author seems to) I think that the changing ideas of religion found in the book will also be found within the Ranchos. For example, although Catholicism is the predominant religion in Mexico, other religions are starting to become more popular. Even in the Ranchos there is an Evangelical Church that is either under construction or already in function. It will be interesting to see the differences in religious beliefs found even within these tiny rural communities.
I don’t think that I can assume that every theme and cultural idiosyncrasy found within Pedro Páramo mirrors completely what I will find in the Ranchos. I think though that the theme of religion is likely to be fairly dominant in the community. The people there may express it in different ways or they may have different beliefs but they will have the same history that makes religion an important aspect in their lives.
