THE MAGIC WATERS OF TLACOTE

Thousands of supplicants line a dusty road in a tiny Querétaro suburb called Tlacote, less than an hour from here. They’ve been coming from all over Mexico, and as far away as Russia and Japan, since last May, bringing empty bottles and cans and jugs to a well whose miraculous waters are said to cure cancer, obesity, high cholesterol - nearly every human affliction. Since a sick farm dog lapped up some of it, and was allegedly cured, Sr. Silva, the well’s owner, has been giving the water away to up to ten thousand visitors a day. The state’s health director says the water’s chemistry is like any other, though Sr. Silva claims it weighs less than normal water. A gift from God, he says.

A few weeks ago Vicente Arias and I drove to Tlacote. Unable to get any closer than a mile away, we parked in a dusty turnaround. We walked down the line of crippled ancients, children with festering skin eruptions, squawling babies ill with incurable diseases, women with huge tumors, and hymn-singing delegations from distant towns and provinces and countries. A running ditch beside the path served as both latrine and sleeping quarters on one side; on the other, a spontaneous community of vendors sold refrescos, tamales chicles, tissues, plastic water bottles and newspapers. Finally we arrived at the head of the line. An arched entry led into a courtyard where attendants were filling pilgrims’ containers from a fountain. The recipients hurried out lugging their bottles and jars, faces shining, full of hope and belief.  

Sr. Silva, perhaps thinking we were reporters, came toward us. He seemed eager to talk. The water has been studied microbiologically in Belgium, he said, and it’s been confirmed that it brings genetic changes on a cellular level. Flipping through his guest register, he showed us names from all over the world - pausing for my benefit on Magic Johnson, the HIV-afflicted basketball star - then had us sign it. Vicente and I had brought no known afflictions to cure, but Sr. Silva insisted we each take a bottle of Tlacote water. On the way home we drank it, to no apparent effect one way or the other: it just tasted like water.

A few days later I ran into Vicente in the jardín. He said there’d been a report on television of thousands flocking to another well on the Guerrero coast - situated on a property owned, coincidentally, by Sr. Silva’s brother. Simply further evidence of God’s work, the brothers Silva responded when questioned by journalists. No surprise when last week bottles of Tlacote water began appearing at Espino’s market alongside the other bottled waters, though at a slightly higher price. The brothers Silva, perhaps obeying God’s further instructions, have gone into business marketing the magic waters.

But devotion has its own power apart from fact; and Mexican daily life is steeped in the miraculous. Here there are no ordinary days: each belongs to some saint at the least, and the Virgin appears continually in myriad guises - in a tree, in a subway station, by a river. A few days ago I came across a singing procession bearing a new statue of a Virgin glimpsed last year by a campesino outside our town. The image had been rendered by, for some reason, a sculptor in Croatia. They were carrying her to San Francisco Church to reside there for Holy Week. Working my way closer, I looked up into a pert, pink-faced Virgen face with aquiline nose, tiny chin, and thin lips - looking more like Barbie or Bo Derek than anyone from around here. Did the campesino really see a Virgen who looked like that in a tree, or was some instruction lost between here and Dubrovnik?

The town and region are rife with stories of faith healing and miracles. Las Monjas, our nunnery, was founded by a local girl known as Maria Josefa of the Most Holy Trinity, whose life, according to her biographer, consisted exclusively of “fearing, desiring, admiring, and loving Christ.” Three days before her death in 1770, she exhaled worms from her nose that turned into butterflies. Even now, a local priest at the nunnery dispenses magical ministrations to visitors from all over the region.

(excerpted from On Mexican Time)