Jesús Pérez Núñez, one of the guardians of Señor del Monte
Jesús Pérez Núñez is one of the members of the honor guard of the Señor del Monte and is the grandson of Cándido Pérez, a character that appears in the painting of The Oath in the sacristy of the parish of Jocotepec.
By María del Refugio Reynozo Medina
Note: The Señor del Monte (Lord of the Mountain) is an image of the crucified Christ in the Parroquia del Señor del Monte in Jocotepec, that is attributed with performing a miracle in 1833 by banishing a cholera plague that was afflicting the village. At the time the residents of Jocotepec made the Señor del Monte the town’s patron saint, and pledged an oath to hold a fiesta every January to honor him. The celebration includes a procession where a figure of the Christ is toured through the town by the honor guard, a group of men who are direct descendants of the original group that made the pledge. The duties of the honor guard include dressing the figure in beautifully embroidered vestments called “cendales” and adorning it with a crown and a wig of human hair. They have a variety of crowns and vestments that are rotated through the years.
“They take care of him as if he were theirs!”
This is how some parishioners express themselves about the members of the honor guard of the Señor del Monte in Jocotepec.
The honor guard is made up of about 150 men, descendants of the people who signed the oath to the Señor del Monte in 1918.
In the honor guard there are eight headed by:
Jesús Pérez, Francisco Gómez, Armando Garavito, Gilberto García, Octavio Ibarra, Marcos Cortés, Alejandro Pérez and Víctor Olmedo. Each of the families has a special mission.
For the Pérez, it is their turn this year to change the crown. Sometimes it seems that the Patron resists a certain crown and they are waiting «to see which one he wants.” When Jesús Pérez was a child, he remembers that his father Mateo Pérez kept the crown of Christ at home. He grew up looking at it, kept there in a wooden niche with a special padlock. His son, Alejandro, on one occasion when he was changing the crown, began to sweat overwhelmingly, his legs trembling in the midst of an indescribable sensation.
Armando Garavito is in charge of the custody of the cendales. Every year they give the Patron up to three on his feast day.
The Gómez family participates in the procession walking with their backs to the procession and facing the image.
Originally, during the ceremony of preparation for the procession on his day, the Señor del Monte was accompanied exclusively by men. It was during the time of Mateo Pérez, the father of Jesús, that they began to involve women in certain activities, such as Amanda Cuevas Pérez, who is in charge of taking care of the wigs that he wears under the crown. They are made of natural hair donated by young girls; she takes them to the beauty salon for their conservation and special care.
The members of the honor guard are tasked not only with the preparation to carry him in the procession, but also with the surveillance during the three days after his feast, in which they remain under the altar so that the faithful can approach.
Because of the Covid pandemic they have not been able to allow the normal ritual, that consists of hundreds of the faithful forming a line to be able to approach the image. Once in front of the image they receive a piece of cotton that they touch to the body of the crucified one, and which they safeguard as protection until the next year.
Jesús Pérez Núñez, one of the guardians
Jesús Pérez, a native of Jocotepec, is the grandson of Cándido Pérez, signer of that historic oath. Don Jesús keeps a photograph from 1907 where his grandfather appears, surrounded mainly by his children, wearing a gala charro suit with gold buttons. He owned oxen yokes to plow the land and also a chinchorro (small rowboat) to fish. That black and white photograph is a valuable souvenir for Jesús, along with the memories of his childhood and youth in Jocotepec that are always closely linked to the image of the Lord of the Mountain.
The greatest miracle he remembers is when he was about eight or nine years old; the priest Ambrosio González was there. That priest opened the parish for the children, where he set up ping pong games, dominoes, and board games, and promoted soccer games for the children.
The priest ordered the construction of an artesian well in the parish, thinking of the town’s need for water. While the machine was excavating the well, the priest saw that the water was not coming and the money to pay for it was running out. He was about to use up his last resources when he took a piece of tepetate (the hard soil that was blocking the water) and went to the altar to the Lord of the Mountain to ask for his intercession. A few days later, water gushed forth in torrents. It seemed like a swollen stream that embraced the streets. It first flowed through Miguel Arana, turning around Guadalupe Victoria, up to José Santana and then flowed into the lake. The women began to set up washing places and the children went to bathe. The water was warm and they could also drink it. That was the drinking water in the town for many years, until one day the Town Hall piped it, building a tank on the hill to pump it and charging for the connections in each house.
Another miracle occurred during a time of extreme drought. The people took the image out to pray for rain. Shortly before reaching the temple, black clouds appeared in the sky followed by a copious storm that barely managed to spare the pilgrims.
Jesús remembers that the date of the feast of the Lord of the Mountain was instituted in those days to be in January, because it was when the families had a little more money from the harvests. This way they could offer a more dignified feast to their beloved Patron.
This man along with all the members of the honor guard is responsible for guarding a miraculous image that has watched over the people of Jocotepec for hundreds of years.
For Mr. Jesús Pérez, being a member of the honor guard is a very big responsibility, bigger than the fatigue that everyone feels when they carry the precious image. But knowing that the Lord of the Mount is guarding their lives is an emotion that cannot be described.
Translated by Sandy Britton
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