Out of Time on the 4th of July

South Americans seem much more proud of specific dates than in America - we have fireworks and hotdogs and baseball on the 4th of July, but nearly every Argentine town has a Ave. 9 de Julio or a plaza or something. There must have been an entire cottage industry churning out busts of San Martin or O´Higgins or Bolivar, because every city, even the smallest pueblo, has something to honor the liberadores. America´s had too many wars to get that excited over the Revolution, but since it was my first 4th abroad, alone, I decided to spend it in style at the Jesuit reduccion Trinidad, a UNESCO World Heritage Site about two hours north of Encarnacion in the rolling hills of eastern Paraguay.

[A little history: After the initial conquests of South America, huge sections of the continent remained largely ignored by the Spanish Crown because they lacked, well, things worth conquering. In these areas, the religious orders became the de facto government presence and, as long as things remained calm, were free to do as they pleased. In the Rio de la Plata, the Jesuits took the warring, semi-nomadic tribes of the delta and organized them around mission towns, or reducciones, scattered throughout the region. Souls were saved, cultures smashed, etc.

Well, this worked fine for about three centuries. But then the Spanish Crown decided the Jesuits had too much power (which was probably true) and kicked them all out, burned down the missions, and gave away the rights to native labor to political cronies and big landowners.

And that was the last time the native peoples of South America were ever mistreated. The End.]

One thing I´ve noticed about South Americans is how helpful they are. You ask them a question, and you´ll always get an answer; even if they don´t know, they´ll always send you somewhere. Maybe it´s shameful to not have any answers, to say ¨I don´t know.¨I was walking around Encarnacion trying to catch a colectivo, and everyone told me a different place. The police officers told me the colectivo didn´t exist, no, never - what day is it? - no, not today, no. I saw my hostelkeeper, and she wasn´t sure where the bus stopped, but that there was one, somewhere. She also told me to adjust my watch an hour; Paraguay and Argentina are in different time zones - who knew.

Despite her encouragement, I just about gave up. It was nearly two, the ruins were an hour away, and they closed at five. ¨Some Fourth,¨ I thought, and with nothing better to do, I went to an Internet cafe to catch up on my email.

I sat there, languidly typing, disinterested in life. Something wasn´t right about the day - I had just given up my plans and a distant part of my mind kept rolling, rebelling against the actions of the rest. Its synapses kept firing. My eyes burned, my stomach churned; I could hear the minute hand turn, each click from the clock. The clock. Something´s not right. The clock...something´s not right...with the clock. Something´s not right with my clock.

The woman was right: Paraguay is in a different time zone than Argentina, and my watch had been set to Argentina time. Well, wouldn´t you know it, but Paraguay is an hour behind Argentina, not an hour ahead. So it wasn´t two in the afternoon, it was barely noon, and I still had the day, the Fourth, Independence Day.

An hour later, I´m on the non-existent colectivo, having just walked out to the highway and asking every bus that went by. Paraguay is a very flat country, with only occasional red outcroppings of rocks as hills - more like small monoliths than anything. The ground is a very bright red color, a lush color, and the uncultivated fields are thick with palms and vines, brush still green in the depths of winter. We pass through small towns, we pick up people at lonely paradas and drop them off by the side of the road where only a couple tire tracks snaking through the grass shows that somewhere, behind the trees and vines, is a home. At times we pass brush on fire, being burned to clear a field. It was a bright and sunny day.

I was dropped off by the side of the road myself, by myself.

It´s not often you get a UNESCO World Heritage Site to yourself, but I did. I guess I was the first visitor all day, the first English-speaker in a month, and the first American in several. The day could not have been better.

The ruins themselves were impressive and, having lived in Peru, I know ruins.

Trinidad was once the home for five thousand Guarani and their Jesuit overlords, with dormitories and workshops, orchards and graveyards, and all religious buildings the priests could think to build. The main plaza is about four hundred feet square, with the red brick arcades of the workshops flanking either side. None of the buildings have roofs, though most are in pretty good shape, good enough to see the remains of ornament.

The highlight of the site is, as you might expect, the cathedral. It must have been an unbelievably impressive building, a hundred foot high Romanesque church perched on a hill at the edge of civilization, clad in gold, with a three piece golden altar to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

The gold´s all gone now, long gone, melted after the church was burned and the Jesuits expelled. I sat across from the pulpit, in the choir. In the dying afternoon, the light slants across the walls of a once dark and holy place, revealing the chipping rock of another man´s time and another time´s faith. I felt something inside, in the choir in the sun; a sort of resigned respect for the ferocity of time - how nothing, not even faith, can overtake time.

It was a beautiful day and very quiet on the hill. At night, I thought about the Fourth, the fireworks and hotdogs back at home, and the few stone saints sitting smashed in the apse on the hill, all growing less distinct, worn, day by day.