Stealing a Nation’s Very Soul

The thieves scaled the white church walls with a ladder. They pried off the rusty iron bars on a window, then dropped to the nave, just below the choir loft.

Working quickly, they slipped through the dark to the altar. They lifted a gilded glass bell jar, laid it carefully aside, then grasped their prize: a statue of the Virgin of Carmen, 15 inches tall and covered with gold and silver.

Within minutes, they had shimmied up a rope and out of the church. They sped away in a red pickup, police believe. They left a gaping hole, not only in the church but also in Guatemala itself.

The Virgin of Carmen is no ordinary icon. A gift from St. Teresa of Avila to Guatemala about 400 years ago, it is both a symbol and protector of the nation. Millions of Guatemalans wear a small necklace with a picture of the virgin over their hearts.

Now it was gone, stolen in the night like a TV set.

“It was like when someone dies,” said Father Bruno Renato Frison, the parish priest for the chapel that housed the icon for nearly four centuries. “There are some things that cause so much pain, they can’t be expressed.”

Someone is stealing Guatemala’s soul, bit by bit. Roman Catholic churches all over the country have been pillaged in recent years. Hundreds of colonial-era religious statues and paintings have vanished.

Nobody is sure who is behind the thefts. Some suggest an international ring of criminals who export the icons to satisfy interior decorating tastes in Europe and the United States. Others point to a band of former military officials accused of human rights violations, who may be intent on sending the Catholic Church a warning.

This year, the pace of the thefts has soared. Five years ago, police recorded 39 thefts of religious artifacts. Last year, 125 were reported missing. The rate this year is on track to surpass that mark, with a church reporting a burglary every other day.

Worse, perhaps, is the record of resolving such cases. Most of the icons are believed to have been shipped abroad to private collectors, never to be seen again. Of the 255 artifacts stolen in the last 2 1/2 years, authorities have recovered only 29.

Although church thefts have plagued other Latin American countries, the recent wave has hit especially hard in Guatemala.

“When they rob our icons, they are robbing the most important thing we have,” said Cesar Lara, director of the Center for Folklore Studies at the University of San Carlos in Guatemala City, the capital. “They are robbing our identity.”

It is here that native artisans carved some of the finest examples of colonial-era art, and it is here that thousands of faithful pack the streets to watch the icons paraded through hamlets and cities during elaborate Easter Week celebrations. Guatemalans ask the icons to keep their children safe, their families healthy, their harvests bountiful.

Perhaps the most affected segment of the population has been Guatemala’s indigenous Maya, who practice a vernacular form of Catholicism.

It’s a blend of traditional Maya animist beliefs and high Catholic tradition, in which centuries-old gilded saints are protected by secret Maya societies, and new “saints” are invented to help break bad habits such as smoking and drinking.

Unlike in other parts of the world, where Catholic officials stamped out even the smallest suggestions of heresy, priests in the highlands here have tolerated, though not endorsed, the Maya’s particular spiritual blending.

As a result, the Maya invest in their images a significance far different from that given by a traditional Catholic. Many icons not only represent the saints but also have a second identity as one of the traditional Maya gods. The Maya are intimately bound to the icons, as to a loved one.

“For the Maya, an icon is much more than an image,” Lara said. “It’s like a photograph of your dead mother that you keep in your pocket to look at sometimes, to talk with. It’s something very deep.”

Last year, the plague of church burglaries came to Chichicastenango, one of the great market and religious centers of the Guatemalan highlands.

The town’s 450-year-old church exudes spiritual energy. On a recent visit, sun streamed through the high windows, turning to beams of mote-filled light in the thick incense smoke that permeated the vaulted interior.

Maya men and women, clad in traditional bright and intricately woven dress, bent before the carved wooden saints that lined the church walls. Some lighted incense, filling the air with the acrid smell of pine resin. Some uttered prayers. Others poured beer on the ground at the feet of the saints, a symbol of their pledge to quit drinking.

The church’s namesake and most important icon is St. Thomas. The wooden 18th century carving is cared for by a cofradia, a group of Maya elected each year to protect the icon.

At least one member of the six-man cofradia must stay with the icon at all times. In June last year, as one of the men slept nearby in a special apartment rented to house the icon, someone broke in and stole a small statue of Jesus that St. Thomas held in his hand, a 15-inch carving that local Maya affectionately call “Little Thomas.”

The theft struck the Maya in two ways. First, suspicion immediately centered on the cofradia members, traditionally leading figures in the indigenous community. The accusations divided the Maya.

“People were very suspicious,” said Gabriel Grave, an assistant to Chichicastenango’s mayor. “Everybody was saying, ‘Maybe it’s him, maybe it’s not him.’ ”

And then there was the matter of tradition. Each year, the small Jesus is taken through the villages surrounding Chichicastenango in a series of parades and festivals to bless the planting of the fields. With no little Jesus, this year’s cofradia paraded through more than 20 local villages carrying a faded picture of the icon.

“People felt an emptiness,” said Emilio Baldemar, another of the mayor’s assistants. “They were unhappy.”

Today, the newly elected cofradia members keep close watch on St. Thomas. He is housed in a different apartment now, a small building on the outskirts of the city marked only by a small pine branch over the entrance. Inside, pine needles cover the floor. Blinking Christmas lights are strung from the ceiling.

The hand that once held the little Jesus now wrapped in a bandage, St. Thomas stands in front of the room in a large glass case. The cofradia members allowed a Times reporter to take pictures, provided that the theft be publicized in the United States.

“It’s important for everybody. It’s our patron image,” said Manuel Mejia Nix, the indigenous mayor of Chichicastenango, which has two parallel governments, one for Maya and the other for Spanish descendants. “Everybody sobbed when they found out the icon was gone.”

The greatest mystery surrounding the thefts is who is to blame: Who are the culprits, and what are their motives?

Catholic Church officials, for their part, believe that the spate of thefts is linked to the recent, highly publicized trial of three military officials accused of killing Bishop Juan Jose Gerardi in 1998, just days after he released a human rights report blaming the military and their allies for 90% of the 200,000 killings in Guatemala’s long, savage civil war.

Some of the most spectacular thefts--of the Virgin of Carmen in April and of the patron saint of the city of Guatemala last fall--came right after or right before key decisions in the trial, which ended recently with the conviction of the three top military officials and a parish priest who helped cover up the murder.

Thus, top church officials believe that the thefts are part of an orchestrated campaign to intimidate the church. When the Virgin of Carmen was stolen from a 17th century chapel that sits on a hill overlooking downtown Guatemala City, the church convoked a parade attended by more than 1,000 people to demand the statue’s return.

“It’s a persecution of the church--and a slap at the Catholic people of Guatemala,” said Bishop Mario Rios Montt, the head of the church’s human rights division. “It’s a distinct message to us.”

To others, the motive is simpler: greed.

Guatemalan art experts trace the beginning of the current wave of thefts to the country’s 1976 earthquake that killed nearly 23,000 people. Many churches were damaged and destroyed, and destitute and homeless quake victims began stealing and selling the icons to survive.

Since then, a thriving black market in the icons has developed. In some cases, the burglars are believed to be common thieves; in others, they may belong to organized groups. Some even believe that priests are involved because the thefts occur so close to parish homes.

“There are many priests who sleep very deeply in this country,” said Lara, the folklore center head.

Estimates for the market value of the icons vary widely. Some art dealers say prices would range into the tens of thousands of dollars. Church officials say they have heard of icons selling for more than $100,000.

Although the icons wind up all over the world, a good number probably remain in Guatemala, in the homes of wealthy citizens for whom the items would have both a monetary and personal meaning.

In Antigua, the well-preserved former capital that’s now a vacation retreat for Guatemala’s rich, the centuries-old homes are reputedly stocked with religious imagery acquired by collectors more interested in interior design than cultural patrimony.

“Those homes are filled with sacred art,” said Lara, who said he has been to several homes in the city and seen artifacts. The owners are rich and powerful, and nothing is done, he said.

The international appetite for such icons is also clear. A few years ago, Guatemalan police captured several members of a smuggling ring allegedly shipping the icons to a German art dealer. And most of the few icons that have been recovered were discovered by border police.

The biggest benefit to shipping the icons overseas is that they are inconspicuous. Who would identify, or even notice, a sacred Guatemalan statue sitting in a trendy restaurant in downtown Los Angeles?

“This is an international thing,” Rios Montt said.

Government investigators face a mountain of difficulties in tackling the problem. First and foremost, the theft of icons is not a top priority in a country now suffering a massive wave of killings, prison breaks and massacres.

Second, although police have a department devoted to the theft of cultural artifacts, most of the focus is on the theft of pre-Columbian art, a more established smuggling phenomenon that commands much higher prices.

And finally, there is no master list of the country’s sacred icons. That means it’s nearly impossible to return a stolen item on the rare occasion when one is recovered.

It’s also impossible to know what, exactly, has been lost so far.

“There are no funds available, and we don’t have the infrastructure” to track down the churches where the images came from, said Luis Fernando Paniagua, head of the Culture Ministry department in charge of investigating cultural property theft. “It’s a problem that’s growing very fast and that worries us a lot.”

The thefts have led to suggestions that Guatemalans round up all the icons in the country and place them in a museum for safekeeping, as has been done in other countries, such as Ecuador.

But that would be a theft of another kind, stealing the icons from their homes in wax-covered nooks and on ancient wooden pedestals where they have been venerated by the faithful for centuries.

“The icons help people to understand their faith,” said Roderico Barrios, head of the committee to recover the Virgin of Carmen. “Their value is incalculable. They are a part of our lives.”

For now, authorities make do with a haphazard system of investigation and recovery.

Proof of this can be found in a small, locked room just a few hundred feet from Paniagua’s office in a warehouse in central Guatemala City. There, tucked next to the bathroom, is where police bring the icons they have recovered.

More than a hundred paintings, statues and carvings are piled on the floor and on long, gray metal shelves, next to outdated schoolbooks and atlases. There are chipped cherubim and handless wooden angels. In one corner is a 3-foot-tall Virgin Mary, swathed in blue.

She has been standing there a dozen years.

Haroldo Rodas, an art historian, has plans for a massive project using volunteers to fan out to churches around the country, cataloging and photographing all the icons.

He asked a visiting reporter to publicize his cause because the project had already been turned down by Guatemalan officials for lack of funds.

“These icons are not only important to us,” Rodas said. “They are important to the world.”