Q. 1-- When did you first come to Álamos, and what was your impression of the congregation and the community at that time?

We were only six young men from the States. As we arrived in Alamos by bus in June, 1977, a lady told us that we should pray for rain as it had not rained in years. We walked to the Monastery (AKA Motel Alamos), and knelt down in the driveway to pray for rain. It started raining immediately. We were actually nobodies. None of us had finished his studies, and most of us could not speak Spanish. After two weeks living here, I dehydrated. I didn't even know what dehydration meant, as a word somewhere in the dictionary. Alamos had about 5,000 people at that time. Not over 100 Americans were here in the winter months. No one stayed in the summer, except two or three hearty souls. The very few window air-conditioners in Alamos were as noisy as freight trains. You could never talk to anyone above the racket. A fan was a real blessing. Some Americans would sit by their swimming pools drinking iced lemonade, cooling themselves with an electric fan. This was the only heavenly moment between May 5 and October 7 each year.

Q. 2-- Your calling has taken you to other missions and brought you back to Álamos several times. What changes have you noticed in Álamos on each stay here?

Alamos has grown only gradually, thank God. Those in charge, politically, only think in terms of what can raise more money. If a music festival brings in money, that's all that matters. The residents have to worry about the noise in the creek all night long, while a select few attend the cultural events in the city hall or in the small plaza in front of the local church. A lot of beer is sold, making sometimes 600,000 pesos. Money talks. So, the Festival is scheduled during semester break so university students can come and blow their minds out. This more negative aspect of the parties (that have increased to include: fiestas patrias, fiestas patronales, spring carnival, Cinco de Mayo, Christmas and New Year's, etc.) has increased to the point where a sizable number of Americans leave Alamos during these events, because they cannot sleep at night. Most weekends I cannot sleep, because the curfew for loud music is 2:30 a.m., but the cars turn up their stereos until about 5:30 a.m. That's when I have to get up.

Q. 3-- The history of the catedral in Álamos has been well documented. In looking back at the establishment of church in this community, what have been the highest points and the lowest points?

It is really difficult to keep accurate records of this church when it comes to what happened in the Catholic community. The building itself is not such a problem. The structure was initiated in 1802. Before that, there was another smaller building on the same site. Our baptismal certificates go back to 1685. (Even María Felix's certificate is here, and it states that she was born and baptized in Alamos. Even though others affirm that she is from Quiriego, that is no problem, because most people came into Alamos from the surrounding town to give birth.) But many documents are missing. All of the documents that record baptisms, marriages and deaths, during about one decade, were destroyed during the persecution that took place from 1926 into the early 1930's. This was called "La Guerra Cristera" in the central parts of Mexico. Here in Alamos, all the images, bronze candle holders, crucifixes, etc., were either robbed or desecrated. Older Alamenses have told me that all of this took place on a superficial "from-above" political level, because most people privately retained their faith during those attempts to secularize the people's attitudes. The church continued to thrive, although people in the northwest of Mexico, in general, were not sufficiently missionized to understand their faith adequately. Why? This city was bordered by deserts in the Mayo and Yaqui Valleys and was not attractive as a place to live, except for the silver mines. There may have been six priests to evangelize the entire state of Sonora. After the Alamos mines were considered exhausted, people went to live in the valleys of the western lowlands of Sonora, especially surrounding the more prosperous towns like Hermosillo, the port of Guaymas, and later on, Obregón and Navojoa, these latter two being relatively modern cities. The city shield of Alamos still hails: "Aquí nace Sonora."

Q. 4 During the time that you have spent in Álamos, is there one church leader who "stands out" for being especially innovative and charismatic? Can you provide some examples of this person's contribution to the church and the community?

The first person who comes to my mind is a little lady by the name of Nelita Robinson Bours. She has been around as long as I can remember, and is probably approaching 80, and has been almost blind for the past 35 years. She was born in Aduana, and was named after the Virgen of that place, "Balvanera". (Nelita is the nickname for Balvanera). She was the last of her family as her mother died giving birth to her. So, she was brought up by her grandmother. If you wish to know about the Bours family, she can tell you all their names and which branch of the family they belong, too. Everyone loves her, and her house is a place where people come and go just to receive her spiritual comfort. She lost her arm in a car accident on the highway, right near where McGahey's gas station is now situated. The accident left her face badly scarred, but you can see a photo of her on the wall--she looked like Judy Garland with blond hair. At that time of her accident (1982), Father Felipe González was the pastor. He, too, was a great figure here in Alamos--very handsome, and he did a lot to restore the chapel in La Aduana, Minas Nuevas, Maquipo, and other small towns. He came out in the Mexican movie filmed in Alamos in 1977, México Norte, as the priest performing at the wedding scene.

Americans may remember Father Joseph Bracket even before that. He was one of the smallest but strongest men I have ever known. He was an orphan from Pennsylvania, who admired the priest chaplain in the orphanage, and decided to become a priest. He was here in Alamos when I arrived and had lived most of his priestly life in Sonora. He died on October 31, 1999, in Albuquerque, NM. Another American priest who came to live in Alamos in the 1950's was Fr. Rafael García, originally from Watts, California. He entered the Seminary here in Sonora when he was 15 years of age, during the Great Depression, and stayed here in Sonora all the rest of his life. He is buried in the Alamos cemetery. He had an incredible sense of humor. When I asked him how he had learned American slang, he said his nieces and nephews in the States taught him.

Q. 5 Álamos seems tranquil to the visitor--almost a perfect place to live. We know, though, that many problems exist in this community and other small towns in Sonora. From your perspective, what are the greatest problems facing the native population of Álamos?

As I mentioned above, economic reasons seem to impel most political figures into initiating projects for the sole purpose of bringing more money into Alamos. These projects are initiated in a mindless fashion. No one thinks about the exponential effects of urbanization, which lead to mechanization, and depersonalization. For example, plans are presently being made to bring a main highway from Masiaca right across parts of Alamos that were formerly preserved from assaults on the natural landscape. Many Americans are very upset by these plans, because they had invested so much in restoring homes that were surrounded by trees and fields of natural wilderness. They fear all of this will be lost. Remember the famous book by E.F. Schumacher, called Small Is Beautiful. If you make Alamos into a city twice or three times as large as it already is, you might as well move to Granados or to Yécora, or somewhere far away up in the hills where you may have to first establish a law about restrictions on size of neighborhoods.

Q. 6 The church building in Álamos is a national treasure, and funds are being raised for its restoration. What are the principal concerns and needs in completing this project?

It takes a lot of money to restore and maintain. This may sound like I'm contradicting what I said in the previous reply. But, it is possible to raise money without destroying the (soul of) Alamos in the process. For example, San Xavier del Bac Mission, just ten kilometers south of Tucson, has a campaign going to restore its two towers. Each tower will cost a million and a half dollars to restore. This is entirely being done by people of all walks of life. They have organized this from their own ingenuity. It is not a church-run project. Here in Alamos, I know something very similar is being done among all the persons who love Alamos. We don't need to have jamborees "a la Rio da Janeiro" every two months to do this, and in the process turn this into another Las Vegas.

Q. 7 Álamos was a village of ruins with a population of 2,000 when an American, Levant Alcorn, discovered the community in the 1940s and started the process of restoration. In what ways has the "American community" here in Álamos benefited the local population? In what ways have the actions of Americans been detrimental?

The Canadians, Europeans, and Americans have definitely been a positive influence on Alamos. Without them, Alamos would never be what it is today. There is always a little self-serving involved in this. However the American experience in Alamos has been very good. Mr. Alcorn did a lot of good, and I feel very privileged to have been here to celebrate his funeral Mass. He would have reached 99 years of age in a few months more. I also knew Ida Luisa Franklin, whose restoration of the Almada mansion in front of the cemetery was a true masterpiece. What a pity that the building is left to crumble again. When she found it, it was just a pile of rubble. She had the imagination to dream about what it must have looked like a century earlier. She would get up at 2:00 a.m. each morning and write. Her books should still be available.

What has been negative in the American community as been what we always find in any other foreign country where we go to live. We don't always understand the way the indigenous population thinks. We impose our own thinking patterns onto what may be entirely different mentalities. For example, we Americans consider the minimum wage to be just fine in the United States. Here in Mexico, the established minimum wage means human bondage. Some workers are paid fifty to eighty dollars per week, and we have no scruples because they accept it. We need to realize that the system here is actually feudal—meaning that we have to accept paying for medical bills, quinceañera expenses, etc. Most Americans have already figured this out. But there is still a lot of fine-tuning to do, especially in the area of attitudes towards the people who we employ. Over-familiarity, for example, is usually the underlying cause of theft. This has unconscious psychological reasons to it, which I can go into in a book I have always dreamed of writing.

Q. 8 What efforts have been made, and are currently being made, to integrate the American community into the local congregation?

There have always been good efforts, for example Las Comadres, and other efforts to help the poorest of the poor. I would suggest the first step is to study Spanish. Nothing helps you more than to understand what people are talking about. An American couple this summer went to Salamanca to study Castilian Spanish for one month. This is a giant step forward. Even after you understand the language, one needs to pay attention to different mentality nuances, that can potentially cause lots of embarrassment. Each country has a different national and cultural mentality. We cannot "go native," as they warned us not to do in Ethiopia (Peace Corps). But, we can learn to appreciate different music, life-styles, costumes, culture, etc. A second way is through knowledge of history. History explains why each country became what it now is. I recommend The History of Mexico by Burton Kirkwood (Palgrave Macmillan, NY, 2005). Cost: $18.95. The author gives a very balanced, sympathetic view, in only 225 pages, paperback, still in print. It makes a good read. If you want to read something really funny and entertaining to understand the Mexican quirks, try Distant Neighbors, by Alan Riding. He starts out by saying: "No two countries are so close to each other geographically, and so far apart culturally, as Mexico and the United States." The third way is to accept that you, although not a citizen, have human rights in Mexico. Stay close to the American community and to the Mexican community. Obey all the local laws, and at the same time realize that some of the laws are merely penal. (That's why some dare to go through red lights, but we should not try it.). Be courteous. They will love you for it.

Q. 9 You mentioned at one time that the percentage of Catholic Church membership in Mexico has fallen from 95% to 75% in the past two decades due to the growth of Evangelical Protestant congregations. What is the Catholic church doing to combat this challenge in Mexico?

We live in a free country. I believe that other religions are actually doing us a lot of good. The Catholic church is the sleeping elephant. It needs to wake up and start taking more responsibility to serve the Mexicans, especially the poor. When Poland was under attack by the Communists, the Polish became the most exemplary Catholics in the world. I also think we can begin working together. One time a young Protestant couple came to my door and said they would offer their services to evangelize the Mexicans without changing taking them away from their religious conviction. I was overwhelmed and deeply grateful.

Q. 10 While standing at the pulpit here in Álamos, what is the most moving incident that has happened? What is the most humorous?

One time an old lady approached me while I was in the pulpit giving a homily. I did not know what to do. She came up the steps, leading to the sanctuary, and got closer and closer. I tried to act like I could not see her, and continued talking. Finally, she embraced me! I stopped talking, trying to keep calm, and waited until someone came forward and escorted her away. After Mass, they told me she is the town nut, and that she does that to all the priests, not to worry about it.

I used to get very upset with dogs coming in and out of the church. No one else paid any attention to the dogs. So, after several years, I finally got accustomed to ignoring them.