I Guess The Meaning of "Parade" Gets Lost In Translation

A few weeks ago, while waiting at the bus stop to go to Ollantaytambo, we heard drums and horns and marching. Eduardo explained that every Sunday, there's a parade in Cusco, so we hurried over the sidewalk, expecting to see floats and high school marching bands. What we found, instead, was a group of soldiers all marching along, bayonets fixed, boots gleaming. It terrified me, and I vowed from then on to avoid the main streets of Cusco on Sunday mornings.

Today, though, I thought it would be fun to go to mass in La Compañía de Jesús, which is one of the 16th-century churches in the Plaza de Armas. When I arrived, I found the plaza cordoned off, so my taxi let me out at a corner and I ducked around the police barricades onto the sidewalk. Turns out that those military parades, which I had so desperately tried to avoid, all converge on the Plaza de Armas each Sunday morning, with a military grandstand set up on the steps of the main cathedral and a decent-sized crowd applauding each unit as they march by.

Now, I am not categorically opposed to the idea of a military. I understand its necessity for defensive purposes, and even, in rare instances, for offensive purposes. However, I have never been accustomed to the sight of large groups of camouflaged men and women marching through the city's streets. To be honest, the sight of several soldiers together at once, all in uniform with their guns, tends to make me fairly nervous. In my mind, military parades are strictly for wartime and, what's more, wartime pre-1946 or so.

But what really upset me, more than anything, was the military grandstand on the steps leading up to the cathedral. I'm no idiot. I know my church history, and I know the pope used to have armies, and I know wars have been waged in the name of God since people first became aware of the name of God. Nevertheless, just because something happened in the past does not mean it should continue to be encouraged in the future. Having the military set up with the church as such a distinct background was, in my eyes, a blatant attempt to justify military force by association with the divine, and that is unacceptable regardless of which nation is invoking the divine.

When the church doors finally opened at 11:10, I scurried inside and was met with the "Ubi Caritas" that we sang so frequently at the UCC. Few things could have comforted me more.