Bill Tate

I picked up The Penitentes of the Sangre de Cristos for the most unlikely of reasons: I had seen Charley Crockett reading the book, somewhat enigmatically, in a couple of his music videos. Crockett is one of an exciting generation of alternative-country musicians, along with Colter Wall, Tyler Childers, Nick Shoulders and Sierra Ferrell, who are showing that real music isn't dead, it's just underground. Seeing the book in a couple of his videos, I was curious to see what it was.

Unfortunately, it's not much. It's a very slight volume; at 60 pages, including illustrations and footnotes, it's almost as short as one of Charley's songs. It pulls together, rather haphazardly, information on a devout Christian sect, called the Penitentes, who lived in the Sangre de Cristo ("Blood of Christ") mountains in New Mexico. Central to their ritualised lifestyle was a re-enactment of Jesus' crucifixion.

The reader's interest is piqued upon learning that these Penitentes were the descendants of the original Spanish colonizers (pg. 11), and one of the only links to an ancient American world (pg. 8). But the book is too slight and unfocused to really inform the reader; there is no narrative, and only short chapters on 'origins', 'rituals', 'music' and the like. A first-hand account of one of these rituals from author Bill Tate lacks reporting clarity.

A promising early hint that the book will delve into the nature of 'tragedy', and how re-enactment is a ritual common to all cultures, is never followed through on. The book is too short to really bite into this theme, or into anything, and it's closer to a museum pamphlet than a book. Writing in 1966, Tate notes that the Penitentes will fade into history (pg. 26) and, certainly, they have done so. This is one story that remains shrouded in the mists of time.… (plus d'informations)