I vaguely remember that interesting short story from Salvadoran fiction in which a thief and murderer and lapsed priest in Guatemala of the 1500s is crucified. I might have read/translated part of this story for Barbara Miller of Mississippi although I really don't remember. During Uraco's long criminal career he had come to think of himself as a noble creature, one who committed bad deeds in order to spare "good people." He murdered his friend so that his friend would not have to carry out orders to act as executioner. Uraco took upon himself the bad in order to spare the good and after he was captured the judges decided to reward Uraco's "generosity" with his own execution by crucifixion. It so happened that while Uraco's body was hanging on a cross on a Central American hillside that a professional artist who had been commissioned by the Catholic church to make an artistic rendering of Christ's crucifixion was walking nearby with his notebook in hand and saw Uraco's dead body. Immediately he sprang into action, sketching a vision of Uraco that would serve as the model for his artwork, a sculpture known as the "Black Christ." It so happens that there really is a famous sculpture named the "Black Christ of Esquipulas" located in a Catholic church in the Guatemalan town of Esquipulas which is just across the border from Guatemala but the verifiable facts pretty much end there. It is said that the wood from which the 400-year-old sculpture was carved has turned dark as it has aged over the years, thus matching the skin color of the original inhabitants of the region when it was conquered by the Spanish. The story is an interesting and well written contrivance of human imagination, an entertaining blend of fact and fiction. In truth, art is beautiful and fascinating in its place but in and of itself it has no redemptive value. Art for art's sake is a dead end. Uraco, if he ever did exist outside of the author's imagination, was just another sinner who died. Praying to his image will not save anyone. The artist also was just a man carrying out the orders of the religious clerics who rewarded his talent according to the local market value. The artist was just another sinner who died. The church of Esquipulas was built on a site at which it is said that a local inhabitant had a vision of Christ crucified. The local inhabitants were just people who died as are we all. It was only Jesus who rose from the dead and who holds the keys to sin and death and is at the right hand of the throne of God making intercession for us. So sometimes all this art is just a distraction. So I found the story of the "Black Christ" very interesting in its own artsy way and yet it is wrong in a sense. There is no glory in being bad and sacrificing a good and clear conscience in order to meet the demands of art. Or maybe that was the author's point, sort of. Christ died so that we would not have to do that.
