VANKA’S MURALS
THROUGH A DIFFERENT SET OF EYES
The Holy Mother intervenes between gas-masked soldiers wielding rifles, breaking one of the bayonets. A woman hangs lifeless from a cross in dirty white garb, chained by her hands and feet. Mary, dressed in loud yet regal clothes, stares from the church’s altar.
These murals welcomed me to St. Nicholas Croatian Catholic Church in Millvale.
The church’s pastor, the Rev. Albert Zagar, commissioned Maximilian “Maxo” Vanka, a Croatian immigrant, to paint 25 murals on blank walls in 1937-41. His only requirement was that some of the murals be religious. The artist delivered.
“Where’s the holy water?” I asked myself. It was the first time in five years that I’d chosen to go to a church, but the routine was a familiar one. I was raised in a devout Roman Catholic Mexican household. I had to pay my dues to God in his home.
“Croatian Mother Gives Her Son for War” depicts a gathering of women in white mourning dress preparing a soldier’s body for burial. Rows and rows of white crosses fill the hillsides, stretching toward the distant church on top of the farthest hill.
On the opposite wall, “Immigrant Mother Gives Her Sons for Industry” shows women dressed in black crying over the body of a man killed in a mining accident.
The miners are Croatian immigrants who sought better lives abroad for themselves and their families. The other men are Croatians who died defending their nation’s values against tyranny. It’s a painful irony that these men left a country they loved because it had no more to The fundraiser for the preservation of the Maxo Vanka murals is at 6 p.m. Friday at St. Nicholas Croatian Catholic Church in Millvale. Details at post-gazette.com. offer them. The alternative was to travel to a foreign land that exploited them until their deaths.
I have heard why my parents decided to leave Mexico. At the time, my mother was a lawyer and my father was a seasonal migrant worker. They were a middle-class couple living the Mexican dream. They owned a house, a car and some property. They did it for me and my siblings, so we would have the liberty to pursue our passions. They wanted us to dream, so they moved to South Carolina.
The drug wars caught up with their hometowns a couple of years after they left. They’d get calls from my aunts and uncles describing the latest shootout. They said it wasn’t so bad — only a couple of people were injured and one person died.
I was 14 when my dad’s cousin went missing in his home state of Guerrero. A few days after he disappeared, the kidnappers called with a ransom demand. My aunt and uncle sold all of their belongings. They delivered the money and waited for the phone call. No one ever called again.
“Who caused World War II?” I asked myself. The Nazis. What did they want? They wanted power and to erase non-Aryan people from the earth. They wanted the earth all to themselves. They were greedy. In the Vanka mural “The Capitalist,” a rich man reads the stock reports and smokes a cigar. A black servant holding a tea tray stands next to a table filled with a gluttonous spread.
If there is no demand, there is no supply. But there is a demand, an American demand for Mexican drugs. The demand for drugs demands violence, demands death.
Opposite “The Capitalist” is a mural called “Croatian Family.” The father and children pray over pieces of plain bread as the mother brings soup. They’re the simple people pushed to the edges of society by capitalism. Christ looks over them, offering his blessing.
My mom prays each morning, during lunch and right before she goes to bed. I have heard her muttering for the souls of the wrongfully killed to reach heaven, the souls of the killers to be forgiven, and for an end to the needless killing. I don’t pray anymore. I used to pray out of habit. Sometimes my prayers were fulfilled, and I felt validated. Other times my prayer fell flat, and I felt isolated. He had ignored me.
I stopped going to church when I went to college. I lied to my mom for the first year and told her I was still going. She was happy. Maxo Vanka wasn’t religious. Church members say he never attended Mass at St. Nicholas. He used to say that he was deeply spiritual. The artist died swimming off the coast of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, in 1963.
I didn’t find my answers in the murals. The obvious explanation is that I am not a Croatian immigrant and no longer a devout Catholic. However, the muralist was asking the same questions I am asking. Maybe I’ll find the answers for both of us.