Playing for the pope:
Musician in Juarez earned tourists’ pesos
One man travels far from home to share his violin music with Pope Francis and the faithful who came to see him.
His red violin matched the headband that kept beads of sweat from running into his eyes. When he ran his bow over silver strings, the sound he made stopped the people rushing to find a spot to see the pope.
They took photos and tossed pesos into Felipe Rey Gonzalez’s open instrument case. He made the case his money jar and laid it on the dirty street next to his feet.
Felipe stood out. He was near where people were lined up to see the pope before and after he left a Juarez prison. Inside, the pope would pray with people who were paying for their mistakes.
Felipe said he’s Tarahumara and Rarámuri, a Native American tribe from Mexico’s Sierra Madre forests known for their long-distance running. He was wearing traditional garb — a white shirt and pants, a red headband and a printed scarf around his neck.
Felipe said he walked partway from his home near Guachochi and took a bus the rest of the way. His gnarled feet were wrapped in a thin strip of rope and a sole so thin it seemed it could disappear with the dust.
“I came to see the Papa,” Felipe, 56, said in Spanish thick with an accent from his indigenous tongue. “And play for a little money.”
On this day, he was in the city with hundreds of others lined up outside Cereso prison. He would stay in Juarez three weeks, he said, to earn extra cash before he returned to his home on a farm in the canyons.
On the corner of Boulevard Oscar Flores and Barranca Azulejo a vendor was selling popsicles. People had been lined up for hours for a glimpse of the pope. The street was blocked off by a thick rope on each side meant to keep the crowd at bay.
But for some reason a guard let Felipe cross the rope, walk to the middle of the street. And he listened when Felipe’s fingers moved over the strings. The notes sped up and soon everyone nearby was watching Felipe.
Moments later, in the same way Felipe seemed to suddenly appear in the middle of the street where no one else was allowed, he slipped into the crowd waiting and waving when the pope’s motorcade slowly passed by.
The pope would head to his next stop. The mass of people who couldn’t believe they just saw Pope Francis on a street in Juarez stayed to hug and laugh and cry. Felipe was gone. But on a warm Thursday morning, on a sidewalk in front of a small shop, just steps away from the crowded plaza and the historic Our Lady of Guadalupe Church, there was Felipe again. He smiled when he talked with a woman who also stood out. He said she was like him. She lived on a ranch near Guachochi, a small city in the Sierra Tarahumara. Guachochi means “place of the herons.”
On this day, Felipe had been playing his violin in front of the Juarez cathedral, hoping to catch the last of the tourists who came to see the pope. He talked about his home.
“I have a ranch,” he said. “A farm with corn.”
He was not playing his violin. He was resting for a bit, visiting in the city with a friend from home.