Passport to Paradise Miriam Warner Vieyra

 Passport to Paradise 

    I really liked this story because it shows the power that people have when they stand behind religion, whether it be good or bad intentioned. In the story, a foreign man blows into town claiming to have power and offers tickets to the afterlife. The people of the village allow the existing clergy to be usurped by this man who claims to do the same thing but for a price. The legitimacy of the foreign man is never definitively stated but either way the people of the village seemed to believe him without much question. "Everyone in the market place said he possessed the power to make amulets which were passports to paradise"(275), at this point the actual legitimacy of the magician no longer matters because the people believe that he has power and therefore he does.

    "Heaven open to everybody and sin gone out of use....Man's imagination can certainly go to unfathomable depths"(276), this line alone points to many different religious implications. I think foremost it points to the concept of being able to commit actions without consequences at least from a spiritual standpoint. This becomes amplified if there is no law enforced the actions of religiously liberated men. We've seen this happen many times throughout history, the entire age of exploration was built on the idea that the ends justify the means. People ravaged the lands of the Caribbean and new world for hundreds of years and made peace with their god doing so. They didn't have anything morally or spiritually stopping them from pillaging the land. Maybe that's where it begins in this village, being able to cheaply by your way out of misdeeds so now you can commit as many as you want. I don't think people need to have their lives dictated by the ins and outs of regions but often times religion is what forces morality on people and without it certain people are held back by nothing on their quest to power.

    "Her man was going to burn in hell, not because of his sins, but because he was poor and black"(275), this could be the single most powerful line in the entire book because it so blatantly points out the race and class war that exists in the Caribbean and everywhere else in the world. I think this line is very applicable to the current sociopolitical state in the US. In modern day America and Latin America many people end up imprisoned and disenfranchised because they don't have the economic means to fix their problems and also have a racial disadvantage. I think for some people it's hard to grasp the actual gravity of what wealth means, some people think it doesn't mean anything, but in reality it is everything, Eugino could have been easily sent to the afterlife if he had the economic means to be, and none of the plight of this story would have had to play out. The story shows one of many struggles poor and disenfranchised people have to go through.

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