NM Rain Mass ‘gives people hope’

BUEYEROS – The faithful gathered at a base of a huge rock, arriving from homes as far away as Idaho, to pray for rain in a land that needs every drop. Temperatures soared to near 100 under a noonday sun as the Rev. John Brasher continually mopped his face with a handkerchief. “I’m not crying; I’m melting,” he confided to the congregation in the middle of a Gospel reading. As Brasher prepared the Eucharist, a sudden gust whipped up a cloud of sand and dust, forcing many to turn their heads and squint. Wind lashed the tarps set up to provide some shade for the congregation. Welcome to the Misa del Cerro, or Mass on the Hill, an 81-year-old tradition started in the dark days of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression, and faithfully observed every year since. The event is held at the foot of a butte that looms over a huge expanse of grassland. “You are still praying for rain, aren’t you?” Brasher asked the congregation. “Every day,” one man shouted. At the end of Mass, the congregation recited a prayer for rain: “Open the heavens for us and send us the rain we need for our crops, our livestock, and our well being.” Plastic chairs were collected and guitars stowed away, and a field of pickups rumbled off to Arnold Miera’s ranch nearby, where a reception was planned in the family’s big steel barn. Beef barbecue, rice, beans, salads and desserts were served cafeteria-style at long tables. Miera, 82, owner of the 17,000-acre Miera Ranch, looked every inch the cowboy in a white Stetson, jeans and a leather belt tooled with his family name. He is the son of Nestor and Feliciana Miera, who organized the first Misa del Cerro on July 25, 1934, the feast day of Saint James, the patron saint of Spain. Miera raised cattle until worsening drought conditions and personal tragedy prompted him to sell his herd in 2012. When Nestor and Feliciana arranged the first Misa del Cerro, Harding County’s population was near its peak of 4,421 in 1930, just before the Dust Bowl hammered the southern Great Plains. In the years since, young people have abandoned the harsh life of ranching to find jobs elsewhere. The county, more than a third larger than Rhode Island in area, has lost population each decade, shriveling to just 695 residents in 2010, making it New Mexico’s most sparsely populated county.