September is crazy fiesta month.
Two weeks after the Dia de la Independencia San Miguel celebrates its patron
saint. I learned that in the past there had been 6 different patron saints of
the city (who all were celebrated with full fiestas, but the officials or
religious-stick-in-the-muds had declared an excess of fiestas, and somehow got
rid of the other patrons of the city. Now there is only one official patron. Though each church
still has its saints who are celebrated. This latest round of festivals was awesome and special, but left me needing a break in the action.
Michael’s Dad picked a wonderful
time to come visit us over this festival weekend. We had a great time with him
and he enjoyed the beauty and art of SMA.
Between the two big fiestas Bob and
I came upon the day of celebrating el Pipila, the independence hero who stormed
the Alhóndigo, and was born in San Miguel. The El Pipila celebration involved many marching troops of
older secondaria students who paraded around the central square. In the
bandstand speeches were given in his honor. Most ended with a rousing Viva el
Pipila! Then wreaths were taken to his birthplace house and other important
sites.
The San Miguel fiesta began the
next day. Or rather, in the middle of the night. Many people never go to bed, but we did, then got up at 3am
to see the Alborada (literally meaning the “dawn”). We managed to miss the
parade somehow but arrived at the Parroquia for a front row view of the
fireworks. This display symbolically depicts the epic battle between the
archangel San Miguel and the devil (and their troops I guess). The cohetes
(bottle rockets) were set up at the main church and fired from 4am for a solid
hour. Rather than going up, these rockets were set to travel horizontally, INTO
the crowd, for a more battle like experience, I suppose. We had to fight the
crowd to get far enough away to not be in the danger zone (or the freak out
Nataly zone). At the same time all the bells of the Parroquia are ringing at
top volume. It was quite a battle, but, gracias a Dios, San Miguel won. Then we
dragged ourselves home around 5:30am. The crowds were at this point streaming
into Parroquia to attend mass. The large statue of San Miguel had found his
place above the altar surrounded by masses of flowers.
The next morning we missed the
thousand horses that descended on the square for an outdoor mass and individual
blessing of the horses. We woke up in time to see and smell the poop brigade
clearing the streets. Then came an amazing parade (desfile) in honor of San
Miguel. It was primarily a parade of dance troupes from all over Mexico. About
half were Chichimeca (native peoples from this area) groups, which are very colorful. From a dance perspective, their
steps are rather basic, as befitting a folk dance, I guess. Probably it’s much
more rewarding to do than to watch. I believe that their dances are a form of group prayer.
But looking at the dance troupes overall, you might
be excused for thinking that this event was a contest for the best hat. There
were feather poof hats, round tall hats, big flat signpost hats, beaded hats,
mirrored hats, you name it, someone had figured out how to make it.
Another significant
part of the parade was the carrying in of the Xuchiles (probably 20 ft tall and
made from lashing wooden sticks together and then decorating them with
marigolds, juniper branches and parts of a plant called cucharilla (little
spoon)). These are a traditional type of offering to saints. Apparently they
were originally used to place over the grave of a deceased for honor and
decoration. After being carried in the parade they were lashed upright into
place all around the parroquia in a beautiful display of community pride.
 |
| St. Miguel victorius over the devil (in purple) |
I don’t know how long the parade
lasted, but we lasted 2 hours before giving in to our hunger cravings. It was
so crowded we had follow along the parade route to escape and basically find a
restaurant along the path of least resistance.
Fortunately we found a great one
with enormous tamarind margaritas.
That night we got to see the
Voladores of Veracruz perform a few times. They are continuing a pre-Hispanic
dance ceremony. 5 men climb a tall pole (maybe 80 ft tall) to a square apparatus
at the top. They attach themselves to ropes. One man in the middle plays a pipe
while dancing and cavorting. At some appointed time they all lean backwards and
fly around and around this pole gradually getting lower and lower until the
reach the ground. What creativity
and beauty.
This brings us to the time of the
bullfight. I’m sort of embarrassed to even admit I went to one but I did. There
had been about 4 or 5 other bullfights in Sept and we’d debated going to see
one but hadn’t. This one looked like the last one of the season. So, in the
spirit of cultural expansion we decided to go see it was really like. And what
it was like was awful and cruel. As Michael’s Dad put it, it was like a train
wreck that you can’t stop watching. Actually I left 3 seconds after watching a
man put the poor bull out of his misery with a knife through the skull. The
event we saw featured young boys and women (though I left before the woman came
on). At first they weren’t killing the bulls, just ceremoniously slapping them
on their shoulders. Ok, this I could deal with. It was interesting watching the
way the boys use the cape.
The movements are very stylized and particular.
Also, the crowd really did yell óle whenever the bull ran through the cape.
When a fighter was done, the crowd threw roses down and waved white
handkerchiefs. But after the first few bulls, they did begin killing the bulls.
I left right away with Nataly. Michael and Bob told me that it just got more
and more gruesome, with no clean looking kills. I know this is a long tradition brought over from Spain, and
I don’t understand all the cultural implications, but looking in from the
outside it was as gruesome and cruel as I expected. I could respect it as an
act of bravery pitting man against a fearsome animal if they stayed with the
ceremonial kill. But actually killing the animal, no.
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