¡Viva la Virgen!

I believe I’ve seen a lot of great celebrations in my life, but I’ve never seen anything like the gigantic explosive elephantine mega-carnival of a celebration of the Virgin of Guadalupe here in San Cristóbal de las Casas in Chiapas! All of Mexico celebrates this most festive of religious holidays, which takes place on December 12, but parties, parades, music, games, and strikingly beautiful traditions are held within the two weeks leading up to this day.

Years ago, after the Spaniards had arrived and were spreading Catholicism throughout Mexico (and raping and pillaging), the Virgin Mary appeared before an indigenous man named Juan Diego. She appeared in the form of an indigenous woman, and asked him to build a temple for her on that spot. She also appeared in two other locations in Mexico. This has a very deep significance to the Mexican people, because this Virgin of Guadalupe appeared before a simple, poor indigenous man, and signifies that the indigenous people who were being persecuted and abused at that time (and many of whom still are today) also had a right to dignity and respect. Thus, the celebration of the Virgin of Guadalupe is a deeply important, popular event here in Mexico. This is my understanding of the story from what I have read and heard.

This image of the virgin is one that you probably have seen before - the virgin demurely standing, her head tilted to one side, draped with a green cloak and wearing a red dress, and with curvy yellow rays shooting out of her like an oblong sun. A little person beneath her (who is an angel, but looks like a little boy or a strange little man) holds her up with his arms. It’s a very popular image in Mexico, and she is the famous Virgin of Guadalupe. (As a good friend of mine says, who would have thought that most popular woman in Mexico would have been a virgin???)

Well, here in San Cristóbal the church of Guadalupe sits atop another hill on the east end of the town. A street called Real de Guadalupe extends from the long, tall stairway of the church, like a tongue extending from the mouth of Guadalupe to the center of town. The church flashes its bright yellow and white paint, and although it looks old and colonial, it sports a gigantic light-up cross on the top in the best of deliciously tacky Mexican fashion. The cross glows across the entire town all night long.

About a week and a half ago, preparations for the big festival began. Red, green, and white flags were strung all up and down the Real de Guadalupe. Lines of them sway in the wind, and the sun shines through them during the day to make the illusion of a bright swimming ceiling of the colors of the Mexican flag, for blocks up and down the street.

Red, green, and white bulbs were hung all up and down the steps to the church. And now there are boughs of pine needles hung up, and shiny tinsel, and flashing Christmas lights forming a whole web of happiness in front of the church. Each day new elements were added all up and down the street and in front of the church - a few new food stands, a carousel, a ferris wheel, carnival games, more food stands, ANOTHER ferris wheel, more carnival rides, and MORE stands that sell everything from CDs to clothes to tacky pictures and knick knacks. And you can buy this fantastic native drink called ponche, which is a hot drink made with pineapple or other fruit, mixed with little pieces of bread, and a native alcoholic drink called posh. There are delicious pieces of fruit floating in the drink and it feels so warm and fuzzy down your throat. This drink is what truly killed my cold and my cough for good.

The carnival games are the best here. There are entire tents dedicated to table soccer. (In the States we play table hockey, but here it is table soccer.) There are about ten soccer table games all lined up under a tent with techno music pumping in the background and neon lights above. There are a lot of bb gun games. (How do you spell bb, anyway? Is it just bb? Or beebee?) There are tiny little shelves with pieces of weird candy lined up - the kind of weird candy they have here in Mexico, like salsa flavored suckers and tamarind gum and candy cigarettes. You pay a peso for a shot and if you shoot the candy and it falls, it’s yours. There’s another one where you shoot at little statues of animals and people, and when you hit one of them little puppets dance and sing in a little box. You don’t even win anything. You just get to watch the puppets dance and sing. They are often little skeletons or people playing in a band, or some type of singing animal. One was just a fat gorilla with sunglasses that bounced up and down and sang. That was my favorite.

The tradition here is for groups of people to walk or jog up the street carrying torches up to the church. The torches are metal and they usually seem to contain this rich-smelling local incense called copal. The people run up the street chanting for the Virgin. They arrive to the church, get on their knees, and move to the front of the church on their knees. A priest blesses them with holy water, and then they jog or walk away from the church again.

The most amazing thing about this tradition is that the torch is carried by foot all the way to the church from whatever town the group is from. They come from surrounding villages, and some have come all the way from Mexico City! They come in trucks and busses, but the people take turns running the whole way with the torch. My Spanish teacher told me that some groups come all the way from Tijuana! (That´s like team-tag jogging from New York to California!) And to think that this church of Guadalupe in San Cristóbal is so well known throughout the country!

By the time they get here, many of them have filthy clothes from miles of running. Sometimes they sleep in parks or in the streets, since many of them are poor. But they come anyway, and are very dedicated. The trucks and cars and busses are all decorated with balloons, tinsel, and tree branches. Some carry statues of the Virgin. One truck was carrying people dressed as Juan Diego and the Virgin of Guadalupe, posing in a scene and lit up. It’s a major, beautiful pilgrimage that people make here.

This morning my friend Zoe and I walked up to the church at 5am. For the past two weeks I’ve been hearing this strange marimba music floating down the hill as early as 4am, and I wanted to see what it was all about. We arrived, and the band was playing full force. Two huge, wooden 5- or 6-foot long marimbas were being played, along with some saxophones and an electric bass. The church was packed! And groups of people were already jogging to the church with their torches, chanting and singing. Incredible.

There are a few different bands that play, and they seem to play in shifts. I guess they would have to, since there is music constantly from 4am until very very late into the night. They usually play these one to two minute little riffs of popular traditional tunes, and they play each time a new group arrives to be blessed. An announcer will often introduce the group and encourage everybody to applaud. But this is completely sporadic. Sometimes there is music; sometimes there isn’t. Sometimes there is an announcer; sometimes there isn’t. And often the groups arriving with their torches are carrying and playing their own instruments - guitars, drums, and I even saw an upright bass being carried by two people. One person was supporting the bottom part of the bass walking in front, while the other person was holding the neck and playing the bass behind. Many of them also carry large or small pictures of the Virgin, or big banners or Mexican flags.

Yesterday I walked out of my hotel, which is right on the Real de Guadalupe in the thick of the celebration, and I could here explosions in the distance. They were constant, and they sounded like gunfire. And there was a cloud of white smoke coming down the street. Then I noticed a long line of black powder up the middle of the street, dotted with little balls of something packed in what looked like twine. A flame was making its way up the street down the line of black powder, and the little balls of twine were exploding all over the place. This was one of the craziest things I have ever seen! People followed the flame, and also ran ahead of it, both fascinated by it and slightly afraid of it. The flame would sometimes shoot up three or four feet, and the little balls were so loud when they exploded that you had to cover your ears or they might ring. Pieces of debris flew all over the street from the little balls, and sometimes they would ricochet out of control and send people dashing off the side of the street or hiding behind food stands.

The line of gun powder led all the way up the street, up the hill and next to the church. We followed its loud, chaotic, smoky path with the same frightened fascination that everybody else seemed to have. I wondered if there were any war veterans that were freaking out. Wow! That would be SOOOO illegal in the United States!!!!!

Yesterday I ran into these amazing traditional Aztec dancers who had come from Mexico City. They wore colorful outfits with intricate beadwork and other designs, complete with headresses that sometimes looked like leopards or birds and had full, colorful feathers shooting up to 4 feet above their heads. They danced up Real de Guadalupe, one of them beating a huge bongo-type drum that another man in front of him held on his back. Another was playing a tiny mandolin-like guitar. Hundreds of people followed, crowding the narrow street wall to wall. Many of them carried babies or walked hand in hand with children. Yesterday was the day to dress children in indigenous clothes, in honor of the indigenous Juan Diego. Little boys had little wool white or black tunics and bandanas and even had little mustaches painted on their faces. Little girls had intricate, beautiful little indigenous dresses on.

I followed the dancers to the church, and they danced inside the crowded place and got blessed by the priest. The interior of the church is wonderfully gaudy. (And I mean that respectfully, as a person who loves gaudy, tacky things.) A gigantic picture of the Virgin of Guadalupe hangs prominently at the front of the church, lit up by three squares of neon lights - green, red, and white for the colors of Mexico. A glowing neon crown hovers at the top of the picture. Jesus hangs on a cross to the left, with a glittering white cloth covering his groin topped with a huge white bow in the shape of a flower. (Somehow I sense that he wasn´t really crucified in this garb.) Over the windows hang bright pink and blue curtains. And another image of the virgin is on one side with a light illuminating her and several white glittering stars that shoot out from her sides. For some reason there is a green plastic cactus before her with little red lights on it. Hmmm. I can never bring myself to take photos inside churches; it just feels too disrespectful, even if the Virgin Mary is surrounded by neon lights. So you will just have to imagine it from my description and take my word for it.

Well, December 12 is the final climax of this big celebration that’s been going on for almost two weeks. It is the special day. In classic American style, I asked a Mexican here what happens today. He said, "It’s the big day. It’s the day of the Virgin of Guadalupe." I said, "Yes. I know. But what happens today? It’s the big day. What happens? Is there a parade? A big concert?" He said, "Well, people run up to the church and carry torches. That’s to honor the Virgin of Guadalupe." I said, "Yes. I’ve seen them. But is there a big parade today? Is there a big final event?" He said, "Well, today is the day. It’s the big day. It’s the day of the Virgin."

And the conversation went on like that for a while, until I realized that I was expecting some kind of big explosion, a climax that tops everything off, a final thrill that outdoes it all. But the celebration here was not like that. The final day was just like all the other days leading up to the celebration - just more of it. There were more people, more torches, more music, more food... but no big climactic ending. And, well, the people here are satisfied with just that.

And I wonder if my thinking comes from the way we think in the United States. We in the States always want more. The eggs have to have their salt and pepper. The chips have to have some weird spice flavor on them. The juice isn’t just apple juice anymore – it’s apple-banana-mango-cherry-broccoli twist. We always expect more. We have to have the tallest roller coaster. We have to have the latest gadget. But on the big day of the Virgin here, there are old outdated rides with pictures of Mickey Mouse and Goofy and members of Kiss and Marilyn Monroe. And the paint is old and flaking off, and nobody bothered to repaint it or add some new trendy character. The ride is there, and it works, and it’s just as good as it was 15 years ago. And that’s good enough for the big day of the Virgin.

Maybe it’s a difference of affluence and poverty, of luxury and simplicity, of higher or lower standards of living. I don’t know. I feel strange now that I expected some kind of climax to the celebration. As if people running for miles and miles and days and days across the country is not enough for me. Now that I really think about it, it’s a hell of a lot more remarkable than most of the big climaxes I’ve seen in my country.