Monday, March 23, 2015

So a funny thing happened on our first trip to this part of Mexico which has since become something of a not uncommon occurrence.

We were walking along a street in Guanajuato on our first trip to that city when suddenly as we came around a corner just a whole lot of people were standing on both sides of the street waiting, it seemed, for something about to happen.  A couple of nights before this a religious procession had walked by us, starting with priests with incense and a large flower-filled float carried like the Ark of the Covenant through the street, with a marching band and the Church bells going off like crazy, followed by hundreds of people walking and singing down the street.  You can see a video I took of it here.

We thought something similar might be about to happen, but instead it was a very different sort of parade that came around the corner and down the street.  It consisted mostly of kids, a couple of which held a banner for their school, but it was like no school parade I had ever witnessed.  There was one kid dressed as the devil and another as kind of a pirate/bandito/Guy Fawkes character, both of whom brandished whips that they kept cracking at other kids in the parade (and at the crowd, which kept a respectable distance).  A few other kids danced around, dressed variously as a black bull, another devil and assorted other adult-sized caricatures.  Later there was a marching band, people dancing in native dress with the feathers and the paint and whatnot, but it was these kids that I found the strangest part of the proceedings.  I just remember thinking, as I frequently do down here, that this is decidedly not Salt Lake City.

We've since had other experiences like this many times, where some cultural event starts happening unexpectedly around or near us, such as a parade, a procession or a marching band, sometimes in the middle of the night (like last night) or mysterious firework demonstrations at weird times (like this morning, beginning at 4 am and then becoming loud as hell and seemingly just outside my window from 6-7).  The overall feeling is "What exactly is going on here?"  Sometimes a Google search of Mexican Holidays will turn up a clue but other times one is left completely in the dark and totally baffled (turns out yesterday was Benito Juarez' Birthday, so Wake the Hell up, Everybody!)

Where I come from, parades are a very different kettle of fish, especially those featuring kids.  There was only one parade that happened in my neighborhood growing up, every year on July 4, and it went right down Evergreen Avenue, the street in front of my house.

I have very few memories of it growing up, but in 2001 my folks asked if my own kids, 6 and 8, would like to be in it.  It consisted mainly of children riding by on bikes wrapped in red, white and blue ribbons and a few homemade floats pulled along by dedicated parents, watched by the grandparents and other family members.

In other words, it was super lame.

Like school plays, piano recitals, merit badge and graduation ceremonies, parades in the U.S. are generally something you get roped into watching because your kid is in them and you love them enough to sit there and suck it up for the duration.  That's as true for the Pride Parade as it is for the 4th of July.

Hooray!  Green!
There have of course been many more parades since which fall into this category, such as the yearly St. Patrick's Day Parade, which apparently exists to celebrate the color green, Shriners in small cars, and Girl Scouts in full uniform, of which I have had two.

Best Buy Crossing the Plains
Around the turn of the century however, I began to be interested in going to Utah's biggest parade, which occurs on July 24th (Pioneer Day) and is WAY bigger than the July 4 celebration in Utah for reasons which are just too historically weird to go into.

These people brought their iguana
This parade, a barely-disguised celebration of Mormondom masquerading as a Founder's Day Parade, has become an event that people actually stake out their places for and camp there like nerds circling the Apple store the night before a new iPhone release.

Can you tell how much fun Grete is having?

And despite the LDS overtones, there is a huge variety of people of all stripes hanging out and watching the festivities: families with kids who planned for the event with humongous colorful umbrellas, drunken rednecks with kids dressed only in diapers (it's also known as Pie-and-Beer Day), hacky-sacking teens, a few punk rockers, the morbidly obese stretching the limits of physics in plastic lawn chairs, and just a lot of interesting people of all ethnicities and social classes, which is of course why I tried to convince my kids to come with me so I could snap clandestine pictures of people and slip them later into paintings.  My son John-David wised up after the first year but Grete humored me twice.

Here's one painting where I slipped in some parade folks, and another here.

Why didn't my kids want to go to this event?  Because my kids are smart and The Days of '47 Parade is, of course, super lame.

Who loves Mericuh?  Modern Display!
Saint McPatrick's Day
There will obviously be detractors from this point of view, as a lot of people go out to these things for some reason, but parades in the States, at least the part I'm from, have for the most part become these big corporate McFestivals that are just another vehicle for corporate advertisers and politicians (and in Utah, church leaders) to drape themselves in the flag or something with a shamrock on it or push the odd Mormon handcart.  As such these big crepe floats are incredibly surreal with their over-the-top patriotism displays and huge corporate logos.

Beauty queens, state troopers driving their motorcycles around and around in figure eights, marching bands and the glamorous honkies of the late night news team:  it is increasingly hard for me to connect any of this with my life, is what I am trying to say.  Plus I really despise bagpipe music as a rule, of which there are at least 2 different outfits that come marching by in each parade, kilts flying and scottish junk presumably a-waggling beneath.

We are the beautiful white people who bring you the News!
Me actually enjoying a parade in Mexico
The truth for me is that I actually want to like parades, filled with color and sunlight and spectacle as they supposedly are, but year after year I feel actually even more alienated by the parades of my own culture than I do when I am seeing a completely baffling one pass me by in Mexico and wondering what exactly it's all about, Alfie.

The thing about parades in Mexico, and many other places, is that they don't shy away from the darker side of the human psyche in the way that the antiseptic parades in the States have in the past who knows how many decades.  One would hate for there to be anything that's not nice in one of these slow moving sequin shindigs.

Don't be messin with St. Judith.
I feel this way about a large amount of the art I see produced around me and shown in my home state.  Put something weird or slightly disturbing in a painting and people assume you're a freak with some kind of psychological maladjustment, even as they cue up the latest Saw movie on Netflix.  Half the fun of art history are all the gnarly and funky bits that show up even in, perhaps especially in, the Churchy stuff.
Don't be afraid.  It's only a painting.

I love paintings that also try to take on the subject of the parade, especially when it's a really bizarre one.  Heironymus Bosch is always good for a parade route down Psilocybin Avenue, especially when one considers that they were paid for by and hung in churches in the Netherlands before America was discovered by Columbus.  That's not the kind of picture that was hanging in the foyer in the cinderblock chapel where I went to Sunday School growing up.  Maybe if it was I'd still pop in now and again for a look.

One of my favorite paintings of all time, James Ensor's Christ's Entry into Brussels, is a parade scene of the strangest sort imaginable:

And another favorite, Goya's Burial of the Sardine, is another parade scene which has that "What exactly is going on here?" feeling that I wish would occasionally happen back home but never does, at least not in a real parade.

I would love to paint a painting of a parade someday that captures some of the weirdness that these paintings do, but looking through all the photos I took of parades back in the States I just don't see the source material there.

The daughter I dragged on those ill-fated outings is now all grown up and heading off this fall to Tübingen, Germany on a Fulbright Fellowship.  Maybe you'll find the parades there more interesting, Grete!

I can't remember the last time I really enjoyed watching a parade in the States, though of course I've never been to the Mermaid Parade in Coney Island or Mardi Gras in New Orleans.  I suppose the addition of breasts would probably change the entire dynamic.

Do let's get back to Mexico, by all means.


So the next parade we witnessed in Mexico was the Good Friday Procession when we came back to San Miguel a few years ago, and it is an unapologetically religious, (specifically Monumentally Catholic) reconstruction of the Passion of Christ, complete with Roman Centurions and some extremely serious guys carrying heavy crosses in the heat of the day.

Following these hombres are (I suppose) the thieves who were crucified along with Jesus, being flogged by Romans (not really flogging them and nobody actually gets crucified, though I understand this really happens [yikes!] in the Philippines), and several other folks from the cast of characters from the Biblical story.  The people in this parade are decidedly not messing around, and clearly working very hard.  Several of the "floats" are really heavy affairs carried by 6-8 devotees dressed in black, which has to get super hot in the 84 degree weather of early April in San Miguel, and they are allowed to stop and rest every once in a while, the floats propped up on wooden supports while they catch their breath.  I would pay good money to watch the Ten O'Clock Eyewitness News Lineup from back home do this.

I'm not what anyone would call a Believer by any stretch of the imagination, and the whole mythology (which I was also raised within) now strikes me as extremely odious, but this procession is really something to see.

I imagine if one were counted among the Faithful it would all be very affirming and moving, but for me it was simply aesthetically beautiful, with the resonance of an event that taps into a symbology and tradition that goes back thousands of years.

I felt that way again when we came back for Christmas later that year and witnessed what seemed to be a spontaneous peasant procession for the Virgin that walked up the steps of the Parroquia just as Christmas Mass was ending on the morning of the 25th.  It was very beautiful despite the off-tune singing led by a woman with a megaphone and a small group of people with a life-size statue of the Virgin.  Then the people tucked fake flowers into various places on the Virgin as they set her down outside the church doors and sang another hymn.  

There were people crying tears of real devotion and it made me wonder what could possibly move a person who doesn't believe to this degree.  There was a tiny little bent-over woman with a cane who climbed slowly up the stairs to make her devotions.  Like I say, I'm not a believer but I do believe in showing respect for what other people hold dear, and I was glad Sofi could be there to see it even she really didn't understand what was going on.  Neither did I, to tell the truth.

However, despite myself, I thought of Steve Martin's Hymn for Atheists, and I mused that it's not too surprising there aren't any atheist cathedrals.

One bit of advice I would give to anyone who is staying in San Miguel during Semana Santa (which starts this Sunday, incidentally) and who is not 100% of the faith:  Make sure you are on the same side of the procession as your hotel and that you are close enough to a side street to beat a discreet retreat when you decide you've had enough Passion for one day, because this event takes an improbable amount of time to come to a close and sneaking through to the other side of the street is not something that is smiled upon by the people on either side of that strait and narrow divide.

Semana Santa is a whole scene here in Mexico, with different events and processions happening every day of the week, starting on Palm Sunday where people weave palm leaves into all sorts of interesting and clever shapes, and continuing through the week.  Unfortunately Sofi had an ear infection on our first day, so she looks a little miserable after looking all morning for a doctor who was open on a holiday weekend, holding her little palm crucifix complete with little palm Jesus on it that she had picked out, though she had no idea what it was.  

We certainly didn't go to all the events, as one procession goes a very long way IMHO.  And then, on our last morning in San Miguel, which turned out to be Easter Sunday, after a terrible night's sleep filled with people walking up and down the streets all night making altogether too much noise, I woke at 5 am to a marching band playing Mexican Polka music at the loudest possible volume as they marched down the streets of San Miguel, seemingly around and around the block our rental house was located on.

Then the fireworks started going off.  Not the quiet pretty kind that sparkle and shimmer and rain back down like squiggly little sperms swimming back to earth, but the big FLASH ones that just make a huge BOOM, echoing up and down the valley San Miguel is located in.  It was still pitch black, mind you, with a full moon high above the city.  Perhaps the thinking is that Jesus rose on Easter, and so should you.  Here's a link to a probably boring little video I took about an hour after they had started in, had figured out they weren't going to stop any time soon, and had dragged Tracy up to the roof of the house we were renting for the week.  What I am trying to say, is that when you come to this town, you might want to invest in some foam earplugs first.

[Side note:  I'm no biblical scholar, but I think there's no way Jesus was getting up at 5 am that first Easter Morn.  I bet they let him at least have a cup of java and read the morning paper before really firing things back up.  I mean, give a brother a union break already.]

Later that morning the entire town assembled for the event known as the Firing of the Judases.  It turns out this does not imply giving Judas a pink slip for inadequate job performance, violating the terms of his Nondisclosure Agreement, and improper touching and/or kissing.  No, turns out the firing is much more literal than this, and involves actual fire.

Half this penguin-dude's pants just burned off.
When we got to the Jardin, which is the town square in front of the Cathedral, we noticed 16-20 life-sized papier maché effigies hanging by ropes over the street, with a huge crowd anxiously awaiting the beginning of festivities.  Some of them were devils or demons as well as a few witches (the effigies, not the crowd, at least as far as I know), but most were just relatively ordinary looking Joes with Ross Perot ears and signs on them saying things like Candidato Corrupto, but also many more signs that said things like Hotel Virreyes and Dulceria Goreti.  In retrospect I think these were simply the local versions of Corporate Sponsorship for each Judas, but who knows?  Maybe somebody had a really bad night at Casa Canela.  Considering the night's sleep I had just had, this was a real possibility.

One by one the effigies were lowered, a fuse was lit, and the Judas was quickly raised back up while the fuse lighters ran like hell and the people pulling the ropes in the balconies above closed the doors.  The Judas would spin slowly as rockets began shooting off (sometimes into the crowd!) from circular bands around his/her waist, and then slowly pick up steam.  Some of them would catch on fire at this point, but most simply exploded with the force of an M80, which is almost certainly what they have inside.  We kept what we hoped was a safe distance away, which increased a bit as the show commenced.

There is simply no way I'm not going to show you a couple of videos of this.  

There's this one, which I'm fairly sure at least one of his unpardonable sins was wearing that pink leisure suit with the high fastening pants:

And then there's this one.

At least one of the Judases actually had candy inside, like a piñata with medium duty artillery, and when he blew up and rained dulces on the ground below some members of the crowd had to be encouraged to go back behind the ropes before the next Judas could be lit.  

This is emphatically not something you are going to see in Murray, UT, folks.

After the last Judas had been exploded, but before the street sweepers came in to clean up the carnage, there was a rush by members of the crowd on the parts and pieces left on the ground below.  Then there was an informal marketplace of sorts selling the best bits of exploded Judas chum for the proverbial 30 pieces of silver by what I am assuming were the event organizers, or perhaps crepe paper black marketeers.  

We didn't buy anything, but here's Straussy holding up a witches' head, and our friends who'd come to San Miguel with us ended up with an arm they snatched off the ground for free in their carryon.   Sweet spoils of victory!  Then we saw some kids walking a complete unexploded Judas (some of the effigies were traitorous duds), presumably still with the explosives inside, away from the battlefield.  Cuidado, Ninos!

While I understand (and Sofi has already pointed out to me today) that this last was technically not a parade per se, I hope you'll not be a Doubting Thomas wiggling your finger around in my blog about niggling details.  

I also want to insert a little clip here from one of my favorite shows of all time An Idiot Abroad, where Karl Pilkington, a very, very reluctant tourist, has a similar but much crazier Easter Sunday in Mexico City:

So, in closing, I would like to suggest that along with earplugs, you might wish to bring along safety glasses and perhaps some lidocaine when visiting Mexico during Holy Week.  And always remember:  Drop and roll, people.  Drop and roll.

I have more to say about parades in San Miguel, Little Flock, but this blog entry is too long already, so perhaps I'll write the rest in another epistle in a week or two after the Easter holiday.  Until then, try to be of good cheer already.