Santa Cruz de los Milagros

Night of September 12, Santa Cruz de los Milagros, Rooster heads up the serenade.

This has been a very busy week. Starting last Saturday, Bob and Maria took us to Mineral de Pozos, a mostly abandoned gold and silver mining town. Around the turn of the century it was one of the richest cities in Mexico with somewhere around 1,500 mines operating. By the 1940s its population had shrunk from over 70,000 to 400. In the 1990s, it began growing again, and is now 4,000, due in part to increasing tourism. The artsy crowd in San Miguel de Allende is touting it as the next artists’ colony. Mining started here before Cortes, was taken over by the Jesuits with enslaved indians, and after Spain kicked the Jesuits out of Mexico in the 1780s, private enterprise took over. Somewhere in there, the forests were destroyed, the ecology was raped, and a bunch of foreigners who owned and ran the mines got very, very rich. We visited two industrial haciendas, San Rafael which has an underground mine shaft, and Santa Brigida, which has a large surface mine and some interesting buildings. Both have incredible and extensive ruins, industrial and workers dwellings. It is a historical archaeologist’s dream. For some pictures, visit my Flickr site at http://www.flickr.com/photos/tomwheaton/sets/72157594276915411/

The remainder of the week revolved around our barrio’s annual celebration of Santa Cruz de los Milagros (September 12-15) and Mexican Independence Day September 15 and 16. The Santa Cruz celebration is in remembrance of the taking of Sangremal Hill (where we live) by the Spanish in 1531 after Santiago appeared in the sky, and of the miracles wrought by the cross that gives the barrio its name. The wooden cross that was first used in the 1530s was later replaced by one of cantera (stone), and is now a venerated icon for the indigenous people who originally lived in the barrio and who still live in the other barrio on Sangremal called San Francisquito. This is the biggest celebration of the year for concheros (Aztec style dancers who use conch shells in their dances) and Apache/Soldado dancers from Querétaro and across the Republic.

The festivities start on the 12th and include a nearly all night serenade in the barrio. We started the festivities in the afternoon by following the sound of a band as it passed near our house, going in the direction of La Cruz church. At the tail end of the procession was a pick-up truck with offerings from the people at the La Cruz market. Later, this group was followed by people from the market carrying dozens of offerings of flowers, and by as many bird cages with all kinds and colors of birds, also from the market. The flowers were offered to the church for the weeks festivities, but I think the birds were just taken to church to be blessed. We ran into Sophie and her son Antoine as we came out of the church. They and Pierre are staying in Querétaro for a year while he is on sabbatical. They are friends of Byrone and Neils from Boston, and know and enjoy Mexico.

The serenade starts at 9 PM from La Cruz church and is led by a big paper maché rooster and smaller paper maché roosters all carried on long poles, followed by a 8-10 piece band, and 100-200 people to begin with. We went along Felipe Luna and stopped at a house about halfway up the block following the same route as most every other procession from the church. At the house, the band struck up Las Mañanitas (traditional Mexican birthday morning song and thus the roosters to greet the morning), and the priest and some Franciscans (who were all remarkably well-fed, jolly, and young) went inside to bless the altar set up by the owner while the rest of us stayed outdoors. This and the subsequent houses we went to were the houses of captains of the indigenous dance groups throughout the barrio. Every year the captains prepare altars or even turned their living rooms into small chapels with flowers, pictures, statues, an altar, etc. While the altar is being blessed inside, the band is playing, the cohete (rocket) guys are setting off big bottle rockets at the edge of the crowd (OSHA would definitely not approve), and the roosters are cavorting. At most of the houses, the crowd is offered something to drink or eat. The lively and animated crowd consists mostly of people from the barrio, with no foreigners (except us) or tourists from out of town, and very few people from other parts of Querétaro. Even our American and Canadian friends who live in the barrio did not come. There is a definite sense that the people know each other and feel a strong bond.

After the altar was blessed, the coheteros headed off to the next house shooting off rockets to lead the way. When they arrived at the next house they would send off half a dozen or more rockets at the same time. This invariably set off car alarms which added to the general noise and chaos. It was really rather amusing.

The only indication or information about the serenade was a short note posted at La Cruz church giving the time. There was also an explanation in the new book Christiane got from her teacher about the barrios of Querétaro which turned out to be a reliable guide on what was happening this week, why it was happening, and its history. Other than that there was no information available on the biggest celebration in the barrio. The folks in the barrio just knew what was going to happen next, since it has been going on, pretty much unchanged, for 300+ years.

Christiane went home as the crowd grew and headed off towards San Francisquito. I followed the crowd since we had heard the next house was giving out free tequila! By this time the rooster had lost a leg, the other one was hanging by a thread, one of the smaller roosters had popped off its carrying stick, and someone was passing around tequila surreptitiously, as people (well, guys) were getting a little tipsy. We crossed all six lanes of Avenida de Zaragoza stopping traffic in downtown Querétaro for 10 minutes. On the other side was San Francisquito, and a crowd waiting for us. There were now around 400 people.

The narrow, winding streets of San Francisquito made it hard to get around, and when I got to the street for the next altar it became apparent that I would never get in to get my tequila. So I said goodnight to the couple who had been telling us what was going to happen next and headed home at around midnight. We heard the multiple rockets exploding as the crowd arrived at a house until sometime between 3 and 5 AM.

The next day was the parade of dancers that started on Zaragosa and headed downtown passing through the main squares, then in front of the old San Francisco monastery (now the regional museum) where every group paid its respects and did a special dance. The parade then continued up Independencia to La Cruz Church. There were coheteros interspersed along the way setting off car alarms to the accompaniment of each dance group’s big drums that never stopped and which made a deafening noise. The featherwork was truly incredible (see http://www.flickr.com/photos/tomwheaton/sets/72157594286822733/), and the sense of movement almost made you seasick.

As evening drew near, my pictures began to get fuzzy, especially with the quick dance movements. The Aztec dancers have been around for over 100 years, but the Apache and Soldier dancers are 15 to 20 years old, I think. There are few if any Apaches in Mexico, and the soldiers are all French, even the ones with US Calvary uniforms. Since the French (under Maximilian) never fought the Apache, the whole meaning of this is beyond me. Do the Apache represent Mexicans, and the French represent the US or the Spanish? Why do the French always win?

The clowns in this parade are all either devils or skeletons, who are sometimes chased around by a little kid dressed as an Indian and holding a machete sword.

After three hours of this we were glad to see and hear the end of it.

On Thursday, there was dancing in all the streets around La Cruz from around 8 in the morning until at least 11 at night. After dancing for three hours in the parade the day before, everyone must have been exhausted and only kept going by the hypnotic effect of the drums. That evening we went to mass and happened to catch the bishop coming up the street (as foretold in C’s book) escorted from the cathedral across town by the best Aztec dancers and a coterie of well-fed, jolly, and young Franciscan monks. As mass was going on inside the church, the dancing went on outside. Without loudspeakers turned up full blast, no one would have been able to hear mass. At one point, I think I heard church bells amidst all the noise, and once I heard very faint, whoosh, whoosh, whooshes, followed several seconds latter by a dozen very loud explosions right over the church.

By this time we were worn out and went home to dinner. Later, we heard the sounds of real fireworks, not just the rockets, but were too tired to go watch. Maybe next year.

The barrio celebration ended Friday morning, and that evening was the Grito which memorializes the “cry” of Father Hidalgo in 1810. This is celebrated throughout the country, but the main celebration is the Zocalo in Mexico City. This year, there was a lot of speculation about what would happen with AMLO’s tent city dwellers who had been camped out there for 47 days. President Fox decided to avoid a confrontation (someone had to act like an adult) and visited Dolores Hidalgo and gave the Grito on the same steps Hidalgo did 196 years ago. By this time we were safely ensconced with our Irish coffees at David and Zoe’s B&B watching TV along with a bunch of other ex-pats like Bob and Maria, Joe, Lee, Barry, and some current Peace Corps Volunteers. We had a great view of the fireworks in Plaza de Armas from their roof, despite the rain which did not dampen the celebration too much.

Today, Saturday, there is a military parade in the Zocalo which AMLO kindly vacated for the occasion. Traffic is back to normal in Mexico City, and there is something going on in Querétaro, but I am too tired to find out what.

A footnote on AMLO and his movement. One gets the impression that a deal was struck between his group and the federal government to help him save face by being able to say he had “won” the Zocalo and defeated the “traitor” Fox. In return, he moved his folks out of the Zocalo. All the papers trumpeted how he had “won” and Fox had “lost”. But Fox also got what he wanted, by playing the martyr to the messianic, anti-democratic AMLO, by giving the Grito in Dolores Hidalgo (where it probably ought to be anyway), and by clearing out the Zocalo and Avenida Reforma of protestors without any need for police brutality. 84% in a national poll said they are glad AMLO and friends are leaving (every time AMLO does something his poll numbers go down and the PAN’s poll numbers go up, so the PAN was happy to let AMLO do his worst.) 77% said they don’t want him to come back; but significantly, 60% said they thought there should be a vocal opposition to the PAN and the federal bureaucracy. Also significantly, the PRD (AMLO’s party) are questioning whether they want to be a thorn in the side of the PAN or whether they want to get some laws passed for their constituents by working cooperatively in the legislature. And perhaps most significantly, the PRD and many of their sympathizers are now again referring to themselves as perredistas (PRD party members) and not as lopezobradoristas (followers of AMLO). Common sense seems to be prevailing.