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proxodimecI don't think i'm moving faster than light - am i? Why are my posts here always so late?
1 Nov. 2003, Dia de Todos Santos.
Todos Santos (All Saints) is also the name of a town in Cuchumatanes sierra - and when the two combine, all saints faint. Imagine yourself living in a small village, spending most of your life working in the field, the rest of it probably dying in your bed. What would you do for a fiesta?
(Wrong approach, possibly. After all, that's how most of you actually live, just replace villages with cities and fields with Hi-Tech or whatever. For you it might not necessarily be a nightmare...)
Well, anyway - the guys drink. A lot. Gallons. A lot of gallons, too. Walking in the town between 30th/Oct and 2nd/Nov can make any Russian homesick - and envious. Immovable objects (sometimes trying to move, but usually without much success) of human shape line the streets. Cantinas and liquor shops have tails (queues, that is) nearly as long as the sierra itself. Dancing and fighting everywhere - often it's difficult to tell which one is going on.
All this chaos culminates on Dia de Todos Santos, with the so-called "horse races". In reality the event has nothing to do with races - there're no winners, no timing, no sense. Starting at 8AM, dozens of local cowboys, already "warm", gallop along a 500m. long stretch of a dirt road there and back, there and back. No records are set, but the speed is impressing - standing in the front row lets you experience the feelings of a spearman facing a cavalry charge. After each 10 or so rides, the guys add some Quetzalteca Especial to the stock already in their stomachs. Thus losers begin to appear, and they often lose more than just points - that is, they fall. Almost none stand up - most have to be carried away; some have to be buried later, too (fortunately, the next day is Dia de los Muertos, so it shouldn't be a problem). Someone told me there is a belief: if no-one dies in the "corrida de caballos", the next harvest will be miserable - Yum Kax, or what's his name, still wants some human meat, at least once a year (easy to understand - he'd had enough time to get used to abundant sacrifices).
More riders arrive, and the circus continues till dark; a couple of hours before sunset they start lashing the horses with live chicken until the latter die - another form of sacrifice, apparently.
The final show awaits one on the way back - piles of man, some wounded, drunken police (they come from Huehue - a long way - to enforce order, but always end up drinking, shooting someone for practice and then drinking more; this time they came with the military - maybe to drag them home when it's all over), marimba playing from all sides simultaneously (different melodies, of course) - a picture of hell generously sprinkled with fresh (well, mainly fresh) vomit.
Fiesta!
1 Nov. 2003, Dia de Todos Santos.
Todos Santos (All Saints) is also the name of a town in Cuchumatanes sierra - and when the two combine, all saints faint. Imagine yourself living in a small village, spending most of your life working in the field, the rest of it probably dying in your bed. What would you do for a fiesta?
(Wrong approach, possibly. After all, that's how most of you actually live, just replace villages with cities and fields with Hi-Tech or whatever. For you it might not necessarily be a nightmare...)
Well, anyway - the guys drink. A lot. Gallons. A lot of gallons, too. Walking in the town between 30th/Oct and 2nd/Nov can make any Russian homesick - and envious. Immovable objects (sometimes trying to move, but usually without much success) of human shape line the streets. Cantinas and liquor shops have tails (queues, that is) nearly as long as the sierra itself. Dancing and fighting everywhere - often it's difficult to tell which one is going on.
All this chaos culminates on Dia de Todos Santos, with the so-called "horse races". In reality the event has nothing to do with races - there're no winners, no timing, no sense. Starting at 8AM, dozens of local cowboys, already "warm", gallop along a 500m. long stretch of a dirt road there and back, there and back. No records are set, but the speed is impressing - standing in the front row lets you experience the feelings of a spearman facing a cavalry charge. After each 10 or so rides, the guys add some Quetzalteca Especial to the stock already in their stomachs. Thus losers begin to appear, and they often lose more than just points - that is, they fall. Almost none stand up - most have to be carried away; some have to be buried later, too (fortunately, the next day is Dia de los Muertos, so it shouldn't be a problem). Someone told me there is a belief: if no-one dies in the "corrida de caballos", the next harvest will be miserable - Yum Kax, or what's his name, still wants some human meat, at least once a year (easy to understand - he'd had enough time to get used to abundant sacrifices).
More riders arrive, and the circus continues till dark; a couple of hours before sunset they start lashing the horses with live chicken until the latter die - another form of sacrifice, apparently.
The final show awaits one on the way back - piles of man, some wounded, drunken police (they come from Huehue - a long way - to enforce order, but always end up drinking, shooting someone for practice and then drinking more; this time they came with the military - maybe to drag them home when it's all over), marimba playing from all sides simultaneously (different melodies, of course) - a picture of hell generously sprinkled with fresh (well, mainly fresh) vomit.
Fiesta!
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Date: 2003-11-11 08:39 pm (UTC)no subject
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