The festival rises to a higher pitch.

September 7, 2023. As I sit here this evening, competing bands an processions pass under one window and then another, punctuated by firecrackers. I’m waiting and resting to gout in an hour to see the biggest firework display and dancing.

The morning started on a worrisome note. I had diarrhea, most likely from a street food I had yesterday, but there was no cramping or ill feeling. From that I expected it would pass quickly and it did. Then I returned to a more cautious appraisal of street food.

Looking out the window I saw 10 men working on two cows, recently slaughtered. Our host told me that they had just been slaughtered there to provide food for the whole town tonight. In fact there is a herd that is maintained explicitly for this festival and the cowboys who work it and manage it are honored during the festivities.

There was a little time free before the 11:00 mass, so I took an offer from the oldest son, Adrian, to go out the mountain to look at a historically important chapel.

Before the mass started, Fr Stephen blessed the people living far away by sprnkling holy water and saying prayers for them

After the mass ended the bands and fireworks started up and town assembled under a large covered event space. The whole town appeared to be gathered. Events alternated between children’s folk dances and honorary certificates for various notables in the town

The weather was threatening at this moment, so I cut out from the great assembly of townspeople, stopping at a couple of stands for pizza and tacos. As soon as I arrived home the skies opened and it rained hard for an hour. This was a very welcome rain in an area that’s had almost no rain for six weeks.

Later, around 8, Stephen and I headed up to the municipal court where the giant fireworks scaffolding had been constucted, as swell as a giant wall of speakers that were stacked 30 feet tall with a stage for all night music and dancing. As we arrived others were already enjoying music from the band, women dancing together in native costumes, and men preparing drinks from mezcal or whiskey. Soon the first of a multitude of paper mache bulls, women and chickens that all carried a series of fireworks attached.

With each successive lighting of the firework-bull bands of revelers dance behind the bull as she dances in a circle around the municipal square with the band playing. At first it was only one bull with a good space inbetween, but over the next hour, the number of figures increased. Sparks flew every which way and sometimes portions of the fireworks were launched off of the assemblage landing dangerously close to other people. A hot spark hit my cheek just below my eye and I took measures to protect my face, and then moved further back from the spectacle for protections.

The final pyrotechnic event is the “burning of the castle”, when explosions and fire arc out in every direction. It seems that the spectacle has become more outlandish with each year.

With the fireworks display over, the band warmed up on the giant stage, bit enough for a stadium concert in the US. From my host family home, the music could be heard, interspersed with firecrackers all night long. Until the firecrackers began to become interspersed with the roosters, and then the call to mass. At 5 the revelry stopped and the sacred chanting of the 5 am mass began. The sacred, the civic and the profane all intertwined in a complex dance that everyne knows and everyone has a role.