SMA: Dia de La Virgen de Guadalupe

Last Saturday was El Dia de la Virgen de Guadalupe, otherwise known as Guadalupe Day to us heretics.  For Mexicans this is one of the, if not the, most important religious holidays.  Literally millions of Mexicans flock to the Basilica De Guadalupe in Mexico City to pay homage and ask for relief, health, good luck, favors and so on (see post “Mexico City Day 4”).  Our neighbors went into overdrive and decorated the image of the Virgen painted down at the corner with loads of flowers, a flag, balloons and so on. 

They also held an unofficial mass every night for a week with something like 50 people, mostly teenage boys. Every so often they would break off from the mass to sing a song dedicated to Guadalupe.  After the second round of droning singing I got fairly fed up with it and bunged on my headphones.  Bear in mind this was every day for a week and lasted several hours each day. 

The finale was a party held at midnight (but starting much earlier) on Friday night.  There was a mass, a mariachi band of dubious quality, much singing of the paean, buckets of pozole, mounds of tortillas, an urn of atole (a lightly sweetened rice drink a lot like very thin rice pudding), ponche (apple/cinnamon punch) and much fun.  We hung out for a couple of hours (~2:30am), chatted with several of our neighbors in our pidgin Spanish and their sometimes excellent and sometimes pidgin English. 

We had thought that sleep would be a vicious rumor but surprisingly our heads (ears stuffed with ear plugs) hit the pillows and off to lala land we went.  There were of course the usual celebratory fireworks at 6am and a reprise of the mariachi band and paean but lack of sleep kept us mostly unconscious.

I should mention that this particular image is the source of a local miracle.  It seems that the locals painted the image to help ward of poor behavior/bad luck and so on in the immediate neighborhood.  This is quite common, the adornment of important corners with La Virgen, and usually results in a decrease in littering, bad behavior and so on as it has in our area by all report.

Just before we moved in the owner of the adorned building decided that he couldn’t allow the image to remain and painted over the Virgen.  He was concerned that he would lose control over his building to some extent to seriously Catholic locals, possibly superstitious ones at that.  Well, you can imagine the excitement and upset. 

And lo the following day the Virgen had miraculously reappeared at the corner in even better form, positively radiating a glow.  You can Imagine the Excitement.  Since then the locals have really amped things up, they have added sconces (with candles), flowers appear weekly, a Christmasy fringe of tinsel was added two weeks ago and last week was the aforementioned adulation.  It is all really wonderful.  The Owner is not Amused we are told.