Semana Santa

Semana Santa, holy week, is the roughly two week period leading up to and just after Easter. If you want to pin it down more than that you’re not Mexican. There is no pinning down time here. That’s one of the things you should leave at home if you ever come. Here time is vast and endless you must make yourself at home in it.

The first of the public events was around Palm Sunday, which the locals celebrate with plenty of decorations and paletas, which get handed out to just about anyone who will take one. The paletas, melting in a increasingly intense dry season sun, represent the tears of Mary mixed with, um, fruit. The kids loved it anyway.

San Miguel has its own little special little tradition on Good Friday, which involves papier mâché figures called Judases. They are not, however, limited to figures of Judas. Everything is Mexico is layered and goes far below what things appear to be, so I won’t pretend to know who the figures represented, but local political figures and other controversial people are common targets.

The puppets get wrapped in firecrackers with one big one inside. They’re strung up on a horizontal line and lit up. The fireworks cause the figures to spin for a bit and bam, the big one blows them apart. And it really blows them apart. Even for here this was a substantial blast that hurt your ears if you were at all close.

Domingo de Pascua as Easter Sunday is known around here, doesn’t have any of the non-religious associations it does in the states. I didn’t see any Easter Bunny or chocolate eggs. It’s a day people go to Mass and celebrate with their families. We dyed some eggs anyway.

We also found some good pork belly tacos for lunch. I’ve never understood it, but something about travel causes you to find more and more things you like the closer and closer you get to leaving a place.