Every year on the last weekend of
July, the pueblo of Yolomecatl,
Oaxaca celebrates the festival of Santiago Apostol.
The preparations last all year and the festival attracts
hundreds of visitors to this town of 3000 residents.
I was invited by my adopted Mexican family to stay with
them in their family home. The family Galicia-Tapia
left Oaxaca in the late forties to find a better life in
Mexico City. Ruperto and Aurora Galicia took
with them their three children, the youngest, Toņa, then
three years old, and set out on foot for Mexico, roughly
500 km away. The Galicia home is still in the
family. The front of the house as shown in the photo
below doesn't reveal the full size, there are four moderately
sized apartments inside that surround the patio. There
is also a common kitchen.
Above is a typical street.
I like this shot because of the adobe house on the left
and the satellite dish poking up over the house on the right.
Here are a couple of shots of some
of the family. Left to right: Tita, German, Lola,
Gloria, (or me), Hector and Elvia. In the front row,
Tita's youngest, Lupita.
Santiago Apostol, as I understand
it, became deserving of sainthood while fighting to reclaim
Spain from the Moors. A figure of him is kept in the
church. The figure is dressed in pure white, on a
white horse, sword raised. I'm told the figure
on the ground below the horse is a Jew. I don't know
what the connection is between the Moors and the Jews.
A very well read friend of mine told me some of the history
of Santiago Apostol. It seems that he is an incarnation
of the apostle Michael. The story goes that after
the death of Christ, St. Michael traveled by boat down the
Mediterranean and eventually shipwrecked on the north coast
of Spain. During the crusades the Spanish locals
found his remains. This encouraged some of the crusaders
to stop off on their way to the Holy Land to help fight
the Arabs. I imagine that some of the original Spanish
to settle in this area of Mexico must have brought Santiago
with them.
A mosaic of flowers,
some 10 meters tall, covers the front of the church.
Below, a sculpture of the saint from a live bush and the
clock tower on the plaza.
The festival enjoys the music of
the brass band.
On Sunday night comes
dancing with the bulls. A dozen or so paper-mache
bulls are brought in parade thought the streets to the city
square.
After the bulls, the churchyard
was lit with a fireworks show that lasted several hours. The
show concludes with lighting a 15-meter tower of fire works that lasted
about an hour.
Sunday morning, breakfast
of mole, chicken, rice, tortillas and cuba libres was served
to 600-800 people. A cuba libre is rum, coke and soda
water. Tequila and mezcal were also available
to help dull the hangovers of Saturday night.
The main attraction
Sunday afternoon is the parade. Perhaps two hundred
people follow the figure of Sanitago Apostol on a 6-kilometer
march around the town and back to the church. At each
of four stations, the people stop to pray, and of course,
there were more fireworks.
The town square on
the left is the site of the annual basketball tournament
and on the right are the municipal government offices.
These two shots show
the type of terrain surrounding the town. Most
of the farms support livestock and corn. On the road
back to the main highway we passed through an ecological
preserve forested by cactus. Yes, a forest of cactus!
