Adoring the Saints: Fiestas in Central Mexico

Six. Toward Understanding the Patron Saint Fiesta

towArd underStAnding the PAtron SAint FieStA What do patron saint fiestas signify for the communities and the people who participate in them? What do these fiestas reveal about their cultural behaviors and practices? What is the significance of the various dances and processions that take place during fiestas? What is the significance of the religious practices associated with patron saint fiestas? What aesthetic principles organize the fiestas? Is there a continuity in tradition? What is permanent, what is changing? Why? What do these vigils, processions, encounters, ceremonies, and dances tell us about people’s identity ? Activities, participants, spaces, topography, sounds, music, costumes, and food all have deep symbolic meanings and significance. In this chapter we offer some interpretations of the events and practices associated with patron saint fiestas. SigniFiCAnCe oF the PAtron SAint FieStA The patron saint fiestas of Cruz del Palmar and San Luis de la Paz, as well as patron saint fiestas in general, are extremely important moments in the lives of these places and their inhabitants. The fiestas are thought of, imagined, constructed, invented, prepared for, and indeed lived for throughout the year. They mark both the time of year and the passing of another year. They link the past, the present, and the future. As Ingham has written, “Their focus on popular religion constitutes a system of signification through which social order is experienced, communicated and reproduced.”1 Their existence and recurrence make them part of the specificity of the place and identity of the people. The patron saint fiesta is a time for pleasure, eating, drinking, dancing, and praying. It provides an aesthetic enjoyment through an abundance of six 11 adoring the saints ceremonies, music, and processions. During the exuberant days of the fiesta the community, the people, and especially their saints are on display. In the words of a famous huapango player, the fiesta is an expression of the magic and the traditions of Mexico (“Mexico es magia y tradición”).2 The patron saint fiesta is a performative event that produces temporalities, sacred spaces, actors, and stories to remember.3 The patron saint fiesta also reaffirms family ties. Husbands and wives collaborate , as do children. Fiestas are an expression of the beautiful tradition of the Mexican family. Parents show their deep love for their children in the way they dress their children for the occasion and actively involve them in the fiesta. Children are well behaved and serious about their tasks. Relatives who have migrated to other parts of the region or of Mexico or to the United States come back and take part in the celebration of the saint and in praying for the family’s ancestors’ souls (ánimas). The event reinforces peoples’ sense of community. The organization of these elaborate fiestas implies a community and groups of people, young and old, who can help each other, work together within families, villages and towns, and the region, and who can draw on resources that individuals in other parts of Mexico or immigrants in the United States can contribute. It is striking that all the events of the patron saint fiesta are group activities that require collaboration. Musicians come in groups of various sizes, depending on the activity; dancers perform in groups; vigils are attended by twenty to thirty persons, as are ritual meals; and processions bring together hundreds of people. Men making an adorned panel and altarpiece work in groups of two or three or more. Several women—grandmothers , mothers, daughters, and other women of the family or the neighborhood —work together in the kitchen. Each individual in a community is part of a group that honors the same saint. Every year the collaboration necessary for the complex organization of the fiesta reaffirms its social and ritual structure, organized by the fiesta leader and fiesta officials. And, of course, what is significant about the fiestas of Cruz del Palmar and San Luis de la Paz is their special ritual and historical linkage, the encounters within and across them that originally brought them together, which is expressed each year during their fiestas. These networks of relationships are effective because of ethical principles that govern the behavior of the inhabitants of the communities. They feel a sense of duty, expressed by the verb cumplir, which means to fulfill one’s duty, to carry out one’s promise. Cumplir is a verb participants in the fiesta use when asked about the fiesta. It is related to a set of other notions—obligation (obligación), promise...