I've been a fan of Halloween all of my life. It is still one of my favorite holidays. I wasn't really aware of the Mexican tradition of having this holiday be far more meaningful and extend into their culture beyond a few new movies and spending millions of dollars on throwaway costumes and free candy for the ninos.
Since I am anti-consumerism anyway, I prefer the Mexican method of celebrating this time of year. They do spooky stuff, they have costumes, but the holiday itself is rooted in history and religion instead of strip mall stores that are only open for 1 month a year.
I went to Guanajuato at the recommendation of my sister who have lived in Mexico for years because she had heard, but not yet witnessed, that it was one of the hotspots for the entire country suggesting that it might be the biggest party other than the one that takes place in Mexico City.
It was a very large party, I would say too large.
As the day turned to night everyone started to line up along this one street and this is where the parade took place. Like any parade in medium-sized cities, most of what took place was kind of crap but some of it was good and the costumes on some of the people, especially the women and girls, were extremely well done.
It was tough for me to get a lot of good shots of what was going on because even though I am taller than most Mexican people are, the arms reaching up with phones were literally everywhere. So some of my shots aren't the great but well, I was there and trying to take it in with my eyes for the most part.
The really tall characters were a lot of fun as well and when they walked by you could see that all of these puppet type things were actually very sweating men inside of these contraptions. The crowd went wild whenever the corpse bride would have a kiss with one of the other tall puppets.
To a Mexican, this all probably has a lot more meaning to it than it did to me and there were times that the entire crowd broke out into songs that I do not understand.
I don't know why, perhaps as a reminder to any cartel or the general population, there was a show of might on the part of the National Police as several dozen soldiers with completely blacked out masks were part of the parade with full armaments as well as mounted 50 cal machine guns mounted to armored vehicles. I'm kicking myself for not taking pictures of that but as a fan of weaponry and someone that has some knowledge of the ongoing battle between Narcos and police here, I was kind of transfixed by the show of power in the middle of a parade that is largely about death.
Some of the costumes that the little girls or women were wearing were so elaborate that they must have spent the entire day in makeup and costume and I was told by someone that was standing near us that there is a competition that is voted on for best costume at the end of the night. We didn't make it that far though as we had been there for many hours, I had already had several beers and a Michelada, and I, as well as 2 of the other members of our 5 person crew were very ready to get the hell out of there after the parade was over.
Most of us agreed that the parade was nice, but the addition of some minor things like the Rotary club just waking down the street and waving at people when they didn't even have costumes on, was a waste of time. The people that really put some effort into their costumes and puppets, well that was wild but I think that overall the entire thing could have been a lot better if had been about 30% as long as it was.
We left right after it was over and at that point I had been standing for around 6 hours straight. Maybe I am just lazy, but that was too much Day of the Dead-ing for me for one day. We had one more day to go after this one though and that was on the Sunday which was the last day of the festival. That day turned out to be a terrible mistake and I will talk about it in my next entry. It will be filled with warnings for people that might be considering heading to Mexico for this holiday, which I do recommend that you do.