Many of the mundane world's events pale as the techicolor madcap festivities and excesses of Carnaval (Mardi Gras) culminate Fat Tuesday, the day before Ash Wednesday. In the old days Mardi Gras was the last great hurrah before the hard and colorless days of Lent.
Rio de Janeiro, New Orleans and Vera Cruz are famous for their extravagant annual pre-Lent events which were patterned after the elaborate costumes and masked balls in Venice. In spite of those opulent celebrations, I prefer the homespun hilarity and madcap mischief of the traditional sayacas in Ajijic’s Mardi Gras parade.
Some things, like Ajijic’s sayacas, are better experienced than explained. Once folks experience the pure joy and mischief of the dancing, flour and confetti-throwing sayacas, explanations no longer matter.
Sayacas are masked men and boys costumed as ever-gracious, well-endowed women. Preceding them in the parade is a band of younger boys who taunt the sayacas and then run to avoid being showered with fistfuls of flour. Sayacas wear everything from elegant gowns to tawdry sundresses over a few well-placed balloons. Accessorized with make-up, wigs, hats, gloves, and handbags, the outfits still are less than stunning.
A few of the sayacas dance through the streets with their masked escorts who don ill-fitting, out-of-date suits, giant worn shoes or boots and dapper hats. When they stop to dance to the rhythm of the parade's banda, the effect is altogether delightful and zany.
The slapstick fun of a US or Canadian mock wedding with the men portraying the bride and her attendants, while the women served as the preacher and groomsmen is the mindset and tone of the sayaca tradition.
A group of Ajijic residents resurrected the ancient tradition of the sayacas about 10 years ago. As Dale Hoyt Palfrey wrote in a 2003 Guadalajara Report piece, the custom is based on an event which is said to have taken place shortly before the arrival of the Spanish.
Visitors to Ajijic were welcomed by an old woman called Cicani or Cicantzi, the curendera (shaman) who cared for a man and a woman suffering from mental disorders.
The oddly attired pair trailed along performing crazed pirouettes when the medicine woman went out to meet the first Franciscan missionaries. The villagers taunted the pair, calling them sayacas or zayacas—a name which seems to have evolved from the Spanish word for slip or elaborate dress.
In a slightly more recent version of the legend, the old woman (whose name is spelled Xicantzi) is the deranged one. She burst from the hospitalito (the hospice adjoining the old chapel at the plaza) when strangers came into town. Wearing an odd combination of clothing she’d follow the men, trying to kiss them. When they refused she showered them with the face powder in her purse.
This year’s February 16 riotous Carnaval parade will be, as always, filled with bands, charros on horseback, carros alegóricos (floats) and led by the comical sayacas who alternate promenades with fending off the taunting village boys. The parade is set to begin at 11 a.m. on Calle Revolución (the tianguis street) and then follow the sayacas along Calles Constitución and Ocampo to Six Corners, and then back to the plaza on Hidalgo around noontime for the judging of sayacas for cash prizes.
There’ll be dancing and fun in the plaza. At 4 p.m., the entertainment continues with bull riding, live music, and frequent refreshment at the Lienzo Charro back on Revolución. Evening concerts stretch into nighttime dances, with the young people partying on until the pre-dawn hours.
On the first day of Lent, the frivolity of Carnaval gives way to the subdued season of sacrifice and devotion. To commemorate the beginning of Lent, villagers attend church on Ash Wednesday to be marked with the sign on the cross.
Bookmark this page and return tomorrow to see more pictures of previous Carnaval parade fun in Ajijic. Then plan to attend the parade on Tuesday. See you there!
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