Nothing to Declare

Yesterday, we had the day off school, so I went to Xoxocotlan (or Xoxo, pronounced hoho, for short) with two girlfriends from school. I'm not sure if Xoxo is a bario of Oaxaca or a tiny pueblo unto itself...it doesn't show up on many maps. Either way, it looks very nondescript and poor, with low buildings and lots of graffiti. It's about 20 minutes away from the center of the city.

I wanted to see some Semana Santa events in a small pueblo instead of a big city, and I think we chose a good one. All over Mexico on Good Friday, churches celebrate the stations of the cross. Some, like in Mexico city, have live reenactments of the crucifixion in all its bloody glory. We past one neighborhood procession on our way to get a collectivo that included a man dressed like jesus, carrying a huge wooden cross. Makeshift alters under purple posterboard signs marked where the procession would stop. But I was interested in a seeing an entire small town celebrate together.

Our collectivo taxi dropped us at the edge of Xoxo, and then we took a three-wheel go-cart-slash-taxi (I love these things!) into town. Our driver dropped us right in front of a procession in progress. The church's icons - statues of Mary and Jesus - were being paraded and, just like in the neighborhood in Oaxaca, they made the stations of the cross in the street. There were men dressed as roman soldiers, and the apostles, and the two men who were crucified with Christ. (I felt most sorry for them, since they were carrying huge logs across their shoulders in the heat, which had to have hit 100.)

Meanwhile, in the church, a man was leading a rosary (i think). The chanting was broadcast over loudspeakers throughout town. The folks in town met at church at 8 in the morning to start the procession. When they returned at noon, all of the pews were pulled from the church, and most of the icons and the pictures of Jesus and the altar and the thingie where they keep the host (can't remember the name of it) had been covered with purple sheets. The sides of the front of the room were lined with lillies and roses and gladiolas and greenery and candles. We watched the men who were setting this up for a while...they removed a cross that had to be 20 feet high from one wall, and spent an hour cleaning it, kissing it, praying and crying, before they set it up in front of the altar. Then they brought in what looked like laurel trees and chopped them up with machetes to make a 25-foot-tall forest around the cross.

When the procession ended, there was a homily and afterward, everyone left the church to eat at a street fair set up outside. There were vendors selling nieves and tlayudas and tacos and mole and fried fish and endless kinds of cakes, cheese filled pastries, meringues and sweet breads. There were also games and rides and a small market with chintzy things like hair bands and bracelets that you could get engraved and embroidery patterns for virgins of guadalupe stamped in purple on white cloth.

Did I mention I've started eating street food? We went nuts. We shared two empanadas made from tortillas that were patted down in front of us and grilled on a comal (a flat iron plate over a fire). One had quesillo, which is like string cheese only more flavorful and less dry, flor de calabaza (squash flower) and mole verde inside. The other was mushrooms, pepper, quesillo, refried beans and salsa. There were fried balls of mashed potato and chorizo. And enemolados - tortillas soaked in sauce, in this case mole coloradito, which is brick red and slightly sweet. We had two kinds of nieve, which means snow and is kind of like gelato - atun, kind of like prickly pear, and nuts, which tasted like pralines. Oh, and fried plaintains, crispy and brown on the edges, covered with both condensed milk AND crema. We washed all this down with agua refrescos - Jaimaca (hibiscus) and a new fruit that I don't know how to spell but tasted like pear, melon and cherry mixed together.

After all this, we wandered aimlessly in our food coma for a bit. A sweet old man with no teeth stopped us and pointed out that we were going in the wrong direction from the church. Not sure if we were headed toward a bad area of town, or he was just trying to help us out, but we assured him we'd been to church and we´d be heading back. Just taking a break.

We did go back to the church, where the town lined up to file past two particularly gory statues of christ for one last look before they were put away until Sunday, when they'd be "resurected". Roman soldiers guarded the doors of the church letting people in and out. A choir sang. It could be hard to understand the emotional reactions that people were having - crying, touching the cords or folds of the statue's clothes, rubbing it with flowers bought from old ladies who kneel on the floor and say the rosary as they sell.

But after a week of celebrating and reflecting on the pain of both Jesus and Mary, and a four hour march reenacting the crucifixtion in sweltering heat, and the vision of a church transformed into a death site, I'm sure Christ's suffering is no longer such an abstract concept. I'm not religious, but watching strong faith in action is moving.

And this is one of the things I love about Mexico - experiences are direct, visceral and not particularly clean or picture perfect. Here you might see a fly crawl across a Picasso painting at the Contemporary Art Museum. After visiting a meat market, a friend noted how weird it was to smell food. We put plastic wrap between us and our meat and our priests and our ceremonies stay inside churches or on designated parade routes.

It's easy to over romanticize this, though. One woman in front of me made a donation to the kneeling ladies and got only a broken part of a small blossom, instead of the full stem of a rose or gladiola, like most people. When she started to protest, the old kneeling ladies who were selling the flowers scolded her and shooed her away. "You don´t need a full flower to appreciate Christ's blessing." And this reminded me of the many ways the church has, at times, scolded the poor here to accept their lot in life, and made them feel guilty to want more.