Yesterday, I was minding my own business, busily sifting tons of rocks out of a new section of my property to make it ready to receive new plants, and a celebration found me. Not remembering that the next day would be Ash Wednesday, I wondered why I was hearing firecrackers and chanting, and opened my gate to see.
What I saw was a tradition called Los Paspaques. It began as an indigenous celebration of the Nahua people of Mexico, and now is held before Ash Wednesday. One person told me that it goes for 9 days, and I don’t recall hearing the chanting before yesterday, but the firecrackers are so common that it would be hard to remember if I heard them or not before this day.
So, there was a group of men, holding an effigy of a bull, chanting and throwing corn flour at any spectators that happened to be around and waving flags. I’m not sure what they were saying, but they were having a grand time, chasing each other with the bull and one of them came up to me and smeared part of my face and neck with the flour.
It made me think of Diwali – the Indian festival where everyone throws colored flour on each other, but this was just white flour and very amusing. Strange that I don’t remember it from last year, but perhaps I was somewhere else outside the village, or maybe just busy down at the Hacienda and didn’t hear the chanting.
Well, whatever the reason, there really isn’t that much more to say, so I will leave you with a few photographs and two videos which I hope you enjoy….
mex-pat.org 