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Dia de la Virgen de Guadalupe
A fair while ago near Mexico City, in 1531 if Google serves me correctly, the Virgin of Guadalupe appeared to Juan Diego. Juan was a young Indian boy and spoke Nahuatl, just like my Dad (see comments in the previous post). La Virgen told him to build a church on that there spot. He was on his own, and an Indian to boot, so the Catholic priests didn’t believe him. He went back to the place she’d appeared and she made a rose bush bloom (not common in the winter). He took the roses back to them as proof. The blanket he’d wrapped them in had a Turin-shroud-like perfect impression of said Virgin. Not long after, most natives converted to Catholicism. So the Virgin of Guadalupe is sort of representative of the mestizo (mixed) heritige of Mexico’s native and European roots. She incorporates all kinds of indigenous Nahuatl female deity imagery with her moon, stars and sun and is a more palatable version of Christianity for the local populations.
Apparently the celebrations kick off in a bigger way come 5pm, but I’ll be hungry by then and fixing to go and see films about wardrobes and allegorical big cats. So I left at around 12ish and asked our neighbour, Sra Teresa where the church with all the celebrations take place, she pointed me in the right direction and I started my pilgrimage. 24 blocks later I arrived at a church/fairground filled with kiddies in traditional Mexican garb being photographed with the virgin, blessed in the church and some were lucky enough to get tied to giant bungee cords and flung into the sky (I have pictures…).
All very nice. I also found a place in the city center that does courses on Flash and other stuff pretty cheaply so I may look into that soon too. That’s all for now, off now to eat and watch CGI lions. Cheers. Click HERE for a slideshow of all today’s photos.
Movies, markets and meeting mexicans
Have to go to work in 5 mins, so a quick post about the weeked. Saturday: Sita had her tequila class and I changed the oil in the car. Well I took it to an oil change place, there’s no quickilube so it had to be a garage. i thought I’d show some brand loyalty and took it to Multiservicios Gaytan first, but they were closing and somewhat brusque so i went elsewhere and got to watch the entire mysterious process which you don’t usually get to see. Jose came round in the evening and we never got round to the podcast cos he’d forgotten his notebook (the paper sort). Good night all the same, though. Yesterday I went to the baratillo (pictured) the huge sprawling market that takes over Oblatos on Sundays and picked up Aeon Flux, which has had terrible reviews but what the hey… since I was in the barrio i checked in on Cesar at his house, he was there and i caught up on 2 yrs worth of news. He might be up for going to see Lucha Libre (Mexican Wrestling) on Tuesday evening, but I’ll not hold my breath. Watched Shaolin Soccer in the evening which was grand, then flicked through the channels and got hooked on a fantastic film about drug addiction, i didn’t know what i was watching till the end, but it was Requiem for a Dream. Bloody brilliant film, i foresee a lot of nightmares. It’s by the same director as PI, which is another great film… anyroad, off to work. Wish me luck, I’m meant to have come up with some kind of unifying theme for the Camino Real documentary and to be honest, I haven’t. it’s hard to summarize the history of a 2000 mile stretch of road over 500 years. In Spanish. Ah, we’ll see how it goes, i’ve got a few ideas…