michoacan

so, this past weekend, all the current summer volunteers (me, 3 students from UNC, 3 from notre dame, and about 15 from iberoamericana in mexico city) went with adriana to a nearby state called michoacan. we went to visit some of the small towns around and to meet some of the local artists. it was a really great time and i took a TON of pictures. so, i'm going to post a couple here and write about them, and then i'll put the rest up on facebook later.

this is a town we visited on the first day (after driving for like 4 hours in an '89 volkswagon van, which didn't have any type of stereo, of course, so we decided to sing the whole way there. the guys driving led the songs/yells, including screaming WOODSTOCK!, so they were mostly in spanish, but every once in a while they'd switch to either beatles or disney songs so we could sing along. we called it the "coche feliz" "happy car").

anyways, this town is called patzcuaro, and this was a performance of a dance called the dance of the viejitos (old men). it's a traditional folkloric dance in this state. it was really fun to sit in the plaza and people watch. and it made me think a lot of cuzco, peru, for some reason.




this was the tiny little town we stayed in over the weekend. they were celebrating the catholic holiday of corpus cristi, which, in this town i guess, entails putting up this HUGE pole/cross thing the night before and then letting people try to climb it the next night, during the fiesta (see below). we went to watch them put this up (with one tractor and mostly by hand with ropes) because people kept screaming when it seemed like it was going to fall, and we wanted to see what was going on. fascinating.


this is a mural facing the plaza. it is INCREDIBLE. this is only a small part of it, but it had a lot of indigenous images (there are still many people who speak an indigenous language in the town) and also an image of emiliano zapata, along with phrases like "this community has said ENOUGH" and "restoration of communal lands."


after visiting a small tequila/mezcal distillery, on the second day we went to this mask workshop/store. every mask is made by hand, and many of them out of one piece of wood. they were really beautiful. the second pic is to give you all a bit of my "kait" personality that i'm sure you're all missing.





and this is a copper workshop that we went to after. again, everything is made by hand, and we even got to help hammer some pieces of copper fresh out of the fire. it was really interesting.


this is a shot of where we stopped for a quick lunch after the workshops and got these amazing, although pretty greasy, cheesy quesadillas for 10 pesos, which is less than $1US. a beautiful thing.


this is a shot of the guy that we saw get the highest on the pole thing. he was also the first and he was pretty built. he's about a THIRD of the way up, if that. so, at that point, we realized that as it got darker and everyone got drunker, there was NO way anyone was going to make it up. eventually people started trying to do pyramids and stand on each others shoulders, but it still didn't work. we DID however talk the guys in our group into giving it a try. "cmon!" i said, "don't you realized how much this crowd would love to see a bunch of gringos get up and try it! they're already staring at us as the only white people in town, you might as well give it a go!" they didn't make it very far. the picture below is everyone watching.




this was when we tried to talk our boys into trying. don't you especially love jack--the guy in the pink polo? he's this quiet guy who doesn't speak a ton of spanish and while we were just standing watching, this guy came up to him and said (in spanish), "excuse me, but my niece would like to take a picture with you. is that okay?" ja, that's what i mean by the ONLY white people there.



and then these last two are the final fiesta for the corpus cristi thing. there was a live band playing "banda" music, which is a style of dance that is basically running in place, sometimes with a bit more flare. and we did it for about 3 hours. it was really really great. (and ps--i think both of these pictures were taken about at eye level.)






ok, so that's a summary of a long but great weekend, in which i took 200 pictures. thanks for checking in on the blog!