February 201
Candelaria was the caboose on the
train of fiestas that began with Muertos (November 1) and rattled on through
Thanksgiving, the Virgins of Juquila, Guadalupe, and Soledad, the Night of the
Radishes (December 23), Christmas, New Years, Reyes (January 6) and, just as if
we could march in another calenda or
eat another tamal, Candelaria. On
Reyes (Epiphany, Three Kings Day) the tradition is to gather your friends and
serve then rosca de reyes —a large,
round, egg and sugar sweetened circular fruit-cake sort of bread. Whoever gets
the slice with the Niño, the small
plastic figure of the baby Jesus, is obligated to host the Candelaria party for
the same group of friends and serve them tamales
washed down with café de olla (coffee
heated with sugar and cinnamon in a clay pot), chocolate (made with either water or milk), or atole (think thin, flavored cream-of-wheat). Oh, also champurrado, which is the café and the chocolate mixed and foamed by whisking it with a wooden chocolatera. This year we celebrated Reyes at Jim and Cathy’s house with a
large group of Mexican and ex-pat neighbors,

and then again at the Mercadito
with our adopted family of Lupe, Ángel, their kids Uriel, Alex, and little, Oliver, Lupe’s mom doña
Irene, who makes the enchiladas and guisos (stews) at the Mercadito, and the
handful of doña Lupe’s other blood relatives, don Mauro (who helps at the
Mercadito by shelling peas, cacao beans, chopping wood, and other piecework
tasks, and waiting tables when there is a crowd) and a few other adoptees:
Marianela (la doctora Ruiz), Rebeca
Romero, Don Jorge and his daughter Alís, and one or two others. Abby and Matt
were with us too, and Matt got the baby Jesus.
Dilemma: Matt and Abby obviously could not return to Oaxaca
to host Candaleria here. Solution: Matt and Abby hosted a Candelaria in
Bloomington, Indiana, inviting their friends on February first to make tamales, and on the second to eat them. And Lupe hosted a Candelaria here at the
Mercadito, with the same Reyes array of family, blood relatives and adoptees. Five kinds of tamales, put together by another of her relatives whom we hadn't met
before. The traditional
beverages. The family Mercadito staff taking turns sitting at the long, high
wooden table with its wooden chairs that is by tradition informally reserved
for “certain people” as contrasted with the square plastic tables, each with
its four cast resin chairs. For the very first time since we have known these
folks, doña Irene actually came to the table and sat down for thirty seconds to
ceremonially eat her tamal before
going back behind the counter to her cook pots.
So after Candelaria there are no more festivals, no more calenda parades, no more 4:00 AM
tuba-rich bands in the streets until Mexican Constitution Day. That’s February
5.
The weather is changing, too. In winter (i.e., mid-December
through January) I wear long sleeves at first light and then shed to short
sleeves by 10:00. Now it’s spring, and I wear my long sleeve shirt buttoned
until 8:30 and then take it off. I’m in shorts by early afternoon. Most of our
neighbors who have not spent years in New England think it is cold, and wear
jackets, hat, scarfs, and gloves.

There are some other signs of spring, too. In the valley
some of the jacarandas are beginning to blush blue-ish purple. Our plumarias are beginning to make leaves
and the bouganvillas up and down Calle Independencia are in full rainbow. Some of
the birds that migrated in for the winter are beginning to migrate out, and a
couple of barn swallows, high over the Presa Gutiérrez last week, announced the
beginning of their ten-day pass-through on their way from their winter homes in
Central America to their summer homes in El Norte. Here at Casa DaviLinda, for
some unknown reason two uncommon warblers, a MacGillivray’s and a Virginia’s,
have taken up residence. And the dayglow buntings, the indigo and the painted,
are showing themselves up in grasses among the thorn scrub. Qalba doesn’t seem
impressed, but I am.
The Trumpiad up north is a constant topic of conversation. Every
day the newspapers report on the latest screed of the man
whom one columnist has taken to calling don
Don. Today Efrén, who caretakes a big house at the end of a narrow privada, a dirt alley just up the road
from us, and takes his eight-year-old son to school every day on the back of
his bicycle, stopped for a moment to inform me that one of Trump’s cabinet
ministers had just resigned. I’d already
heard on NPR: I get the RI 6:00 edition at 5:00 here with my coffee. Our expat
friends bombard us with forwarded opinion pieces. Ditto our friends in the
States. I am speaking next week at the English Language Library downtown as
part of the Cervantes series I’m offering as fundraisers for the Library. The
topic: “Don Quijote, Trump, and the
(imagined?) Muslim Threat.” The last one, “Don
Quijote and Human Rights,” drew a pretty good crowd, and I’m curious to see
if this one sustains the interest.
All this, and the fact that we are looking forward to visits
next week by brother John and his wife Pat and two colleagues from our Nebraska
years, and that’s all the news from Santa Cruz Etla.
Until next time . . .
David & Linda
and the painted bunting