The procession had originated from the little chapel in the center of the plaza; in this ritual, part of the celebration of the immaculate conception, the parishioners carry the Virgin Maria up and down the main street of the barrio (which happens to be our street) accompanied by a noisy brass band, singing, and repeated cries of "viva la Virgin."
Three or four times the crowd came to a stop in front of a house that had been decorated, the Virgin was set down, facing the house, and a line formed of people waiting to pray in front of the Virgin and touch her face. (Antonio and I assumed that these were the homes of the biggest patrons of the festival--the large banners in the plaza announcing the events for the day made it clear that the fireworks show that spectacularly closes each day of the festival would only be possible if enough donations were made.)
The procession travelled a few blocks past our house and then turned to retrace its steps back to the church. The door to the beautiful chapel had been framed with a kind of floral headboard, its yellow and pink matching the large sand painting that decorated the plaza immediately in front of the church.
As the band took their seats under the tarp to the right of the church, the men carrying the Virgin set the statue down in the middle of the sand painting and began to clean the statue of all the flowers and petals that had been heaped on her during the procession. Children and dogs were running around shouting, the band was playing, and the bells of the church were ringing wildly; it was that kind of festive chaos that we don't seem to have often in the States that strikes just the right balance between headache-inducing and fun.
The Virgin was lifted again and carried into the chapel for a mass.
At nine o'clock that night, we returned to the plaza where a large crowd had gathered to watch the fireworks, or the "toritos," as they call them. In front of the church, an enormous three-tiered scaffolding had been set up with elaborate cords and tubes running all over it. A standard fireworks shot would be fired into the air above the church (after the show we realized that the launching pad for the fireworks was right in the middle of the plaza, about fifteen feet behind us--again, something else you don't see in the States!), and then one section of the scaffolding would be set on fire in a dazzling display. I remember when fireworks displays were a little unusual and exciting, but today it seems like the huge explosions in the sky have become so common that they have lost their wonder. A castle built up in front of a church that burns up bit by bit, accompanied by the deafening sizzling of the explosives and the applause of the crowd, however--that was fun. Each section would explode into spinning white lights, and slowly those would burn off to reveal colored images that would spin in their little circle. As the explosives burned off, bit by bit the spinning would slow and the image--seahorses, starfish, elephants, horses, crosses, a crown, and finally the Virgin--would glow and then slowly fade out. It was fantastic.
The next morning Antonio and I woke up early to go to the morning mass marking the official day of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin. There to wish the Virgin happy birthday was an 8-member mariachi band, standing in an arc facing the statue of the Virgin and the altar, playing and singing away in her honor. We arrived at 7am just as the horns of the mariachis started up and found a seat towards the back, but fifteen minutes into the service I turned around and the crowd was lined up standing in the plaza. Perhaps it was devotion, or perhaps they already knew what we were delighted to find out--all church-goers were invited to breakfast (a tamale and champurrado, a hot drink made from corn that looks like the consistency of bean soup but is delicious) in the plaza after the service.
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