The Huajuapan Feria
From the smallest villages to the countries major cities, the general rule in Mexico is that, where there is a settlement, there is a big annual party or "Feria". Huajuapan is no exception. Although the feria officially culminates on the 23rd July, it encompasses almost a month of live shows, street parades and firework displays. National celebrities, comedians and musical groups visit to deliver performances in specially constructed marquees whilst their audiences quaff from litre glasses of Micheladas (beer mixed with chilli sauce and salt).
Stalls abound selling anything from tacos, to grasshoppers, sweet corns and cows hoof sandwiches. It is the task of any self respecting macho to try his luck on the mechanical bulls whilst teenagers scream on the small army of fair ground rides covering one of the local football pitches.
It is also the time for an army of local artesans to converge on the site. In the crowded halls of a temporarily assembled shopping centre you can haggle over clothes, rugs, pirated DVDs, jewellery, handmade wooden items. Whatever you feel you can haul back home on one of the buses provided to perpetually take patrons to and from the feria.
The 23rd itself is the time when the towns figurehead, "El Señor de los Corazones" leaves the perch in his chapel and proceeds, at the head of a grand procession, around the town. The towns people will have been up since dawn, preparing elaborate "tapetes"; designs, patterns and image made from coloured sawdust using large wooden stencils. These are laid on the roads along the route of the procession, which travels from the cathedral, all around Huajuapan and back to the church. The event advances with an outpouring of emotion quite unusual in this normally stoical town.
John Holman