Little boys and grown men with their heads on fire, running around the town square to cheers and to loud traditional Mexican fiesta music (obviously!). Fiestas in Latin American towns are always fun, bright and quirky affairs reflecting local colour and tradition. We’ve seen much of such quirkiness in our travels, but in El Tule, Oaxaca, they out-quirk the quirkiest of traditions.
Should you feel the urge to participate in such quirkiness… come here at the end of January… make a papier-mache hat in the shape of a bull… cover it in a frame of fireworks… then set-off the fireworks and dance around the town square at night, with the rockets whizzing, arking and sparking around your head.
On Fiesta Thursday night the little boys, some of them little more than toddlers, display their bravado. They call them the Torritos (little bulls) and the little chaps came out one by one, fearlessly dancing around the plaza to cheers from the crowd, with all hell breaking loose around their heads and faces. They did a grand job.
On Fiesta Friday night the Torros, the big-bulls, turned out. Grown men with their papier-mache bull-hats heavily laden with fierce-looking fireworks. Some of the men come out, rather sensibly I would say, in long-sleeved jackets and hoods pulled-up over their heads. Other fearless chaps come out with short sleeved cotton shirts and nothing to protect their hair from catching fire from the flying sparks. It’s a fine line between ‘brave’ and ‘stupid’, but they were all entertaining! And the night was finished off with a fabulous fire-work display (this time in the sky!!) that a city ten-times the size of El Tule would be proud of.
Other parts of the fiesta weekend included all the traditional colourful dancing, street parades and a gathering where local ladies throw hundreds of ‘freebies’ to a crowd gathered in the plaza. It started with cakes and sweets, then escalated to cartons of juice, bottles of coke, hats, plastic bowls, mugs and other assorted kitchen-ware. It went on for over half an hour and at its peak, the air was full of random freebie items, raining down on the crowd as locals of all ages pushed, shoved and elbowed their way between each other to catch whatever they could. Anything they could scramble and retrieve from the air or the ground was stuffed into a carrier bag to take home. All in all, it was a really fun fiesta weekend in El Tule. Although we’re (still) a bit frustrated at having to wait here in Oaxaca now for two months for our new windscreen to arrive from Europe, we are pleased to have seen these El Tule fiestas – Mexico never ceases to amaze us!
