Apparently Sweet Marie December 10, 2021
I waited for you inside of the frozen traffic,
When you knew I had some other place to be.
Where are you tonight, Sweet Marie?
Bob Dylan, “Absolutely Sweet Marie,” 1966
The assaults of adoration continue at all hours of the day and night—maniacal clanging of church bells and bottle rockets mixed with occasional ecclesiastic gun fire. There is no posted schedule of events. They simply unfold, like an old map rendered useless from neglect. Those who know where they are going have committed the destination to memory. It is part of their catechism.
The traffic is not moving on Insurgentes, nor on Paniagua, as Guadalupe pageants converge downtown. Flatbed trucks have been repurposed as parade floats, decorated with Mary iconography and colorfully costumed Latina lookalikes, who wave at the crowds beatifically, thickly pasted with some kind of embalmers makeup, although a few of the young Mary-wannabes cannot resist moving their hips to the rhythm of the ranchero tunes of the marching horn-and-drum section trailing behind. One iconoclastic Mary with an earbud and lip ring apparently has her own gothic soundtrack.
The ladies’ costumes are dazzling, but the boys dressed as bulls are not so much. Their hooded dog-eared wardrobe looks worn and frayed, full of earthen stains, suggesting that the boys have done some real bullfighting in them. Walking with those revelers is an older gentleman carrying a load of 3-foot-long cardboard rockets. His partner lights the fuses with a cigarette, and—whoosh!—they fly above the crowd, exploding a hundred feet overhead.
The accompanying bands never stop playing during the punctuated blasts. Following behind is a bunch of people wearing identical white togas and blond wigs, self-described as Los Guadalupanos with signs and paraphernalia. Their curly yellow hair takes the rounded shape of stormtrooper helmets, and I am not sure exactly what image they are trying to capture. Bouncing to the music, as they march down Calle Paniagua, they resemble a flock of sheep dancing toward some shearing ceremony. The sheer whiteness of the scene seems disturbingly sacrificial.
Yet another parade hits the gridlock on Calle Insurgentes, but the horns and sirens will not stop. Everyone who was talking, or driving, or doing anything else a few minutes ago, is now a mandatory spectator. Phones are raised to record the lights and the raucous, either to convey sincere felicidades, or else to complain to the city elders.
A flatbed truck from Francos Construction carries one large Virgin Mary statue, maybe eight feet high, positioned upright by a nervous man who worries that she is a bit tipsy, while surrounded by garlands and candles and highly flammable pine needles. The truck behind it is filled with balloons and an overcharged loudspeaker. These are the very same trucks that I see carrying multitudes of Tzotzil families throughout the city during any given day. Packed like egg cartons on a subway, these impromptu buses never seem to receive traffic safety citations, not even for the giggling children often hanging over the side. It does make one wonder exactly what Señor Francos might be constructing with this cargo. Maria Sabe.
Many of the young men in attendance are wearing new athletic shirts, colored like the Mexican flag and plastered with an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe. They are the runners preparing to leave the city, carrying the torch of their benefactor all the way to Estado Tabasco, near the Gulf of Mexico, to a place called Rosario—the Rosary. The distance is 200 miles. One of the devoted runners is eating tacos in the shade. Depending on whether he applies the yellow habanera salsa, his may be a different kind of run tomorrow—less torch-bearing, more fire-breathing.
One motorcyclist has had enough of this stalled motor train, and he leaps onto the narrow sidewalk on Paniagua, with his frightened girlfriend holding on behind. He has a straight line ahead of him that might allow circumvention of the mess, but for only two obstacles in his path—me and the old Mestizo lady I happen to be standing next to at the moment. She has clearly come to see the parade and has no intention of moving from her chosen spot on this cobblestone. I, meanwhile, have no intention of being trampled by the motorcycle racing toward me. However, there is no place to go, as I have a wall on one side of me and a string of parked cars on the other. The old lady finally looks over at the approaching bike, but without even the slightest alarm, only frowning with irritation at the young man’s impudence. I notice the colors on his machine—red and black—the colors of the Motonetos biker gang. This gang has blood on its hands.
The biker comes to a sudden halt in front of us. “Pasale,” he says, I think. He wants us to squeeze past his machine so he can get by, but the woman beside me is having none of it. She scolds him instead. His eyes fall. His girlfriend laughs at the humiliation. The man has become a boy again. He slowly backpedals the motorcycle and rejoins the stalled cars on the street. Had I scolded him, I suspect this encounter would have ended differently. This is yet another day for powerful women, men not so much.
I’m just sitting here, beating on my trumpet,
With all the promises you left for me.
So, tell me, where are you tonight, Sweet Marie?