Day of the Dead

November 1 is Day of the Dead (Dia de los Muertos), celebrated throughout Central America with visits to cemetaries. One town in Guatemala adopted its pre-conquest celebration of drunken horse races, held at the end of October and beginning of November for centuries, to the European holiday. Todos Santos Cuchumatan is located in an idyllic mountain setting in the Cuchumatan Mountains in northwest Guatemala. Most of the year the town is sleepy, with some tourists coming to do treks or take classes at the local Spanish school. Most of the residents do not speak Spanish, but rather the Mayan language of Mam. The teachers at the Spanish school tend to be westerners for whom Spanish is a second language. However, the last week of October the town comes into its own.

A week before the holiday the ferris wheel and arcade games come to down. The locals set up food booths and open their homes to the tourists.

All of the men in town wear modified jean jackets and red pants year-round. For Day of the Dead they get new outfits and shine their shoes. The men in town also start drinking in preparation for Day of the Dead. For seven days, the men will have a bottle of alcohol with them at all times and will drink generously. At night the men will gather and enjoy their drinking together. Additionally they will dance together. This is not the type of cultural dancing that will be performed at Hill Auditorium or Avery Fisher Hall. It is simple - the men bounce from one foot to the next in time with the marimba (Guatemala's ubiqitous instrument). I joined in with the local men and they loved the fact that a gringo was dancing with them. Actually, they loved it a bit too much and started fighting over who got to dance closest to me. Given that they had been drinking for about 5 days straight by that point, I decided it was best to quietly back away before a fist fight broke out.

On the 30th, the town announces who will be the festival queen for the year. She is accompanied by her court of two princesses. Queens from other towns come from around the country to bring their good wishes to Todos Santos and its queen. This is a rather interesting portion of the festivities because each queen delivers her remarks in her native Mayan language, none of which are understandable to Mam speakers. Also, 16-year-old girls don't have much to say and the Spanish portions of the speeches were all identical: 'I am very proud to represent my town. Guatemala is such a wonderful country because it is multiethnic. I bring the best wishes from my town and hope that Todos Santos has a great festival.' The ceremony also loses something when the electricity has gone out and no one can see or hear very well. After the speeches, the outside queens dance (the same hopping dance) in a circle around the Todos Santos Queen.

On the 31st, the horses are brought into the town square and introduced. The horses are rented from outside town and cost each team approximately $30, a large sum for a town where most of the people do not have formal employment but rather subsist off the land. Everyone gathers in the town square to get a look at the horses and riders this year.

The festivities continue the night of the 31st with marimbas playing throughout town and a big party at the captain's house. The captain is not elected or appointed. Basically, it is one of the wealthier men in town who says that he wants to be captain and he gets the honor of presiding over the festivities. The drinking continues through the night and intensifies.

The riders go to the race track (a strip of road about a 5-minute walk outside of town) at 4 am to participate in a Mayan religious ceremony. The origin of the races is from the Mayan religion, but much of the mythology has been lost, and the rituals are often not open to outsiders.

After the ceremony the men eat and prepare for the races. The men are dressed in their red pants and jean jackets. Additionally they are wearing headgear that looks like feathers. They also yelp in high voices. They have stayed up all night drinking. About 8 am, the races start and every one from town descends on the track. When I say races, keep in mind that the track is maybe 400 meters long and the riders are drunk. The object of the race is to last, not to finish first or fastest. In order to last, you have to stay on you horse, drunk, for 7 hours. (You can switch out with a teammate from time to time).

Falls are common. The track is narrow and horses bump into each other. Also, some riders fall off simply because they are drunk. The drunkenness is obvious. Riders are red in the face, the eyes are low, and they lose their balance. In the course of the two hours I watched, there were a dozen falls, but no deaths. It is considered bad luck if none of the riders dies. The previous year no one died. In 2008, prior to the races there was already at least one death, as during one of the pre-parties a local thug was stabbed to death by some other youngsters.

2008 marked the appearance of the first female rider. None of the teams would let her ride with them, so she formed her own team. In the end, though, I think she was pressured out of riding, as I didn't see her on the horse or in the staging area. I didn't stay all day, though, so she may have appeared later.

There is only so much drunken horse racing that I can take. Plus I had to get to Huehue in order to make it to Guatemala City for my flight. Since it was a national holiday and in particular the local holiday of the year, there was no bus service from Todos Santos. I hitched on the back of a truck after hiking for an hour. It was a lovely ride through the mountains and I had a great conversation with the members of the local film crew from Huehue who were riding in the back with me. It was their first visit to Todos Santos as well. They got the footage they needed and then headed out of town.