Carrizo, cucharilla, willows, and other resources for regional religiosity
By Jose Arturo Morales Tirado
Harvest festivals have been celebrated in our region for the last five centuries. They occurred around the feast of the patron San Miguel Arcángel in this Tierra Adentro border, the old towns of San Felipe and San Miguel el Grande, and innumerable organized rural communities.All of them, were built around the stewardships, brotherhoods, and dance groups based in the main religious temples, whether they are parishes or community temples in the different towns, neighborhoods, rural communities and, from the 20th century on, in urban colonies.
Some of the centuries-old communities of indigenous origin, through complex community rituals, keep their centuries-old identity and sense of belonging alive and robust in this cultural border between volcanic Mesoamerica and semi-desert Aridoamerica, mainly around the Upper sub-basin of the Laja River and its tributaries. Historical communities with a greater syncretic tradition due to their deep and deep pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican cultural roots, who transformed, by force and cultural pressure of the power of the Spanish of arms and faith, part of their forms, uses and customs, from their buildings to their rituals, with enough Christian appearance to be accepted by the dominant hierarchy, to this day; As I said, just to mention some of these communities, with a living tradition around their so-called Indian chapels, colonial monuments that by force, most of them, evolved from ancient cuesillos to this type of ceremonial center, in the nearby Bajío, for example: San Miguel de Ixtla in the municipality of Apaseo el Grande; Jurica and Monpaní, in Querétaro, Neutla, Orduña or Salitre in the municipality of Comonfort. In Altos (heighlands) of Guanajuato: municipality of Dolores Hidalgo: Arroyo Seco, la Ventilla, or El Llanito, in the municipality of San Miguel de Allende, among others: La Huerta, Puerto de Calderón, La Cieneguita, Cruz del Palmar, Los Guerrero, San Marcos de Begoña , Rancho Viejo, La Cuadrilla, San Miguel Viejo, Valle del Maíz, el Obraje, San Rafael, and from the second half of the 20th century, mainly due to the construction of the Allende Dam: Nuevo Pantoja, the Cuevitas, the Station.
In all these towns, around the specific patron saint festivities, and the most important festivities around the old agricultural calendar – ritual, indigenous-Catholic, maintain common rituals and in interaction between various neighborhoods, towns and colonies; such is the case of the harvest festival 9 days after the spring equinox (in San Mateo-Oaxaca, San Miguel de Allende, there are equinoctial markers), which is neither more nor less than the great festival of San Miguel Archangel. For example, for reasons of the solar agricultural calendar in our geographic coordinates, close to 20 degrees north latitude, the first frosts traditionally occur between September 29 and October 4 (crowned San Francisco).As a fundamental part of these relevant ancestral and syncretic ritual celebrations is the visit of different representations of communities with their respective ceremonial chapels presided over by one or several sacred images, such as, among the most relevant: that of Lord San Miguel, Lord Santiago , the Lord San Isidro Labrador, the Lord of the Conquest, among others; or else: the Holy Cross, with the names of its different residences. In the case of the celebration of the patron saint, Lord San Miguel, for hundreds of years, in various relevant communities on the throne of this festival, delegations representing other towns are received, these delegations carry with them banners, a red flag, the anima (spirit) of their patron saint (a small-scale image of the main patron) accompanied by beeswax candle lights, flowers and songs of praise, plus rockets to announce his processional arrival that takes place on the eve of the patron saint’s date. The hosts, originally receive them from midnight at the entrance to the atrium of the ancestral chapel, so they prepare from the day before, and at dawn, in a ritual relationship, they begin the weaving of the two chimalis (with the emblem of the vertical and inclined crosses) or parande for being an offering that is woven horizontally and is commemorated standing, woven by the members of the host community and its visitors during the early hours of the patron saint festival, an offering that measures between 1.0 and 1.5 meters wide and up to five meters high that is made with cucharilla (teaspoon leaves, an agavacea plant: Dasylirion acrotrichum) on a frame of two vertical posts of willow wood and transverse carrizo as a weft and cucharilla leaves as a warp . The annual fabric of the community (common-unity) in the vigil of the patron saint, a marvel in our Tierra Adentro Border. arturomoralestirado@gmail.com / www.tasma.com.mx
