Embajadoras Esta Mañana

This morning, as we walked down the road into town to do our Sunday morning produce shopping, Mark commented that it had been a little while since we had encountered a wild surprise in the streets of Guanajuato - a parade of chain-mail wearing medieval knights juggling fire, for example, or a pilgrimage of men wearing purple robes, as we have seen during various celebrations and festivals here. The streets of Guanajuato always are lively, but sometimes they are exceptionally so.

Then we turned the corner to the Embajadoras market.

The street was blocked by a truck with a tiger in a cage, advertising a circus that had come to town. Beyond the truck, between the regular jumble of vendors selling beans, avocados, ice cream, and t-shirts, the street was lined with dozens of dancers in brilliantly-colored indigenous costumes and incredible headdresses. They danced in two lines to music of drums and rattles, but also infused with the melodies of flutes that were being played for an adjacent group of dancers: children wearing masks and re-enacting a bullfight. At the center of the plaza stood a magnificent floral altar topped with a pretty statue of the Virgencita, an homage to the Virgin Mary during this month that is devoted to her. The altar stood in front of a stage where a band played popular Mexican songs as well as "Ghost Riders in the Sky" on electric instruments plus a gourd. Inside the market, a brass band squeezed between cilantro, plátanos, mangos, and jitomates to play marching music.

All of this, within an area the size of a Costco. Hooray for Sunday shopping at Embajadoras!