Outtake from The Church of Tango: a Memoir: Mexico

Loco en San Miguel

And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music. ~Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

     El Dia de los Locos is a happening every June in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Although it is celebrated on San Antonio’s Day, the thousands of people cavorting in the streets dressed like clowns, politicians, cartoon characters, and monsters, make it look like anything but a religious feast day.

     It’s a wild parade of costumed groups who throw treats and gifts to the crowds lining the streets, similar to Mardi Gras and Carnival. But these more familiar festivals are somewhat last freak-outs before the somber self-reflective and

self-denial period of Lent, the forty days leading to Easter. Mardi Gras or Carnival is the last chance to party and thus the origins are Catholic, even if now it’s a lot of other things in Rio, New Orleans, and Venice.

     While there is no relation to Lent or Easter, in San Miguel de Allende the costumed “Locos” are also participating in a religious festival. Always on the Sunday closest to Saint Anthony’s Day, the activities begin early and at the church

of San Antonio, with a mass under a tent on the church steps to accommodate the huge crowds of participants.

     Despite the array of crazy costumes, none sexy or bare as in Rio and New Orleans, most people are serious under their makeup and masks about why they are there, and in fact, are making a kind of pilgrimage. Winnies-the-Pooh, Spidermen, transvestites, sumo wrestlers in full foam body suits, and robots are a strange sight on their knees inside the church to eyes unaccustomed to the tradition. Often it is even a costumed devil who solemnly accepts the Host from the priest.

     It’s also weird and wonderful to see the neighborhood groups pulsing down the tiny crammed colonial streets of San Miguel to whatever pop music emanates from the truck/float ahead of them. The costumes and masks are generally homemade and extremely creative as well as witty. Yet there is also a simple flowered float with a little boy in a brown monk’s robe and wire halo representing Saint Anthony.

     Taking off his hat to wipe his sweaty brow, one visitor among the packed throng holding hats and umbrellas upside down to better catch the candy thrown by the herds of cows, then cannibals, followed by teams of Vicente Foxes and Osama Ben Ladins as they boogie by, asks his companion, what planet are we on?

     Throughout the year prayers are sent to San Antonio for help in finding things, anything from a lost memento to a boyfriend. These folks are offering their joy and thanks to the saint for helping them, it is their gift. As most of them dance down the streets beneath rubber masks and heavy thick costumes under the hot sun at noon, it is also a penance and a sacrifice. And if their disguises make them anonymous, so much the better. The neighbors won’t suspect that it was more than allure that got Teresa engaged to that nice young man.