The feria, or county fair, rages on. It’s a week-long festival of parades, traditional dancing, horse trading, cotton-candy eating, Ferris wheel riding, drinking, and socializing. Not necessarily in that order.

This fellow on the left is one of many “conquistador dancers” that perform during the feria. The Maya have a long memory; this dance commemorates the Spanish conquests in the early 1500s, when European men with horses and guns showed up to massacre and enslave the natives here. The costuming is a fascinating social commentary on how one culture views another: the conquistadores are white-faced, fair-haired men with bright, colorful, clean clothes. Their outfits are opulently adorned, and you can still see the echoes of medieval Europe in their styling. Mirrors adorn their arms, legs, and capes, and we’ve heard several stories about the mirrors’ origin: one says they make the dancers more “brilliant”. Another explains that the mirrors are symbolic of the trickery and technology that the conquistadores used to defeat the Maya in battle after battle. A final tale is that the Maya, having never seen a mirror before, were so enthralled by its magic that they were regularly duped into trading gold for mirrors during the early days of the conquest.

The concept of “conquistadores” has evolved somewhat in the intervening centuries, though. There is usually a negrito present, as well as one or two children dancers. I really couldn’t get a good explanation of their presence; instead I was told that the dancers are selected the year before, and spend the intervening time practicing the routines. The guys that play the marimba for this special dance have been doing it their whole lives, know everything by heart, and apparently only get replaced when they die (like the Supreme Court justices). Regardless of how you look at it, it’s a bit awkward as a white person to watch this tribute to a pretty dark period in history.

As will happen here, some take the festival as a chance to drink too much. We see a lot more bolos (drunks) during this time than normal. I will spare you most of it, but some of the sights are such an odd combination of sad yet funny that I have to share them. This one is titled, “I like corn.” Click it to enlarge.

The feria is also when people throw their own parties. Here is a party we went to at Pedro’s house. They killed a pig, so they invited us. If you zoom in, you can check out the pig head and guts still on the picnic table in front of us, right along with the soda pop and napkins. Sweet. I wore my capishay to these various festivities, in part becuase it is cold, but also because it’s a big hit with the locals. I was asked to take a picture with Pedro’s nephew, as he has a miniature one, too!

<Pedro lives in the main town, so after his party, we got a ride back to our village in a pretty full microbus. Emily got right in there and snagged the front seat. Thank goodness. Once about half the people cleared out (we’re the last stop), we looked back to discover that Nas Palas and most of his family were in the back. I guess they were enjoying some time at the feria too! It’s a dark picture, but we can see (left to right): Nas, Lina, Lucia, Rigo, Alberto, and Chalio. I think Hela was in there as well somewhere, and maybe more.