Day of the Dead preparations have begun in earnest; even the calaveras (skeletons dressed as diverse, contemporary citizens) are offering discounts to lure back the tourists. Here are 3 sights from a Saturday night on the town, that we are pretty sure we just wouldn't have found in Atlanta today:
1) enormous papier-mache puppets parading down the street to the music of a marching band, followed by folkloric dancers in every color of the rainbow, with matching floral arrangements on their heads. Two little boys pulling a cart that carried the percussion section; followed by a serious, sweating, panting twelve year old pounding the drums and cymbals without ceasing; candles on short bamboo poles, protected by colorful cellophane windows, distributed and lit, for free, by a friendly "oficina de turismo" representative.
2) Teenage "Mary" from Chiapas, swallowed in her thick woolen blanket, helping her wide-eyed 7 year old brother Juan--sporting a "GEORGIA" baseball cap--to return correct change from a sale of Trident sugarless gum in an open-air restaurant;
3) 2 men pushing a completely dark ambulance up a major city artery to its berth at our local community hospital.
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