Carnaval — Mardi Gras — is a multi-week celebration in Ajijic, and one of the weekly festivities is a Sunday morning parade beginning at 10:30 and continuing for approximately 4 weeks during Lent. The parades are organized by the town’s charros (cowboy) association, so horses/riders are always in attendance, and the group ends up at the rodeo arena for a rodeo and other festivities (we didn’t do the rodeo part).
We attended the parade on Sunday, Feb 9. It was a small parade consisting of (1.) a group of masked people on foot who lead the parade, (2.) then the musicians (all boys), and then (3.) the horse riders. The duration was less than thirty minutes. Apparently, the Mardi Gras parade at the end of Lent is huge, but unfortunately, it’s a couple of days after we leave.
(1) First came the “Zayacas” — men dressed creatively as women with balloon breasts in their shirts, masks, and decorative purses (actually flour bags) over their shoulders. They are taunted by the crowd, especially young kids (mainly boys) and reciprocate by chasing taunters and throwing flour on them. Oh, the bystanders get flour all over them too. We know from experience!
The Zayacas tradition apparently evolved after the arrival of the Spaniards. The men dressed up in women’s clothes for the purpose of making fun of what they considered to be pretentious European style dressing.
Here are some pictures of the Carnaval parades.
 |
| Prior to the parade, this decoratively dressed couple was handing out flyers for a theater performance. |
 |
| First came the cross-dressed zayacas with groups of boys (generally) in front of them and teasing them. |
 |
| Then the zayacas started running after the taunted and throwing flour on them. Some of the kids were quite a mess, and bystanders who were in the way (like us) also got a fair amount of flour. |
