LISTSERV - BULLAMANKA-PINHEADS Archives

In Tucson, Arizona in the early '60s, there was a Yaqui Indian village as a wonderful anomaly within the boundaries of the city. The Yaqui people were in exile from Mexico and had no rights or benefits as US (American) Indians, and the whole village was sort of squatting with tacit permission on city land. Within the Yaqui village, both the old world and the new lived side by side and moment within moment, and perhaps the best example was the great Easter fest that went on for a week in the plaza in front of the Catholic church of the Yaqui village. Throughout the week there were proscribed Christian ceremonies at "Indian Time" intervals that tribal people seemed to know by collective intuition and white guys could only try to outguess if they wanted to see some particular event. It was amazing how a crowd would just congregate at "the right time." While we few "white guys" perpetually wasted our time at "waiting". On one side of the plaza was a little stick ramada providing shade for a traditional Yaqui trio of Deer Dancer, Flute Player and Drummer. In between each Christian pageant the Deer Dancer would do his stuff, patiently providing a natural and complementary alternative all week as the events unfolded. The two cultures blended into one - perpetual Yaqui.

The great climax of the week was at midnight on Easter Eve when the largest and most significant parade occurred. After waiting for hours for midnight to be agreed upon, we were treated to the great doors of the looming, silent and darkened church opening and a marvellous procession emerging with costumed figures carrying the church's life sized statues of the Holy figures. They proceeded with a jolly guitar band and blatantly jolly trumpet around the church to the right, accompanied by the crowd of watchers, really all participants by this time. When the parade was exactly behind the church, the intense and Holy darkness was suddenly shattered by cascades of gun fire and war whoops as a mob of hidden banditos leapt out from behind bushes and sheds firing cap guns at everything in sight. There was much leaping and shouting and general disruption of the parade with gun fire and war cries, but just as suddenly as it began, the whole thing ended and the noisy banditos vanished silently into the darkness. The parade continued around the church and back through the front doors into the darkened church and then all was quiet. The quiet was a weird anti-climax after all the excitement. Lots of people lingered in the plaza, waiting for something to balance the intense drama of a few minutes earlier, but the church doors remained closed and nothing else happened and eventually we all went home. We never even saw the processional people leave the church.