Virgencita/Chalma&Pulque -Frances Toor

Notes on: Virgen de Guadalupe, Señor de Chalma, 

&Description of the harvest of maguey and the making of pulque

Virgen de Guadalupe
"Soon he saw the virgin, 'radiant as the sun,' her feet resting in the rocks, gleaming like precious jewels under them."(p.173)
"But the Virgin was so miraculous that she succeeded in establishing herself."(p.174)
"Inside (the chapel of the Little Well) is the well of the Virgin, which opened under her feet during one of her appearances. Here come the healthy and the sick, the blind and the halt, to drink of its brackish waters from a little iron bucket. The sick pour it over their sores and take it home in bottles. It is said if a stranger drinks of this water, he will return to Mexico."(p. 176)
Itinerant photographers capture "magical moments fixed forever in paper and taken home to be looked at". (P. 177)

Señor de Chalma
The pilgrim to Chalma:
-done on foot lasting days a few days or longer than a week.
-as they pass through Chalma, a street of about 30 families, they are greeted with food and asked to make sacrifices for them as well. Then they bath in a sacred pool in order to begin religious devotion perfectly cleansed.
"The Chalma fiestas have the same rhythm as the others-the church, services, dances, various amusements, fireworks- but they are freer from commerce and amusements because of the difficulty of reaching the place"(p. 182)

Maguey &Pulque
"Pulque, made from the juice of the agave or maguey plants and called octli before the Conquest, is one of the oldest a d most widespread of the intoxicating drinks of Mexico.(p. 15)
"Pulque was considered sacred by the Aztecs, who used it as an offering to their gods, especially to the god of fire."(p. 15)
"... One sees vast fields of maguey set in even rows, their strong well-shaped, blue-green leaves rising from the ground in graceful curves- an exotic sight in the bright Mexican sunshine."(p. 16)
"No part of the plant is wasted"(p. 16)
"Cleanliness and prayers are necessary for success in the fermentation, so the vats are kept clean and every tinacal has its patron saint set upon a colorfully adorned shelf over the vats."(p. 17)
"The aim in all the tinacales is to get their visitors intoxicated, which is not difficult, for just to smell freshly fermented pulque seems sufficient to produce a hilarious condition"(p17)
"All social classes drink pulque where there are tinacales"(p.17)
"Now the pulquerias are like any small saloon... Outside walls painted by folk artist with allusive subjects... Both in the names and the paintings is expressed the Mexican love of bright colors, their irony and their unique mocking humor-always bordering in the tragic- known as the vacilada or laugh with the tongue in the
cheek.(p.18)
-natives: doble motive to drink
1-like all drinkers, for whatever pleasure is gives
2- ritual- for considerable drunk ness
"Their drunk ness is generally pacific, tinged with sadness rather than with hilarity"(p. 18)