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The Day of the Dead, Guaracha, 1982.

The Day of the Dead is an occasion when relatives who normally live in cities return to rural communities. Among the young people in this video clip are children and grandchildren of people from Guaracha who migrated permanently to seek work in Mexico City or Guadalajara in the 1940s and 1950s. The clip shows moments from the mass held in the village graveyard, including the handshake through which the congregation are invited to express their fraternity and fellowship. (Video transfer from original Super 8 movie footage, with sound.)

Saint's Day Procession, Guaracha, 1982

Santa Rosa is the patron saint of the community. The celebrations begin with a procession and mass, filmed here in driving rain. The clip begins with some of the masked figures who will participate in the procession and tableaux vivants. One of the latter includes soldiers, and it is important to bear in mind the special significance of such public religious events in a region like Western Mexico, with its history of violent confrontation between supporters of the Cristero rebellion and anti-clerical militants of the land reform movement. After the violent confrontation between the Catholic Church and the post-revolutionary state in the 1920s, bitter divisions smouldered on in communities such as Guaracha, and were far from completely extinguished even in the 1980s, when this film was shot. Many of the old agrarian fighters would refuse to enter the Church, even if they still considered themselves Catholics. For many of the younger participants, the procession was, however, a more light-hearted event, as the clip shows. In this clip and the next, you will also briefly glimpse the village priest, using a megaphone, but dressed only in a plain black cassock, a reflection of the restricted public role allowed to the clergy and members of religious orders until the rapprochement between the Church and the Mexican State under the Salinas de Gortari government in the 1990s. Constititional constraints included denial of the right to vote, though this did not prevent the clergy from playing an important backstage role in the political life of communities such as this. (Video transfer from original Super 8 movie footage, no sound.)

Saint's Day Procession, Guaracha, 1982

In this clip, the procession is arriving at the Church, accompanied by a Tarascan band from an indigenous community in the Meseta. We also see a rocket being set off, an important element in many secular as well as religious festivities. This fiesta is also a convenient occasion for children to receive their first communion. (Video transfer from original Super 8 movie footage, no sound.)

First Communions and Fiesta, Cerrito Cotijaran, 1982

This clip shows communicants leaving the small church of Cerrito Cotijaran, a smaller and less prosperous community neighbouring Guaracha. Note that the young girls are dressed as "brides of Christ". The Guaracha priest also ministers to Cotijaran. The religious ceremomy is hardly over when the band strikes up, and some of the men have already been drinking. The association of religious festivals with drunkenness, dancing, cock-fights and other secular diversions has always been a bone of contention in Mexico and other Latin American countries. Priests in principle disapprove of the aspects of fiestas that are not religiously sanctioned, though in communities like this, in practice they often participate in organising some of the more secular entertainments such as dances and fairs that accompany such celebrations. (Video transfer from original Super 8 movie footage, no sound.)