Xilocruz
Cinco de Mayo is behind us, here's a story from the real Mexican Independence Day
Last year I wrote about a night bus from Oaxaca I took leading up to El Grito Mexico (en español aquí). Now that it is the fake Mexican Independence Day1 I wanted to share a little more from my time with my Spanish teacher and friend Suri in Chilpancingo, Guerrero, MX for the actual Mexican Independence Day last September.2 We spent the days before the holiday at a few swinging parties, including at the CNTE teachers’ union hall, her sister-in-law’s house, as well as a corn harvest ritual called Xilocruz.
The practice of Xilocruz was really intriguing to me. It was hard to research, and more interesting Suri really couldn’t explain it to me either as this was her first time celebrating. All I found after returning to the states was a few short local newspaper articles and a video explaining that it happens 14th of September during the week celebrating independence from Spain and marks the beginning of the fall corn harvest season in the state of Guerrero. In English, I found an academic article that makes reference to it, but really only in short passing since it’s actually about Indigenous water rituals in Mexico. But after looking online, via social media, and asking Suri for more info on it, I still came up with nothing. Normally she loved recounting facts about her country and more so even the things they do specific to Guerrero, but here we were going into it green.
The celebration was at a family friends’ house. They lived on a tiny family farm thirty minutes or so outside the city. All Suri could really explain was that Xilocruz was a mix of pre-Hispanic and Catholic traditions that they do in the hill communities. We arrived in the afternoon to this outdoor kitchen and patio covered by a tin roof, but the family had been cooking pozole de pata all day.3 After hanging out and answering all the questions about America from her little cousin who spoke at a similar level of Spanish as I,4 the family that lived on the farm had us gather outside.
Shortly after they started playing banda music from a portable speaker, gathered little paper crosses wrapped in yellow flowers, and we marched together towards the corn fields as the mama of the house swung a copal filled with incense.
The Catholic influence on Xilocruz is obvious, I mean cruz (cross) is in the name and the ritual involved blessing the year’s crop with crosses. Suri’s Nahua side of the family took the lead and she asked questions and tried to explain things to me more slowly. More than merely a Catholic tradition, this was an offering to la Madre Tierra.
At the end of each row of corn, someone left a cross and a flower in a sprouting stalk. Then the dad of the house lit a cohete firework, the explosion in the grey sky signifying it was time to pour a shot of mezcal.5 This repeated a dozen or so times as we moved around their entire field of corn. Before returning to eat dinner I was plastered.
I sat back down as the pozole was passed down the long table in clay bowls. My seat at the end with the cousins so they could ask me more questions while I played a few games of chess with one of the farmers. I ate the pozole, Suri laughing as she recounted how I mixed up “pata” and “pato” at the start of my trip and chickened out of eating the hoof. They asked why I would want to eat a duck. I couldn’t really explain it other than it tastes good. But pata was Suri’s favorite dish after all, it had been built up now where I had to face my cowardice and eat it all or face being both a gringo AND rude. The hoof itself was chewy but mixed with the carnitas and vegetables, the flavor did not seem to resemble the vinegary delicacy I rejected before. Pata too, tastes good.
As did nearly every night with Suri’s family, things ended by me losing at Loteria. And despite my mind in a warm, sweet haze, they assured me that “this gringo can handle his mezcal.”
On the drive back to Chilpancingo I looked out at the lights as we descended from the hills. Suri’s little sister, a high schooler that lived in the apartment above her with their parents, asked me with concern if I thought their cousin’s questions were insulting. I assured her they weren’t, I liked his candor and bluntness about what he really finds mysterious about my country.
“I know but he’s just so nerdy,” she said before commenting on how big his glasses were. “In Mexico we call that Kotaku.” I laughed, yeah we basically say the same in the USA.
It had gotten pretty late in the evening. I was at the point where I could hardly think in Spanish any longer. Conversations can dull when I started to feel more like a wind up doll that memorizes and recites phrases rather than authentically engaging. I had been quiet and looking out at the view fighting off a spinning headache. Pushing myself to say something off the cuff—something that might resemble the dumb poetic wisdom of a shower thought—I remarked on how similar the view looked to my home town, my grandparents lived on a hill on which the road home from had a view out at the yellow and orange lights of Los Angeles at night. How everything different—the architecture, the layout of the roads, the tropical foliage, the language (well kind of)—is lost at night. Here it’s the same circuit board of light pollution creating a rigidly symmetrical, yet flickering, blend of color that I was used to in LA.
“Never mind, the Gringo is drunk,” Suri’s little sister concluded.
When we returned to my teacher’s house, Suri stumbled out of the car, tripping on the curb. She looked to be almost horizontal in the air, but somehow stuck the landing on two feet. “No mames guey!” I told her.
Her whole family looked at each other before bursting out in laughter. “Is that what you teach him about Mexico Suri? How does he know that?”
“No. He’s been here before, they learn it on their own,” she said.
Cinco de Mayo.
September 16, celebrating El Grito Mexico the night before.
At the beginning of the trip my gringo ass went to this beach town with my Mexican cousin that lives in Jalisco and ordered tostada de pata thinking pata was the feminine version of “pato” (duck). The nice lady even asked me if I was sure I wanted that and I confidently confirmed. Surprised only to get a cold, pickled pig hoof on top of a tostado which I shamefully didn’t have the courage to stomach.
He was 10 or 11 and actually obviously knew way more than me. But he didn’t speak any English so I had fun answering a wide variety of questions I wasn’t used to communicating: from “Do you like Spiderman?”(yes) to “Are the dubbed anime mouths move different for you or are they more accurate?” (no) to “Have you survived a school shooting before?” (no, but David Hogg went to middle school with my brother).
Mezcal is having a moment here in the states, mostly because of the popularity of Oaxaca as a trendy tourist destination now, but Guerrerenses (and I imagine other Southern Mexicans) will fight you over their mezcal being better.