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Hispanic currents flow through the history and culture of Las Cruces and Mesilla like the Rio Grande flows through the fields and arid pasturelands of these adjoining valley communities.
Spanish-speaking conquistadores and colonists left their tracks and bones along the sandy river bottoms more than four centuries ago. Northern New Mexico’s Spanish-speaking settlers, uprooted by the Mexican/American conflict of the late 1840s, rebuilt their lives at Las Cruces and Mesilla, constructing community, churches and homes along the riverbanks. Their descendants, along with more recent Spanish-speaking settlers, now serve in local political offices; work in local businesses, industries and professions; study at the local university and colleges; and teach in the local schools.
And they celebrate their Hispanic heritage, bent through the prism of Mexican history.
They gather three times each year in the traditional Spanish-style plaza in Mesilla to remember Mexico’s most important national holidays, Cinco de Mayo (the Fifth of May), Diez y Seis de Septiembre (the Sixteenth of September) and Dias de los Muertos (Days of the Dead).
The Cinco de Mayo celebration commemorates the day in 1862 that Mexican troops, under famed Mexican General Ignacio Zaragoza, inflicted a humiliating defeat on a French expeditionary force of 6,500 soldiers at the city of Puebla, some 60 miles southeast of Mexico City.
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Diez y Seis de Septiembre celebrations recall the day in 1810 that firebrand priest Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla issued his famous grito – a call to revolution – from the pulpit of his church in Dolores, near Guanajuato, igniting the Mexican overthrow of Spanish rule.
The Cinco de Mayo and Diez y Seis de Septiembre events both infuse the old Mesilla plaza with a tide of vibrant color, the smell of chili con queso and burritos and tamales, the rhythms of Spanish-speaking voices, the laughter of boisterous children, and the music and song and dance of Mexico.
Youngsters line up to take turns swinging sticks at huge piñatas, which are suspended and festooned ceramic vessels which will rain down candies and toys when broken. It is a custom taken from the Indians, whose children swung their own sticks at suspended treasure-laden ceramic vessels long before Columbus turned up at San Salvador.
Adult and children’s dance groups, gaily dressed, perform the ballet folkloricos, or Mexico’s regional folk dances – the dignified polkas and chotis’ of Northern Mexico, the flirtatious "Mexican hat dance" of Jalisco, the stately choreography of Michoacan, the ancient "Dance of the Deer" of Sonora, the flamenco style zapateados of Veracruz.
The Dia de los Muertos (November 1st, All Saints Day, and November 2nd, All Souls Day) ceremonies and customs connect the living to the dead, becoming a celebration of the past lives of relatives, friends and national heroes. It is a bittersweet, distinctively Mexican festival with roots in both prehistoric Indian ritual and the Roman Catholic church. Families gather at cemeteries to tend and decorate the graves of deceased relatives, leaving bouquets of flowers and ofrendas (offerings) of favored foods and drinks. In expectation of visits by the spirits of the dead, they set up altars in their homes, decorating them with lost relatives’ photographs, papel picado (elaborate paper cutouts), toy skeletons, sugar candy skulls, foods, drinks, burning incense, and marigold blossoms (the Aztecs’ symbolic flower of death). Finally, they celebrate death, joyfully, with costume, music, dance and fireworks.
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Later in the fall, Las Cruces hosts what has become one of the largest events of its kind, an annual international conference for Mariachis, musicians who have blended the melodies and song of 16th, 17th and 18th century Spanish theater with the tunes and rhythms of ageless Africa into a sound which seems to rise from the Mexican soil. The Mariachis wear the Mexican cowboy’s, or charro’s, waist length jacket, tight fitting pants with boots, ornamented with embroidery and silver. With violin, trumpet, guitar and voice, they turn the feet of young and old to dance. The Mariachis define the joyous regions of Mexico’s soul.
In Las Cruces and Mesilla, Cinco de Mayo, Diez y Seis de Septiembre and Dias de los Muertos are not holidays, so the events are usually celebrated on the weekends preceding May 5, September 16, and November 1 and 2. Las Cruces’ annual international Mariachi conference is usually held in early to mid-November.
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