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<h1 class="p-name entry-title post-title" itemprop="headline">Cascarones and Machete Dancing</h1>
<h2 class="post-subtitle">Something like Carnaval in San Miguel</h2>
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<h3 class="h-adr" itemprop="address" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/PostalAddress"><span class="p-region" itemprop="addressRegion">San Miguel de Allende</span>, <a class="p-country-name country-name" href="/jrnl/mexico/" title="travel writing from Mexico"><span itemprop="addressCountry">Mexico</span></a></h3>
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<time class="dt-published published dt-updated post-date" datetime="2019-03-03T11:11:00" itemprop="datePublished">March <span>3, 2019</span></time>
<span class="hide" itemprop="author" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Person">by <a class="p-author h-card" href="/about"><span itemprop="name">Scott Gilbertson</span></a></span>
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<p>The weekend before Ash Wednesday is Carnival, marking (roughly) the beginning of Lent. Lent is an odd duck to me, but then all the various religions growing out of the Arabian deserts are odd ducks to me. </p>
<p>When faced with deprivation, followers go on a spree of excess, which is considered a sin, but then you can “repent” and all is magically forgiven.</p>
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<p>On one hand I think this idea that you can do whatever you want and later be absolved is the source of most of what’s wrong with western culture. It’s the source of our environmental and social problems and I think in hindsight will be seen as the bit of philosophy that landed us in history’s dustbin way ahead of schedule. </p>
<p>On the other hand, who doesn’t love a big party in the streets? </p>
<p>Unfortunately, just as Candelaria fades the further you go north, Carnival seems to fade the further north you get from Brazil. Which isn’t to say Mexico doesn’t celebrate at all — by most accounts Mazatlan is the place to be for Carnival — but here in San Miguel de Allende it’s been reduced to día de los cascarones, or day of the confetti eggs. </p>
<p>It’s good fun for the kids anyway.</p>
<p>Cascarones are eggs that have been drained and filled with confetti. Or glitter or flour. They’re colorfully painted, cost less than 50 cents a dozen and exist primarily to smash on someone’s head. What’s not to love?</p>
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<p>Aside from a few vendors hawking giant crepe paper flowers, some glittery masks, and various hand-made puppets to tourists, the only other sign of anything happening in relation to Carnival was the indigenous dancers. One night I took the girls up to the Jardin to watch the drumming and dancing. </p>
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<p>Most of the dancing groups we’ve seen quite a few times at this point, but there was one that was new to me who had drumming punctuated by machetes clanking like cymbals, by far my favorites from a musical point of view.</p>
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<p>The dancers all wore white outfits with red fringing and large feather head dresses. They would dance in a circle and then at some point in the rhythm, form up into two lines of four or five people all facing each other. The footwork moved with the drums, but the hands then clanged the flat side of the machete blade against that of the partner opposite them. The line then shifted and everyone lined up with a different person and the melody and rhythm repeated. When they reached the end of the line they broke into a circle again.</p>
<p><audio controls="" preload="auto">
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<p>The kids loved everything about día de los cascarones so much they dragged me back up the next morning to see if there was anything still happening. There wasn’t. No one’s kidding about the “día” part, but we did get to see the entire square in the Jardin covered in flour, evidence that the night before had gotten considerably messier after we headed home.</p>
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<aside id="wildlife">
<h3>Fauna and Flora</h3>
<ul>
<li class="grouper">Birds<ul>
<li>American Coot </li>
<li>Bewick's Wren </li>
<li>Blue-gray Gnatcatcher </li>
<li>Broad-billed Hummingbird </li>
<li>Cassin's Kingbird </li>
<li>Cattle Egret </li>
<li>Crested Caracara </li>
<li>House Sparrow </li>
<li>House Wren </li>
<li>Inca Dove </li>
<li>Northern Shoveler </li>
<li>Ring-necked Duck </li>
<li>Ruddy Duck </li>
<li>Vermilion Flycatcher </li>
<li>Violet-crowned Hummingbird </li>
<li>White-faced Ibis </li>
<li>White-tailed Kite </li>
<li>White-winged Dove </li>
</ul>
</ul>
</aside>
</div>
</article>
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<p class="comments--header">4 Comments</p>
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<span class="who"><b>Gwen</b></span>
<span class="when">March 27, 2019 at 5:44 p.m.</span>
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<p>Fascinating to hear the audio of the machetes! While I see your point about excess and Lent and agree that many folks probably practice what you characterized here, I don’t think it’s the whole picture. While I have never practiced Lent, I do know sincere folks who give up something in order to focus more specifically on Christ’s sacrifice. They aren’t trying to receive a magical absolution. It’s more about sincere faith. At any rate, that’s my perspective…</p>
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<span class="who"><b>Gwen macallister</b></span>
<span class="when">March 27, 2019 at 6:56 p.m.</span>
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<p>Also, my kids would love the cascarones! Pure awesomeness.</p>
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<span class="who"><b><a href="https://luxagraf.net" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Scott</a></b></span>
<span class="when">March 27, 2019 at 10:05 p.m.</span>
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<p>Gwen-</p>
<p>I probably shouldn’t have printed that, I’m sure it offended quite a few of my Christian friends. </p>
<p>But since I did, might as well double down: I don’t have a problem with Lent especially, I have a problem with the whole notion of absolution.</p>
<p>It’s easy to look down on something when it doesn’t have meaning in your worldview, but it seems very easy to make last-minute absolution the gateway to a two-faced and insincere life and I am suspicious of it for that reason. </p>
<p>I think it’s how you get the pious mob boss killing all week, but in the front row of mass on Sunday, the racist belting out hymns and more broadly seems to have been picked up and reworked by materialists into the notion that something is going to save us from ourselves (technology, science, what have you depending on who’s talking).</p>
<p>I think it was Jack Forbes who wrote something to the effect of one cannot fool the spiritual world by uttering words that contradict what is in one’s heart, what one intends. And to understand yourself well enough to recognize your intentions for what they are, let alone change them to be what you desire them to be, takes a lot of work (more than I have done certainly).</p>
<p>Absolution seems to me to come along and say hey, why bother with intentions, you can be absolved of those no problem. And I think that’s a very dangerous line of logic within the religious context and even more so when it gets pulled outside of it.</p>
<p>All that said, I am always happy to be proved wrong.</p>
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<span class="who"><b>Gwen</b></span>
<span class="when">March 28, 2019 at 11:57 a.m.</span>
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<p>I appreciate your thoughtful response and hearing your perspective. I agree there is much hypocrisy among believers along with problematic theology. Romans 6 addresses this issue. (“Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means!” Romans 6:15)</p>
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