Our Lady of the Taxi Drivers Union

Orizaba on this holiday weekend had a lot more to offer!
turns out every year on this sunday, the church of La Union arranges for different groups to continue doing pilgrimages to the virgin

how did we find this: totally by accident

we decided to see a part of town we had never located, the Parque de la Alameda. Wow. what a great kids park. Enormous walled french style park, many acres, and, perhaps because its sunday and perhaps a holiday sunday, so much free stuff for kids to do. there were: bicycle pedaled carts for you to take your family in, a small choochoo train powered by a VW bug cleverly hidden by a wooden box to look like the engine of the 3 car train, FREE electric powered cars each big enough for one to two children, able to be manipulated by them, their parents holding a cord, or both, huge jumpies with trampolines, even huger jumpies one was with a space shuttle and one an enormous inflated tiger with a huge climbing gym... a free painting class to make christmas decorations.... wow. And clowns. and ice cream. there were kids everywhere, and like all mexican kids, totally well behaved, cooperative, and fun loving. so nice. we could have spent hours just watching the adorable girls in their electric barbie jeeps, the little guys in their tiny red convertibles. it was awesome. And of course, free loud mexican baile music blaring, to make watching everything even more fun.

so then, we went off to look for the flower market. sounds boring you would think. Not at all! because today, the flower market was sponsoring their entry in the parade we had not yet heard of! first we saw people making many small floral displays, which everyone seems to need right now, and, then, we saw the most awesome, 3 tired floral concoction, like a giant wedding cake 8 feet high, with of course, a flower cave where the virgin and Juan diego were gettigng acquainted. with awesome colors and each a perfect flower. the best part was that they had dipped some of the roses in glitter on the edges ... it was lovely. sounds tacky. it was not. Then outside, was the float they had created, even bigger, truck mounted, with a huge virgin and enough room for little kids to have been in front of her in the cave if they had been meant to. they were not. around us on this normal looking street were the most lovely kids, a young girl about 9 dressed to the nines in shiny red and green costume, a young boy about 6 dressed in a fancy white charro costume, and a tiny girl in the india costume. so lovely.


they explained to us there was about to be a parade, any minute now, well maybe in 5 minutes, maybe an hour from now, depends on when the TAXI union gets their act together.... meanwhile they were just going to sit here, keep doing finishing touches, and lets light off a few bottle rockets to not get bored... oh by the way did we tell you about the dancers who are coming? Aztec dancers...

so anyway we went on down to the church which was their destination, and saw OTHER floats coming in, each with marching bands, rata tat tattat tat tatta, of cute high school girls and boys, phenomenal rhythm, and some form of the virgin on some kind of float, and lots and lots of folks singing the same song, about the virgin coming down one handsome morning to bless us, her hands folded in prayer and everything about her from her hands to her face to her skin, were MEXICAN! and isn´t that an honor for each mexican. it´s a great song... but can get a little raspy when sung live on a crummy loudspeaker. it´s great when the crowd is singing and they always look annoyed that we are there photographing, until they see we are singing along, and then, well ok then, go gringos! as long as you are worshipping the virgin too, that´s ok!

and as usual there is an OTHER contingent in this town... the fundamentalists, also holding church today. but they don´t get the fun parade action.

finally we found our group again as they were getting ready.the dancers were here! they were from somewhere in puebla. they wore phenomnally scary devil masks, had huge prongs sticking out of their heads, and there were some with pirate hats and swords labeled not Pirata which means pirate, but Pilato which is pontius pilate. swooshing around. everything got going, the floats were moving, preceded by bottle rockets set off right in the middle of the highway, then the marching band, then the marching DEVIL band, then the floats, then the lovely little kids holding hands in a line in their costumes, then large groups of devotees singing, you guessed it.

and all the flower market men, straining, because the float they were carrying on their shoulders, was HEAVY! and they had relief but it looked like pain....

Then, the taxis!

the entire main highway came to a halt... going the pace of foot marchers.... bands tootling, drums drumming, explosive fireworks banging... what a treat! and, each danged taxi setting off every alarm they had. all in honor of the virgin of guadalupe! our lady of OUR taxi drivers union.