Catemaco in the New York Times

These northern editors apparently tired of Hillary and Hussein bashing and sent a reporter to beautiful downtown Catemaco, Veracruz.

And he fell for the brujo mystique, raw eggs, holy water, bad vibrations and all. He even stuck in a slideshow.

New York Times: Travelers in Search of Mexico’s Magic Find Town of Witches and Warlocks.
Apparently the article was moved to the registered visitor page or something, so here is the reprint.

Travelers in Search of Mexico’s Magic Find Town of Witches and Warlocks
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
CATEMACO, Mexico — To kill a man, Alejandro Gallegos García explains, all you need is a black cloth doll, some thread, a human bone and a toad. Oh, and you must ask the devil permission, in person, at a cave in the hills where he is said to appear.
Assuming you have these things, plus the green light from the prince of darkness, you simply lash the doll to the bone, shove it down the unfortunate toad’s throat, sew up its lips and take the whole mess to a graveyard, reciting the proper words.
“The person will die within 30 days,” Mr. Gallegos said matter of factly, as if he were talking of fixing a broken carburetor. (The toad dies too, by the by.)
“There exists good and bad in the world, there exists the devil and God,” he went on, turning a serpent’s fang in his rough fingers. “I work in white magic and in black magic. But there are people who dedicate themselves only to evil.”
Mr. Gallegos, 48, is a traditional warlock, one of dozens who work in this idyllic town, nestled near the Gulf of Mexico by Lake Catemaco in the state of Veracruz. Like most witches here, he melds European and native traditions in his work, a special brew of occultism he learned from his uncle.
His cramped cement workroom holds an image of the Virgin Mary and a large crucifix with a bloodied Jesus. A six-pointed star is painted on the floor, with a horseshoe to one side and a St. Andrew’s cross on the other. Candles dedicated to various saints crowd his table, most with photographs lashed to them. Some are photos of men and women whom the client wants to ensnare in love. Others are of barren women who want children. Others are of people with maladies from asthma to cancer.
Beneath the table Mr. Gallegos keeps ragged boxes full of herbs, bark and roots that have been used in these parts for medicinal purposes since before Hernán Cortés was a gleam in his great-great-grandfather’s eye.
He has dead bats, used in certain love charms, and ground-up rattlesnake, for curing illnesses. He uses oils extracted from lizards and turtles, the dried tongues of certain fish, coyote skin, eggs, chickens, holy water from the church and less-than-holy water from the lake. He knows dozens of local plants and their attributes. And he wields the tooth of a venomous snake.
“This goes back to ancient times,” he said. “There were witches here before the Spanish. Here there is a mix of everything, even of God.”
Catemaco is known throughout Mexico as a center for witchcraft and, to the dismay of some hard-core practitioners, magic has become a big tourist draw. The town holds an International Congress of Witches on the first Friday of every March.
During the event, a black mass is held at the mouth of the cave where the devil supposedly loiters. An oversize six-pointed star — they call it a Star of David — is set alight, to the delight of photographers. Politicians show up to receive amulets for good luck at the polls. Believers flock to the town to have their auras cleansed.
Sandra Lucía Aguilar, a 25-year-old cashier, traveled 22 hours by bus from Cancún for the black mass. A few days later she found herself in the waiting room of a popular witch doctor known as “The Crow,” hoping for a little black magic to force her errant boyfriend to return.
“I lived with him for five years, and then, overnight, he ran off with another woman,” she said. “I want him back. He humiliated me a lot and I want to humiliate him.”
The Crow turns out to be a slick-looking fellow named Héctor Betaza Domínguez, who wears white guayabera shirts and sits in a candlelit room among effigies of La Santa Muerte, a Mexican icon resembling the grim reaper in drag.
Mr. Betaza says people come to see him from all over Mexico and from major cities in the United States with large Mexican communities. Many simply want “una limpia,” or cleansing, to ward off evil spirits. But a majority of the complaints are broken hearts.
Asked where he learned his craft, Mr. Betaza, who calls himself a “master of occult sciences,” becomes evasive, muttering something about his mother having practiced magic. “This you don’t learn,” he said. “It’s something that you carry in the blood.”
Not everyone is convinced. The Rev. Tomás Alonso Martínez has the unenviable job of parish priest in a town best known as a haunt of the devil and witches. “It’s farce,” he said, “a lie, a fraud.”
In his five years in Catemaco, Father Martínez says he has seen so-called witches practice all sorts of confidence schemes, extracting money from gullible and vulnerable people.
One common trick is to tell someone he is hexed and then remove the hex for a fee. Another is to tell people they are sick, then offer them a traditional cure for an outlandish sum.
“They attribute to themselves power they cannot have,” the priest said. “The fundamental problem that exists with these people is that there are people who believe them. Anyone can set themselves up as a witch.”
Even Father Martínez acknowledges, however, that mixed in with the questionable practices are vestiges of a pre-Hispanic past. The use of Catholic saints also bespeaks a syncretism of beliefs, he notes.
In his church, an icon of the Virgin Mary sits in an alcove directly above and behind the altar. Before Mass, many go to the shrine and pass herbs over their bodies to cleanse themselves. Some leave pictures of loved ones, amulets and prayers.
That syncretism also emerged clearly when Mr. Gallegos performed a cleansing ritual on a recent afternoon. The client was a taxi driver named Santos Luna Cruz who wanted protection from envious rivals.
Stripped to the waist, Mr. Luna stood on a worn piece of velvet in the center of a chalk Star of David. Candles burned at each point of the star. A horseshoe was to one side, a St. Andrew’s cross to the other. Two glasses of water, believed to absorb evil spirits, were placed in front of him.
Mr. Gallegos sprinkled holy water, garlic and ammonia over him. Then, chanting the common Catholic prayer to “the father, the son and the Holy Ghost” and invoking a long list of saints, Mr. Gallegos held eggs to the man’s head and rubbed them over his body.
He scratched crosses with his serpent’s tooth on Mr. Luna’s face, arms, chest and abdomen. He took a live chicken and passed it over his client. He blew the holy water from his mouth in a fine spray at the man, and beat him with clusters of herbs.
When it was over, Mr. Luna, 34, grinned and ran his hand through his wet hair. “I felt very stressed out at first, but now I feel lighter, better,” he said. “I feel like he is taking away from my body the bad vibrations.”

Mr. Gallegos pointed to two eggs that broke during the ritual. “When the egg breaks, it is because it has absorbed the pain inside the young man,” he said.

Official Brujo announcement

Veracruz state and municipal authorities announced that from March 6 to 8 the Congreso de Brujos ( Conference of witches) will take place in the region of Catemaco, Veracruz, Mexico.

In a press conference State Secretary of Tourism, Ivan Hillman Chapoy, explained that during the holidays up to eight thousand tourists are expected to visit who may leave an economic spill of one million pesos.

Among the activities to be undertaken this First Friday of March in one of the most emblematic and mystical parts of the state are included a Black Mass, a very ancient tradition, which will be performed in the foothills of Cerro del Mono Blanco (White Monkey Mountain).

Abdicated former Brujo Mayor (chief witch) Pedro Gueixpal Cobix, explained that the congress will be managed by twelve witches from the area who will conduct personal spiritual cleanings, a mass cleaning in the waters of Laguna Catemaco, numerous ceremonies, dances and lectures by anthropologists.

The Mass will be headed by the current Brujo Mayor Luis Cruz Sipriano "El Indio" and will be in the form of a circle called Steps of Salomón or Star of David. The circle and purification ceremony will be formed by seven acolytes, surrounded by fire fueled with sulfur, along with a black chicken, black cats, a lamb, and giant candles.

Source: Translation of elgolfo.info

Thursday Brujos of Catemaco

Most available white and black witches, warlocks, healers, brujos and whatnots will swarm to beautiful downtown Catemaco, Veracruz beginning Thursday, March 6 for their annual event.

The local government, in spirit with the event, but too dispirited to call it "Congreso de Brujos" (Convention of witches), in the last few years has titled the event "First Friday in March". And if you do not show up by Thursday, you will miss most of the fun.

Highlights this year are a midnight black mass on White Monkey Mountain, and an afternoon of spiritual cleansing on the laguna beaches north of downtown Catemaco.

For the complete schedule of the event in Spanish, see http://www.catemaconoticias/

Photo: White Monkey Mountain

Catemaco Brujo Circus

CATEMACO: "I will not participate in the First Friday in March event (Annual witch convention on first Friday of March), to be undertaken by the city council", said Apolinar Gueixpal Seba, better known as the brujo mayor (chief warlock) of Catemaco.


He added that the main reason why he will not participate in the event that the city council plans to carry out with 12 other brujos is because witchcraft deserves to be respected and that a mass black must be performed in private and not in the presence of the public. Brujo Guexpal, known as the Tiger's Leap said that the city council is making a circus of witchcraft with the first Friday of March event, but despite this, he respects his fellow brujo colleagues but does not agree with this type of celebration.


"The real witches, as did our ancestors, need to provide witchcraft as a service to the people and not as a business. There is now a lot of charlatanería (false witchcraft), and that is why I say to people not to be fooled and also ask people to tell the municipal authorities that witchcraft be given the respect it deserves and not to be used to deceive people", said Apolinar Gueixpal.



Source: Loose translation from Politica en Los Tuxtlas

Catemaco Brujo Convention

Catemaco's major fame in English is its relationship to brujos (witches).

And possibly since ancient times, when the heavily forested Los Tuxtlas mountains in Veracruz provided a cornucopia of medicinal plants, healers from Catemaco were favored for their medicinal plant healing powers. Aborigines in the Los Tuxtlas still count more than 400 species of plants with substantive healing powers. So count various Swiss and US pharmaceutical companies who have sponsored several exploitative ventures into this area.

About 50 years ago, one of the better healers in Catemaco apparently made a pact with the devil and the equivalent of Madison Avenue advertising agencies. He attracted Mexican presidents, film stars, and other infamous public figures seeking fortune, health or a vacation in beautiful downtown Catemaco.
That witch originated a brujo convention which has been annually celebrated in Catemaco since the 1980's, and since then, the First Friday occupies a paragraph of most articles written about Catemaco.

The concept of "First Friday in March", according to a local resident bull shitting brujo stems from the the first day of the Olmec calendar year, which up to today, nobody else, except maybe Mel Gibson, has been able to count.

Locally, the population cares nothing about these witchy doings, aside from steering believers arriving from "outside" to their most favorite commission paying brujo.

Nevertheless, since the first convention produced so many touristic news items, the local government for many years has been encouraging brujo related events on the First Friday in March, which actually is one minute past Thursday.

Most times, hundreds of foreign tourists arrive a day late to miss the midnight mass on White Monkey Mountain evoking the devil. Instead, most visitors settle for a song and dance routine in the Disney forest of Nanciyaga, a local regrown jungle preserve.

Ironically, I am happily settled with a Popoluca, whose father is known as a local brujo. So I tried to find out about the colors of witchcraft which assorted English magazine articles proclaim exist here. Yes, there are white witches who specialize in "good healing" and there are black witches who provide a little extra from the dark side. But "red brujos"? Maybe I have to climb another monkey mountain to find the source for one of those.

Meanwhile, COME ON DOWN on Thursday for Friday.

Return of the Catemaco brujos

Better late than never, the local government rose off its monkey mountain and announced some support for the first Friday in March annual Brujo festivities.

Probably because of political infighting, another Tuxtlas town, Santiago Tuxtla, will be stealing the glory this year, supported by the Veracruz governor, naturally from a different party than the local obstreperous mayor.

Catemaco Protest

A common political tool in Mexico is a protest march. It is so common in Mexico City, that downtown shop owners expect their streets to be blockaded a large part of the year.

Generally, and specifically in the provinces of Mexico, a protest is a political act, paid for by a political agent supported by "under classes" promised some bags of cement, a few chickens and a threat to have their welfare programs rescinded for failure to participate. Political achievement in Mexico is related to who can make the most political noise. That is why almost daily, in this beautiful country, a highway is blocked to travellers because of the perception of some outside malfeasance.

A relatively new wrinkle on this sort of protest was the recent shutting down of fresh water supplies to southern Veracruz by mostly indigenous peoples, because of perceived failures of state infrastructure projects.

Beautiful downtown Catemaco has now joined the rank of protesters, because its prince (alcalde) is allegedly lacking money to maintain his princedom (ayuntamiento) because of over spending and is now desperately seeking promised state public works, which are known to clandestinely add 10 to 20% of their cost to a local leader's portfolio.

Apparently the local prince misunderstood the state's king (gobernador) who, as customary, had promised a boat motor and four chickens for every pot in Catemaco, but whose office is also customarily known never to deliver on promises.

As an example, it took 26 years of promises to pave a local road from Catemaco to the beach.
So now, the local prince, who used who knows whose funds, has engaged various bus companies to transport people from the beautiful uptown Catemaco area for a free visit to the state capital, including free lunches and perhaps a bag of cement to keep warm in the cold temperatures of Xalapa.

The intent is to make so much noise that the possibly embarrassed king of Veracruz will throw a bone to the Catemaco prince so that he can hopefully say he was "promised" that a mile of lake front or other dirt road would be paved.

On their way, these troubadors blocked the federal highway from Veracruz to Coatzacoalcos. This created many more loyal supporters among local drivers and foreign tourists who allegedly joined in the lament of the local ayuntamiento .

Some of the local brujo (witch) population, or at least the ones aligned with the princedom, have also joined this protest and are prepared to draw spells on anyone standing in the way of this protest. (The last protest was welcomed with tear gas).

The king became upset at these happenings and sent troups of his black and white police cars to intercept the merry troubadors. Frightened by the thought of going to jail most of the party makers decided to walk home and left the prince with a handful of lackals, and 22 mostly empty buses.

So much for that supposed brujo magic!

Brujo Protest

Alleging that the Veracruz state government failed to deliver promised municipal improvements, the brujos (witches) of beautiful downtown Catemaco exhort 3000 of their fellow inhabitants to march on Xalapa, the Veracruz state capital, today.

The brujos intend to do a "limpia" (spiritual cleaning) of the seat of government and to illuminate the governor's spirit.

Catemagic

The Mexican federal government recently declared Coatepec near Xalapa, Veracruz a “Pueblo Magico” (magic village).And here I thought beautiful downtown Catemaco was the Pueblo Magico.

A little research discovered that there are 18 other declared magic villages in Mexico, including Taxco, Real de Catorce and Tequila.

Nevertheless that declaration was a slap in the face of Catemaco where everybody knows the “REAL” magic is for sale.

So the Veracruz governor involved himself and proclaimed he will initiate the process to also declare Catemaco a “Pueblo Magico“, and perhaps start his own chain of pueblos magicos in Veracruz.

Is this true magic, or what?

Brujo Tourism

The first Friday in March is a world wide event celebrating the arrival of spring.

The event in beautiful downtown Catemaco, Veracruz is absolutely nothing special except for the inheritance of the dead Gonzalo Gueixpal´s black masses propelling of Catemaco´s brujos to the forefront of worldwide publicity.

Yes, the area is haunted by auras of spiritual powers, especially within its political hallows, where evoking a favorite dead politician is still the norm.The mostly mestizo population of Catemaco, 42,500 out of 43,000 has as much in common with its indigenous ancestry as any recently arrived Gringo.

Forgotten original native populations of the southern Los Tuxtlas, who have now been relegated to a micro region called Las Olmecas, still profess, practice and live mysticism on a daily basis, which has absolutely no relation to the trash that is portrayed on the tourist streets of Catemaco as indigenous wisdom.

Nevertheless, just because Mickey Mouse never existed does not mean that Disney World is a fraud. Catemaco DOES have a publicized history of witchcraft (brujos). Any enterpreneur would take advantage of this situation. If this were the good old USA, there would be brujo breakfasts, brujo over flights of Los Tuxtlas, brujo dive tours of the Laguna and coast, brujo table dancers, brujo weekend packages for less than a day´s stay at La Finca, brujo weddings, and municipal politicians aligned on every road instead of brujo shills.