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Huamantla, Tlaxcala Mexico - August, 2004
Every August, Huamantla comes to life with a month of festivities. The second Saturday in August, starts the "night no one sleeps/noche sin dormir" in Huamantla. Local artisans and neighbors transform nearly every street in the center of the village into wonderfully patterned carpets, using colored sawdust and sand. The transformation starts around sunset, when everyone gets busy stenciling patterns on their street. The festival culminates when the precesion carrying the Virgin of Charity statue tramples all 7 kilometers of carpets, starting after midnight mass. None of the work you see in these photos survives to the morning.
The following weekend is something completely different!
The 30-year-old Huamantlada is the Tlaxcaltecan version of the running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain. However, this is less about running away from charging bulls as it is about drinking enough liquid courage to allow you to believe that you REALLY are a bullfighter!
Approximately 10 to 25 fighting bulls and hundreds of young men meet in the streets of Huamantla. A few minutes before Noon, loud rockets explode and the bulls are let loose in the center of town. Young men carrying bullfighter's capes wait around every corner for their chance, everyone else runs like hell. Some of the young men are lucky enough to maneuver out of the path of the bulls, but others aren’t so lucky, as the bulls charge them. By 2 P.M., the hot Tlaxcalan sun overtakes the bulls, and they soon go away tired and stunned by the number of "bullfighters."
Huamantla, Tlaxcala Mexico - August, 2004
Every August, Huamantla comes to life with a month of festivities. The second Saturday in August, starts the "night no one sleeps/noche sin dormir" in Huamantla. Local artisans and neighbors transform nearly every street in the center of the village into wonderfully patterned carpets, using colored sawdust and sand. The transformation starts around sunset, when everyone gets busy stenciling patterns on their street. The festival culminates when the precesion carrying the Virgin of Charity statue tramples all 7 kilometers of carpets, starting after midnight mass. None of the work you see in these photos survives to the morning.
The following weekend is something completely different!
The 30-year-old Huamantlada is the Tlaxcaltecan version of the running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain. However, this is less about running away from charging bulls as it is about drinking enough liquid courage to allow you to believe that you REALLY are a bullfighter!
Approximately 10 to 25 fighting bulls and hundreds of young men meet in the streets of Huamantla. A few minutes before Noon, loud rockets explode and the bulls are let loose in the center of town. Young men carrying bullfighter's capes wait around every corner for their chance, everyone else runs like hell. Some of the young men are lucky enough to maneuver out of the path of the bulls, but others aren’t so lucky, as the bulls charge them. By 2 P.M., the hot Tlaxcalan sun overtakes the bulls, and they soon go away tired and stunned by the number of "bullfighters."
of the running
of the bulls
