Word: posada
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This week, alongside tenement doors and the imposing iron-grill porticoes of mansions, the little figurines glinted in the light of the December moon. For the humble poor as well as the rich, it was Posada time, the season of Mexico's traditional pre-Christmas parties, when visitors go from house to house bearing lighted candles and singing the traditional words that ask shelter for the holy figures. The hosts sing an answer, saying, like the innkeeper of ancient Judea, that all the beds are taken. The ritual over, everyone troops inside for food & drink...
Palo & Piñata. This week, as always, the highlight of each posada (literally, an inn) was the breaking of the piñata, a big clay pot. The piñata, filled with presents and decorated with gay streamers, was hung from the ceiling. One by one guests were blindfolded, spun around, and allowed to crack at the pinata with a palo (stick). Usually they missed. Then the smallest child was allowed to split it open, whereupon everyone dived for the shower of candies, fruits and toys...
Occasionally, drink got the best of the funmakers, and a posada ended in a free-for-all with the palo. A few practical jokers filled their piñatas with charcoal dust which exploded in the guests' faces. The usual sequel to such unseemly horseplay was a Mexican Donnybrook or "Rosario de Amozoc...
Profit & Loss. In Hollywood, police got word that David Posada's car had been stolen, with $1,500 in it. They started a search, soon located the car, found $2,504 scattered on the floor...
...Artist. Posada was born in 1852, of peasant stock, in Aguascalientes, Mexican provincial capital. Largely self-taught, he went to work in Mexico City in the late 1880s. Porfirio Diaz was ruling Mexico then as a dictator. The San Carlos Academy of Art, near Posada's workshop, was teaching a decadent, imported style to young artists. Posada ignored the Academy, attacked the Diaz regime with vitriolic cartoons. Among his admirers were today's top-ranking Mexican artists, José Clemente Orozco and Diego Rivera, young students of the time whose work was strongly influenced by his. (Orozco: "Posada...