Word: tehuantepec
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...first day, death had a fiesta. Soon after the roaring pack headed off over rolling junglelands from Tuxtla to Oaxaca (329.3 miles), disaster multiplied near Tehuantepec. A Ford overturned on a curve, and six spectators who had rushed to help its occupants were killed by a second Ford, which came whipping around the blind turn. A bit later, near by, an Italian co-driver died under his Ferrari after it blew a tire and overturned. The survivors tore onward, and at first lap's end a record average speed of 94.86 m.p.h. was set by one of Italy...
...Funerals. In merriment-minded Tehuantepec, any pretext for a party goes; the commonest is a wedding. By custom, after the newlyweds retire, celebrators gather outside the bridal chamber, drinking and shouting broad sallies at the groom. Later, when he comes out to greet the crowd, firecrackers explode and an all-night fiesta starts. Scarcely less gay are wakes and funerals (where a favored dirge is the tune of Yes, We Have No Bananas). There are 21 scheduled community fiestas a year in the town...
Last week's communal wingding was staged solely to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the introduction to Tehuantepec of La Sandunga, originally a Spanish fandango. Because the song is now the town's own anthem, the occasion was marked with fitting energy. Through the first night the townspeople, bearing pinewood torches, paraded, fired Roman candles and danced. Next morning, with hardly more than a pause for some fiery 120-proof mescal (drunk with powdered cactus-worm salt for additional flavor), a new parade started...
That night the town crowned a queen, pretty Bernarda Morales, daughter of a warehouse watchman, and danced until dawn. For still a third day and night, the fiesta went on. Then, exhausted, Tehuantepec went to bed. Back of the bougain-villea-twined wall, a guitar plunked and a lazy voice rose...
...civil war between the Roman Catholic conservatives and the anticlerical liberals. The Catholic Irishmen saw it as a holy war, battled at Tehuantepec for two years, finally fell to the liberal forces of Porfirio Diaz, later (1877-1911) Mexico's Dictator-President...