By Dan Prescher & Suzan Haskins
Fiestas and festivals...that's one of the reasons everyone enjoys San Miguel de Allende so much. By some accounts, this little town has more fiestas during the year than anyplace else in Mexico. And one of our favorites is coming up soon--Dia de los Locos, or Day of the Crazies.
Taking place each year on the first Sunday after the day of San Antonio de Padua (June 13), Dia de los Locos isn't a religious festival--it's a parade held to celebrate spring. And for some reason it has turned into a costume extravaganza.
Participants dress up in an amazing assortment of wild outfits made from old clothes, cardboard boxes, bailing wire, styrofoam, fabric, papier-mache, masking tape, and whatever else comes to hand. Cartoon and children's characters like Barney, Power Rangers, and Sponge Bob are well represented, along with outlandish caricatures of campesinos, foreigners, and town celebrities.
There are always lots of costumes inspired by popular movies, and every Dia de los Locos parade we've seen has had several Terminators and Darth Vaders marching in it. Last year we saw an entire troop of Orcs from Lord of the Rings. There is always an assortment of political figures, too. George Bush, Vincente Fox, and Osama bin Laden are particularly well represented lately, portrayed with not-so-subtle and sometimes ribald sarcasm.
And cross-dressing is a standard for Dia de los Locos. You'd have to go a long way in Mexico to see as many men dressed up as women all in one place just for the fun of it! Old women, young women, black women, white women, nuns, geishas, models, nurses...you name it, there will be a Mexican man dressed like one.
If you march in the Dia de los Locos parade, you must--repeat, must--throw candy.
> Next Page of "Day of Crazies"
First Published: May 28, 2005
