Between applause, dancing and a kiss full of good wishes, the mayor of a town in southern Mexico married a female alligator, fulfilling a traditional rite to ask for prosperity and abundance for his community.
Víctor Hugo Sosa, the mayor of San Pedro Huamelula, a Chontal indigenous community on the Tehuantepec isthmus (southern Oaxaca state), confessed his affection for the reptile bride named Alicia Adriana, who assumes the role of “the princess girl” in this ancient celebration.
“I accept the responsibility because we love each other, that’s what’s important, there can’t be a marriage if they don’t love each other. We love each other and I agree to marry the princess girl,” Sosa said during the ceremony.
The union between a man and a female alligator has been celebrated in this town for more than 230 years to commemorate the day on which two ethnic groups from the region, the Huaves and the Chontales, were integrated thanks to a wedding.
Tradition tells that the friction between the two towns ended with the marriage of the Chontal king, today represented by the mayor, and the Huave princess girl, a community settled in the town of San Mateo del Mar, embodied in the female alligator.
The wedding allows them to “connect with what is the emblem of mother earth. All asking the mighty for rain, the germination of the seed, all those things that are peace, the harmony of the Chontal man,” explains Jaime Zárate, chronicler of San Pedro Huamelula.
Before getting married, Alicia Adriana is taken from house to house so that the inhabitants dance with her, who is dressed in a green skirt, a black huipil and a headdress made of ribbons and colored sequins. She has her mouth tied tight to avoid trouble.
She is then dressed in her white wedding dress, with silver trimmings, and taken to the municipal palace to marry the mayor.
Joel Vásquez, fisherman and inhabitant of the town, casts his net and declares his faith that the wedding will open “good fishing, so that there may be prosperity in this nation, so that ways to live in peace are found and balances are formulated.”
After the wedding, the mayor dances with his wife to the rhythm of the traditional music of the town.
“Because of the wedding that we are having today, we are very happy because we are celebrating the union of two cultures, the people are happy,” Sosa told AFP.
The dance ends with a kiss that seals the union between the king and the princess girl.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project