Fiestas, Festivals & Special Celebrations

Each festival has special celebrations, religious and civic activities, folk dance performances, gastronomical specialties, and special folk art production with good shopping opportunities. Each festival is greatly entertaining and gives visitors a deeper insight into Oaxaca’s people, customs and crafts. The religious processions and church ceremonies are accompanied by popular dances, sports events, bullfights, beauty pageants, feasts, elaborate firework displays, and open-air markets. Vendors from far and nearby foothills set up their stalls under awnings in village parks and surrounding streets. Public performances are presented with dressed actors depicting pre-Columbian and/or Christian characters as well as animals (devils, cows, mules, bulls, goats, and tigers are popular).

The big festivals are impressive events, even though seeing a smaller one can be equally rewarding. At times, due to the many Roman Catholic saints & traditional devotions, some are difficult to know about ahead of time, and often one finds out about them by surprise when a brass band comes within earshot or rounds a corner with the “Marmotas” (big round cloth lanterns) and “Monos de Calenda” (giant dancing papier-mâché figures) dancing up and down, with beautifully dressed ladies with large colorful skirts, colored braids in their hair, dancing with baskets full of flowers and the image of a “Saint” on their heads. This could simply be in honor of the organization of flower vendors of the markets of Benito Juárez and the Central de Abastos, for instance (this celebration is dedicated to the Virgin of Guadalupe and takes place at the Church of Guadalupe in Oaxaca in June).

Most parades/processions end at the village/ town churches and in the city at the cathedral on the main plaza, where if you happen to be there you might even get to witness the feast within the churchyard. The fact that locals traditionally continue to organize these sincere public acknowledgements to honor their saints of devotion is very touching; the cheerful music, their innocence and faith are at once brave, joyous and sad.