Catemaco's major fame in English is its relationship to brujos (witches).
And possibly since ancient times, when the heavily forested Los Tuxtlas mountains in Veracruz provided a cornucopia of medicinal plants, healers from Catemaco were favored for their medicinal plant healing powers. Aborigines in the Los Tuxtlas still count more than 400 species of plants with substantive healing powers. So count various Swiss and US pharmaceutical companies who have sponsored several exploitative ventures into this area.
About 50 years ago, one of the better healers in Catemaco apparently made a pact with the devil and the equivalent of Madison Avenue advertising agencies. He attracted Mexican presidents, film stars, and other infamous public figures seeking fortune, health or a vacation in beautiful downtown Catemaco.
That witch originated a brujo convention which has been annually celebrated in Catemaco since the 1980's, and since then, the First Friday occupies a paragraph of most articles written about Catemaco.
The concept of "First Friday in March", according to a local resident bull shitting brujo stems from the the first day of the Olmec calendar year, which up to today, nobody else, except maybe Mel Gibson, has been able to count.
Locally, the population cares nothing about these witchy doings, aside from steering believers arriving from "outside" to their most favorite commission paying brujo.
Nevertheless, since the first convention produced so many touristic news items, the local government for many years has been encouraging brujo related events on the First Friday in March, which actually is one minute past Thursday.
Most times, hundreds of foreign tourists arrive a day late to miss the midnight mass on White Monkey Mountain evoking the devil. Instead, most visitors settle for a song and dance routine in the Disney forest of Nanciyaga, a local regrown jungle preserve.
Ironically, I am happily settled with a Popoluca, whose father is known as a local brujo. So I tried to find out about the colors of witchcraft which assorted English magazine articles proclaim exist here. Yes, there are white witches who specialize in "good healing" and there are black witches who provide a little extra from the dark side. But "red brujos"? Maybe I have to climb another monkey mountain to find the source for one of those.
Meanwhile, COME ON DOWN on Thursday for Friday.
More: Brujos of Catemaco
