Catemaco Brujos 2013

Brujo Festival in Catemaco

Thursday,  Feb 28 / Friday, March 1,  2013

Read more about the brujo shenanigans, Q & A, videos, photos, etc.

http://www.catemaco.info/brujos

Catemaco Brujos 2012

Traditionally the brujo event of Catemaco begins at the stroke of midnight on the first Thursday of  March (1st of March 2012 this year), which is actually the first Friday of March.

At present, although two neighboring cities have announced their events, Catemaco so far has not

deigned to announce anything.

Stay tuned.......

First tune: I think they were drunk when they added the dates to the poster! Right now they are Wednesday to Friday, should be Thursday to Sunday! Stay tuned....

Second tune: Here is the program for Thursday and Friday,

 read it and weep

Third tune: 23 Feb

Also see http://www.catemaco.info/brujos/index.html

New York Time's Catemaco

Mexico's richest man keeps buying chunks of the New York Times, Maybe that has something to do with this strange article about one aspect of Catemaco's brujo tourism.

CATEMACO JOURNAL

Driven to Cast Charms Against Drug Lords’ Darker Forces

more about brujos, here

Catemaco Brujo Song

turn it on to play

Catemaco Brujos 2011

The annual brujo festival on the first Friday of March as usual will start on the first Thursday.

Catemaco is internationally famous for its brujos (witches, healers) and maintains a stable of more than 100 practitioners catering to mostly Mexican adherents, including prominent political figures. Brujo clients range from those seeking alternative health care and spells to improve their business, political standing or love relationships, to those needing a hex to damage or even kill opponents.  The most popular practice is a "limpia" (cleaning), a minor ceremony to relieve a client from evil spirits. 

The festival was originated by the brujos themselves more than 30 years ago, but by now the municipal government has taken over the event. The last 5 years, the event was heavily politicized and basically a mass bacchanalia.

This year's new Catemaco mayor has seriously revamped the program of the event and plans to focus on the cultural and anthropological aspects of  the local phenomena. 

The event runs from March 3 to 6.

Thursday to Sunday, stalls will be erected on several of the promontories jutting into Laguna Catemaco from the Malecòn (boardwalk). They will house local and Mexican handicrafts, culinary displays, individual brujo stalls, herbal plants, etc.

Thursday, starting at 6 pm, at the "Cerrito" a small hill in the center of town, alleged to be an old pyramid.

Salute to the four cardinal points of earth, followed by dances and other shows, terminating with a midnight ceremony and "limpia".

On Friday morning 6 am, a salute to the sun is scheduled.

Other events on Friday to Sunday will be in the town square of Catemaco.

Friday, beginning at 6 pm, conferences, shaman rituals and dances, capped at 9 pm by the performance of  the theatrical work "La Llorana", a popular local legend, accompanied by a drum corp from Tlacotalpan.

Saturday,  beginning at 7 pm, conferences, followed at 8 by a multidisciplinary show of music, songs and dances and ending at 11.

Sunday, beginning at 6 pm, dances, then from 7:30 to 9, the youth orchestra from Coatzacoalcos and ending from 9 to 11 with a public dance featuring the "Hermanos Santos".

You may notice the popular black mass on midnight Thursday, accompanied by burning pentagrams and massacred black chickens, is absent from the program.

Have no fear, the brujo "El Indio" has promised to perform one on the banks of the Rio Grande in Tepetapan (outskirts of the city) on Thursday midnight. Most other major brujos will also hold private masses in their lairs.

Also, Nanciyaga will have its traditional Friday night spring rites ceremony in its jungle setting.

See more brujo stuff

Catemaco Brujo Promo

Catemaco "mìstico"

Last year, a young gringo spent a few months in Catemaco and wrote an article for the National Geographic Magazine's Spanish edition.

Its focus on primarily brujos may be interesting to anyone not familiar with the area, but a cold shower for residents who expected more from National Geographic.

Here is the Google translated link:

Catemaco Mìstico, por David Biller

National Geographic

The Catemaco brujo's granddaughter

The kid is strange. But what can you expect when the daughter of the most famous brujo in Catemaco marries a hippy gringo and her daughter gets raised in Texas. The brujo and the gringo are dead.

Here are the kid's ramblings:
Crzy Down South

Laguna Encantada, near Catemaco

A short drive from beautiful downtown Catemaco lies a picture perfect lake in which an Indian princess supposedly sacrificed herself to assure fresh water for her people.

Nowadays brujos (witches) use a cave near the lake's edge to hold satanic masses, sacrifice whatever is available and other bewitching stuff.

Visit Laguna Encantada

Photo: Carlos Ferrer

Catemaco Brujo Stuff

Seems like the chief exorcist of  the catholic Archdiocese of Xalapa has decided that beautiful downtown Catemaco needs a professional exorcism because of its prevailing malignant spirits.

The chief, who is also famous for whitwashing narco amulets, has invited 10 of his colleagues to clean up the supposed "cradle of witchcraft". Apparently though, he does know his limitations, and recognizes that he may drive out the evil spirts from the geography of Catemaco, but not from us many contaminated locals.
So there is hope.
Read the article in Spanish here.

And of course, a new explorer of "brujismo" has arrived in the pueblo and is adding his two cents:
Day 1 and 2 with the witches of Catemaco.

Incidentally the brujo pages are the individual most popular destinations of readers of catemaco.info, both in English and in Spanish. And they desperately need a rewrite. Maybe next year.

Catemaco Brujos

Mexico Connect recently published an article on the current local brujo scene:
Catemaco: Mexico's cradle of sorcery and witchcraft
Although the author has half of her facts wrong, the article is still a good read.

Brujos of Catemaco

Every year in February I am inundated for requests about the Brujo (witches) Convention, Congress, Festival or whatever in beautiful downtown Catemaco.

I am posting some answers here so I can refer them to the next dozen peoples that ask the same question over and over every year.

What is the Brujo Festival?
Originally the event was sponsored by the actual brujos of Catemaco as a social get together and who invited  the local population to participate and be entertained. In the last decade, the politicians of Catemaco supplanted the brujos and converted the congress into a political event hoping to draw the governor of Veracruz to visit them, and since then, most real brujos have ignored the public event.

When is the Brujo Festival?
The event is always on the first Friday of March. Technically it begins with a black mass on top of volcano Mono Blanco at midnight on Thursday. One minute later is the first Friday of March.

The ride to and climb up the volcano may be fruitless because most brujos nowadays are too lazy or too rich to make the effort.

So if you come to visit on the first Friday, you obviously missed it. Nevertheless several municipal administrations have unsuccessfully tried to turn the event into a 5 day affair beginning on the Tuesday before the first Friday.

Which brujos participate in the event?
Originally most of the brujos participated. In the last years it is usually only the brujo that bribed the Catemaco municipio with 100 thousand pesos or more to obtain the title of "Brujo Mayor" who is entitled to slaughter black chickens in front of burning pentagrams, have a photo opportunity with the Veracruz governor and get quoted by numerous journalists.

What events are scheduled for the Festival?
That totally depends on the municipal government. Events range from mass black masses, mass limpias (spiritual cleanings) in the laguna, booming disco concerts, political parades, supposed natives dancing to bongo drums, getting drunk in front of burning pentagrams, inspection by dozens of journalists, occasional lectures by brujophiles, and being swamped by itinerant Mexican hippies selling handcrafted charms.

Most of the major brujos hold their own private midnight black masses complete with dead chickens and expect gringos to pay  500 pesos or more to participate.

Usually the only functional event is a spring rite ceremony at the Nanciyaga park, 4 miles outside of Catemaco, on Friday night, which is usually fully booked at 150 pesos or so.

Where can I find information about this year's event?
Technically the current  incompetent secretary of tourism of Catemaco handles the event. My experience over the last 8 years, is that the secretariat does not know what they are doing until one week before the event, when they print up a zillion posters and glue them to every lamp post to alert the population of Catemaco which cares less. Specific state or national publicity is usually absent.
Here are phone number of the Catemaco government. Please call them to verify the above information.  (294) 943-0016, or (294) 943 0258. Good luck, and don't call me!

read Catemaco Brujos for more information

Catemaco Brujos 2009

The annual brujo conference in Catemaco, known worldwide as occuring on the first Friday in March, as usual will begin on the first Thursday.

More Info: Catemaco Brujos

Brujo War

The internationally famous brujos of Catemaco are losing the publicity war. The dozens of local warlocks Catemaco are being outmaneuvered by hundreds of imitators as far as Europe and the US.

Classified ads in umpteen publications promise spells and limpias by a "brujo originally from Catemaco". There is now even a Google publicity campaign for an outfit calling itself brujodecatemaco with a Mexico City phone number. Another imitation brujo, actually from San Andrés Tuxtla is now promoting a site from Tabasco,accepting internet money transfers and of course, calling his site elbrujodecatemaco.

Aside from phony ads, foreign brujos are now even imitating the drug lords narcomantas (banners with drug dealer complaints), by painting their own Catemaco Brujo banners across federal highways.

So far only one Catemaco brujo has his own website.

Of course I could be judging this all wrong and the local brujos are sending all their offspring to foreign locales to spread the message.

The Bruja of Catemaco

Supposedly this middle aged sexually repressed and lonely witch likes to fly around Los Tuxtlas at 2 am in the morning looking for fresh blood.

Ay que bonito es volar

A las dos de la mañana.

A las dos de la mañana

Ay que bonito es volar, ay mama

Here is a youtube video which incorporates 14 different versions by different artists of the "son jarocha" La Bruja. Listen to them all  and you'll never fly the same.

14 versions of La Bruja (click on the small photo inserts to change songs) 

Catemaco medicinal plants

Ending yesterday, a Veracruz educational agency offered a course in beautiful downtown Catemaco about medicinal plants, possibly sponsored by the local governor as his response to the local witches (brujos) endorsement of his candidacy for the next presidential race.

My Popoluca, whose father was a known minor brujo, decided to attend. As her homework or perhaps thesis, she was obliged to portray some local medicinal plants.

To my absolute surprise, within half a day, our house began filling with samples of local vegetation supposedly having curing effects. I lost count after 50 and escaped to Veracruz City to avoid to be possibly being used as a guinea pig.

The still remaining knowledge and use of plant lore is simply amazing to me in this small town known for witchcraft and assorted other esoteric endeavors. But now I am looking at my Popoluca bruja as a possible source for a hair loss remedy. Yet I am hesitant, she might turn me into a toad.

Photo: One of many displays of the local medicinal flora.

Catemaco in the New York Times

These northern editors apparently tired of Hillary and Hussein bashing and sent a reporter to beautiful downtown Catemaco, Veracruz.

And he fell for the brujo mystique, raw eggs, holy water, bad vibrations and all. He even stuck in a slideshow.

New York Times: Travelers in Search of Mexico’s Magic Find Town of Witches and Warlocks.
Apparently the article was moved to the registered visitor page or something, so here is the reprint.

Travelers in Search of Mexico’s Magic Find Town of Witches and Warlocks
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
CATEMACO, Mexico — To kill a man, Alejandro Gallegos García explains, all you need is a black cloth doll, some thread, a human bone and a toad. Oh, and you must ask the devil permission, in person, at a cave in the hills where he is said to appear.
Assuming you have these things, plus the green light from the prince of darkness, you simply lash the doll to the bone, shove it down the unfortunate toad’s throat, sew up its lips and take the whole mess to a graveyard, reciting the proper words.
“The person will die within 30 days,” Mr. Gallegos said matter of factly, as if he were talking of fixing a broken carburetor. (The toad dies too, by the by.)
“There exists good and bad in the world, there exists the devil and God,” he went on, turning a serpent’s fang in his rough fingers. “I work in white magic and in black magic. But there are people who dedicate themselves only to evil.”
Mr. Gallegos, 48, is a traditional warlock, one of dozens who work in this idyllic town, nestled near the Gulf of Mexico by Lake Catemaco in the state of Veracruz. Like most witches here, he melds European and native traditions in his work, a special brew of occultism he learned from his uncle.
His cramped cement workroom holds an image of the Virgin Mary and a large crucifix with a bloodied Jesus. A six-pointed star is painted on the floor, with a horseshoe to one side and a St. Andrew’s cross on the other. Candles dedicated to various saints crowd his table, most with photographs lashed to them. Some are photos of men and women whom the client wants to ensnare in love. Others are of barren women who want children. Others are of people with maladies from asthma to cancer.
Beneath the table Mr. Gallegos keeps ragged boxes full of herbs, bark and roots that have been used in these parts for medicinal purposes since before Hernán Cortés was a gleam in his great-great-grandfather’s eye.
He has dead bats, used in certain love charms, and ground-up rattlesnake, for curing illnesses. He uses oils extracted from lizards and turtles, the dried tongues of certain fish, coyote skin, eggs, chickens, holy water from the church and less-than-holy water from the lake. He knows dozens of local plants and their attributes. And he wields the tooth of a venomous snake.
“This goes back to ancient times,” he said. “There were witches here before the Spanish. Here there is a mix of everything, even of God.”
Catemaco is known throughout Mexico as a center for witchcraft and, to the dismay of some hard-core practitioners, magic has become a big tourist draw. The town holds an International Congress of Witches on the first Friday of every March.
During the event, a black mass is held at the mouth of the cave where the devil supposedly loiters. An oversize six-pointed star — they call it a Star of David — is set alight, to the delight of photographers. Politicians show up to receive amulets for good luck at the polls. Believers flock to the town to have their auras cleansed.
Sandra Lucía Aguilar, a 25-year-old cashier, traveled 22 hours by bus from Cancún for the black mass. A few days later she found herself in the waiting room of a popular witch doctor known as “The Crow,” hoping for a little black magic to force her errant boyfriend to return.
“I lived with him for five years, and then, overnight, he ran off with another woman,” she said. “I want him back. He humiliated me a lot and I want to humiliate him.”
The Crow turns out to be a slick-looking fellow named Héctor Betaza Domínguez, who wears white guayabera shirts and sits in a candlelit room among effigies of La Santa Muerte, a Mexican icon resembling the grim reaper in drag.
Mr. Betaza says people come to see him from all over Mexico and from major cities in the United States with large Mexican communities. Many simply want “una limpia,” or cleansing, to ward off evil spirits. But a majority of the complaints are broken hearts.
Asked where he learned his craft, Mr. Betaza, who calls himself a “master of occult sciences,” becomes evasive, muttering something about his mother having practiced magic. “This you don’t learn,” he said. “It’s something that you carry in the blood.”
Not everyone is convinced. The Rev. Tomás Alonso Martínez has the unenviable job of parish priest in a town best known as a haunt of the devil and witches. “It’s farce,” he said, “a lie, a fraud.”
In his five years in Catemaco, Father Martínez says he has seen so-called witches practice all sorts of confidence schemes, extracting money from gullible and vulnerable people.
One common trick is to tell someone he is hexed and then remove the hex for a fee. Another is to tell people they are sick, then offer them a traditional cure for an outlandish sum.
“They attribute to themselves power they cannot have,” the priest said. “The fundamental problem that exists with these people is that there are people who believe them. Anyone can set themselves up as a witch.”
Even Father Martínez acknowledges, however, that mixed in with the questionable practices are vestiges of a pre-Hispanic past. The use of Catholic saints also bespeaks a syncretism of beliefs, he notes.
In his church, an icon of the Virgin Mary sits in an alcove directly above and behind the altar. Before Mass, many go to the shrine and pass herbs over their bodies to cleanse themselves. Some leave pictures of loved ones, amulets and prayers.
That syncretism also emerged clearly when Mr. Gallegos performed a cleansing ritual on a recent afternoon. The client was a taxi driver named Santos Luna Cruz who wanted protection from envious rivals.
Stripped to the waist, Mr. Luna stood on a worn piece of velvet in the center of a chalk Star of David. Candles burned at each point of the star. A horseshoe was to one side, a St. Andrew’s cross to the other. Two glasses of water, believed to absorb evil spirits, were placed in front of him.
Mr. Gallegos sprinkled holy water, garlic and ammonia over him. Then, chanting the common Catholic prayer to “the father, the son and the Holy Ghost” and invoking a long list of saints, Mr. Gallegos held eggs to the man’s head and rubbed them over his body.
He scratched crosses with his serpent’s tooth on Mr. Luna’s face, arms, chest and abdomen. He took a live chicken and passed it over his client. He blew the holy water from his mouth in a fine spray at the man, and beat him with clusters of herbs.
When it was over, Mr. Luna, 34, grinned and ran his hand through his wet hair. “I felt very stressed out at first, but now I feel lighter, better,” he said. “I feel like he is taking away from my body the bad vibrations.”

Mr. Gallegos pointed to two eggs that broke during the ritual. “When the egg breaks, it is because it has absorbed the pain inside the young man,” he said.

Official Brujo announcement

Veracruz state and municipal authorities announced that from March 6 to 8 the Congreso de Brujos ( Conference of witches) will take place in the region of Catemaco, Veracruz, Mexico.

In a press conference State Secretary of Tourism, Ivan Hillman Chapoy, explained that during the holidays up to eight thousand tourists are expected to visit who may leave an economic spill of one million pesos.

Among the activities to be undertaken this First Friday of March in one of the most emblematic and mystical parts of the state are included a Black Mass, a very ancient tradition, which will be performed in the foothills of Cerro del Mono Blanco (White Monkey Mountain).

Abdicated former Brujo Mayor (chief witch) Pedro Gueixpal Cobix, explained that the congress will be managed by twelve witches from the area who will conduct personal spiritual cleanings, a mass cleaning in the waters of Laguna Catemaco, numerous ceremonies, dances and lectures by anthropologists.

The Mass will be headed by the current Brujo Mayor Luis Cruz Sipriano "El Indio" and will be in the form of a circle called Steps of Salomón or Star of David. The circle and purification ceremony will be formed by seven acolytes, surrounded by fire fueled with sulfur, along with a black chicken, black cats, a lamb, and giant candles.

Source: Translation of elgolfo.info

Thursday Brujos of Catemaco

Most available white and black witches, warlocks, healers, brujos and whatnots will swarm to beautiful downtown Catemaco, Veracruz beginning Thursday, March 6 for their annual event.

The local government, in spirit with the event, but too dispirited to call it "Congreso de Brujos" (Convention of witches), in the last few years has titled the event "First Friday in March". And if you do not show up by Thursday, you will miss most of the fun.

Highlights this year are a midnight black mass on White Monkey Mountain, and an afternoon of spiritual cleansing on the laguna beaches north of downtown Catemaco.

For the complete schedule of the event in Spanish, visit Catemaco Brujos.
PhotoSimulation: White Monkey Mountain

Catemaco Brujo Circus

CATEMACO: "I will not participate in the First Friday in March event (Annual witch convention on first Friday of March), to be undertaken by the city council", said Apolinar Gueixpal Seba, better known as the brujo mayor (chief warlock) of Catemaco.


He added that the main reason why he will not participate in the event that the city council plans to carry out with 12 other brujos is because witchcraft deserves to be respected and that a mass black must be performed in private and not in the presence of the public. Brujo Guexpal, known as the Tiger's Leap said that the city council is making a circus of witchcraft with the first Friday of March event, but despite this, he respects his fellow brujo colleagues but does not agree with this type of celebration.


"The real witches, as did our ancestors, need to provide witchcraft as a service to the people and not as a business. There is now a lot of charlatanería (false witchcraft), and that is why I say to people not to be fooled and also ask people to tell the municipal authorities that witchcraft be given the respect it deserves and not to be used to deceive people", said Apolinar Gueixpal.



Source: Loose translation from Politica en Los Tuxtlas