Cold Hands Tingle When Placed In Hot Water

Butterfly Child, Child of Olives, Child of Plenty Untie Knots Child, Child de las Palomas, Sailor Child, Child Harvest, Child San Miguel de los Milagros, Jaguar Child, Child of the Grapes, Chinelo Child, Infant Saviour of the World, Love Child, Child Juan Diego, Niño de Atocha, Child Fisherman Guardian Angel Child, Child Health, Child Footballer ...

The list goes on, but all these children are one, the Child and Child-Pan Pa (Parent Child) , also called the Pueblo Child, Child Pilgrim Travelers Neighborhoods or Child, who is venerated for the feast of the Candelaria Church San Bernardino of Siena, in Xochimilco, south of Mexico City. Like many Mexican traditions, this is expressed more strongly each year, highlighting a local cultural identity, unique, different, product of Christian and indigenous religious syncretism.

Next to the church has installed a comprehensive exhibition that manufacture, repair and sell children's cast of all sizes. On the tables appear as they came into the world naked, dark or light skin , blue eyes or brown, young and old.

Thereafter options diversify the supply of costumes and accessories is extensive, so that each child has acquired a different identity and a name from those mentioned above. The costumes are lavish, ornate, silk or velvet, embroidered lace, with accessories, symbolize the identity you want to give each figure.

An ear of wheat, a sword, a skull, a harp, a crown of stars, a fish, a 500 peso bill, coins, grapes, a butterfly, a dove, embroidered image of the Virgin of Guadalupe , a papal miter, a hat, slipper or a stethoscope, are the accessories that serve to highlight the symbols that characterize each figure.

Pa

The child will ask for favors, as all figures of worship. During the year he spends several months and moved to hospitals and homes where their presence, according to tradition, has miraculous effects. The Catholic Church plays very well with these traditions, does not certify or deny the healing powers, but perpetuates the cults that attract the faithful (and curious) to the churches.

is assumed that the child born Dec. 25, and is robust, has served 40 days of life, and tradition says on February 2nd, Pa Children of Xochimilco change house, as it has been doing for more than four centuries.


stewardship system is strictly enforced, families are booked years in advance to worship in their homes for a year, the original figure was sculpted in the sixteenth century colorín stick (wood with that were made mariachi violins) by an Indian from Xochimilco who made so that the joints of its members to move, so you can be sitting or lying down. The figure of 43 inches tall weighs just half a kilo without their clothes, and is as fragile by the type of wood, which since 1995 has been restored each year.

The Child is treated Pa like a real boy. They say that every night I undressed for bed in his crib, and the next morning I wake up singing "Las Mañanitas." They also say he has accumulated over time and donations of its faithful, a regalia so heavy that when you move each year for a family of stewards to the next, preceding several trucks carrying their furniture, clothes, their jewels, their personal belongings. All this sounds absurd, but so are some traditions.

The Child honcho Pa

The future stewards list is so long, it reaches the year 2036 and has been closed for the moment, several die before they succeed. The family that gave Tlacoapa quarter this year, had waited 35 years for the privilege, and Poblano Hernandez family took him to the neighborhood of Caltongo now had to wait longer. So the general population, which no hope, no money, access to stewardship, complies with the thousands of reproductions that appear in the church on this occasion, distinguished by their multiple identities, costumes and accessories.

Like most religious events in Mexico, this is another example of syncretism. The Indians who worshiped the Child Pa associate it from its origin to Huitzilopochtli, "hummingbird of the south".

diverse music heard during the festival of Pa Child is another example of hybridization Mexican culture: the masked chinelos represent the Moors, the brass band brings echoes of the rural, urban mariachis are properly despite charro origin, and represent the remnant estudiantinas English.

Chinelo

There I was, stuck between the two rows of slippers about photographing their faces fixed, unable to penetrate to the eyes that I would certainly looking behind the masks.

All this happens in the middle of Xochimilco, a colonial town where you can still channel network which stretched back centuries to the center of Mexico City, and surprised the English conquistadors upon their arrival in Tenochtitlan. Around chinampas with its rows of upright ahuejotes ("water tree"), and the surviving channels, water snakes along which the "trajineras painted in vivid colors, continues to grow one of the world's largest cities.

Xochimilco, the paradise of flowers, the place of the fields, the sowing of the Valley of Mexico, a World Heritage Site, where Quirino Mendoza wrote "Cielito Lindo", has retained its village flavor through high-speed tracks, major avenues and the daily madness.