Dressed girls were also waiting in front of the church for the parade to start

By sheer chance, I arrived in the Mexican town of Saachila on the very day of a festival. In front of the church, a crowd had already gathered, waiting expectantly for the parade to begin. I had no idea what the celebration was about—most likely the feast of some local patron saint, or perhaps a ritual to pray for a bountiful harvest. The details eluded me, but the faces around me were lit with unmistakable excitement. Festivals, after all, have a way of sweeping you along, even when you know nothing of their origins.

Among the crowd were young girls in full regalia. Some wore feathered headdresses like tiny crowns, others donned velvet-like gowns, while a few jingled with metal bracelets stacked high on their arms. Standing side by side, they looked less like children and more like characters from a play, performing as princesses of some forgotten court. In their costumes, the playfulness of childhood blended curiously with the solemnity of ritual.

The adornments were hardly mere disguises. They seemed to embody the fusion of Catholic ceremony brought by the Spanish colonizers and the indigenous traditions that long preceded them. In Mexico, it seems no festival is complete without feathers and metallic sheen—as if to proclaim, quite unashamedly, that in these celebrations, splendor itself is the law.

Zaachila on Google Map

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