Parachicos of Chiapa de Corzo

A feast for three saints

The Great Feast of January fills Chiapa de Corzo, a town in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, with music, dance, crafts, food, religious ceremonies and communal meals. It is held in honour of three Catholic saints: Saint Anthony Abbot, Our Lord of Esquipulas and, most important of all, Saint Sebastian.

The Parachicos

The dance of the Parachicos — the word means both the dancers and the dance — is seen as a communal offering to these saints. It begins in the morning and ends at night, as the dancers carry statues of the saints through the town, visiting its places of worship.

Every Parachico wears a carved wooden mask with a headdress, a serape, an embroidered shawl and many-coloured ribbons, and shakes chinchines, maracas. They are led by the Patrón, whose mask is stern, who carries a guitar and a whip and plays a flute to the beat of one or two drummers. As they dance he calls out praises, and the Parachicos answer with cheers.

Learned by dancing

Children learn the dance by joining in and copying the adults, and the art of mask-making — cutting and drying the wood, carving and painting it — passes from one generation to the next. UNESCO describes a feast that reaches into every part of local life and encourages mutual respect between communities, groups and individuals. It was inscribed on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2010.