We are in Ajijic, Jalisco, beside Lake Chapala south of Guadalajara. It is the weekend of celebration for Día de Independencia. On Saturday, Ajijic opens the festivities with their festival of globos.
Globos, as you may know, are un-personed hot air balloons made of tissue paper held together by tape and heated by flaming fuel. Small ones are marketed here in Mexico, three foot tall balloons which are glorious in their beauty and fragility. Even these take the cooperation of three or four people to launch, as all hands must pull aside the tissue during the lighting process to allow the balloons to fill with hot air without catching fire.
Now imagine teams of people cooperating on designing, hand-crafting and launching tissue paper balloons that are ten feet tall, fifteen feet tall, twenty feet tall. Welcome to Ajijic.
A huge crowd always attends. In mid-September, the weather is often an issue. A tissue issue. The teams need some breeze in order to motivate the balloons to float away. Wind is a different story. Wind tips and tilts the lightweight paper balloons as they rise, presenting the constant danger of the tissue contacting the flame that keeps them aloft. Rain is yet another possibility, and not a happy one. Raindrops make holes in tissue paper, allowing the hot air to escape. Even if the water doesn't tear the tissue, it weighs it down. Both those eventualities cause the tissue walls to sag dangerously, sometime fatally, toward the flames.
This particular September, with a hurricane off the coast, the weather in Ajijic is erratic. It is overcast on Saturday morning. Then it is drizzling. The drizzle stops for a while. Then, as the three o'clock start time approaches, it begins to rain.
What will they do? Cancel the event? That is so not the Mexican way. But how can they launch in this weather? We have to go see.
The rain has not discouraged the crowd. The bleachers are nearly full when we arrive. Down on the field, some of the teams are obviously missing. Others are sending up their smaller balloons. The crowd is highly supportive, cheering at every successful launch...
...and groaning in sympathy at the less-successful.
People stand around under umbrellas watching and encouraging the teams. Children scamper everywhere, checking out the vendors and their wares.
By and by, the rain lets up a bit and more teams arrive, carrying their balloons wrapped in tarps, watching the sky.
Some beauties rise perfectly and float off into the white sky. Every launch is suspenseful.
Oh no! The crowd moans in unison as many of the balloons collapse and fall in flames.
But this art is like ice sculpture, like the building of sand castles, like Tibetan and Navajo sand paintings. Everyone, including the artists, know it is temporary. The globos teams accept the risks, the non-permanence of the works. No sooner does one destruct than they are unfolding another.
As the afternoon progresses, the teams up the ante, sending up elaborate creations they've worked on into the wee hours, long after their normal days' work is done. This year's designs surpass any I've seen in their intricacy and elegance. Close up, it appears that many of the patterns are made with small tissue paper shapes glued together into larger pieces that are joined by the ubiquitous cinta: tape.
Up, up, up!
And down, down, down.
What goes up, as they say, must come down. The globos that fail land anywhere they please, including on the nearby streets of the town.
As their fuel burns out, the successes land who-knows-where, as they often will fly for miles before they drift back to earth.
Many do fly, although fewer this year than in sunnier years. The teams do not give up.
Maybe an umbrella will help. This man stands patiently on his ladder the whole time while this globo inflates, hoping to protect the paper from the rain.
He stays on his ladder to view the launch. And here's the part I love the most: as it rises, their giant pink and orange balloon tips sideways in a gust of wind, the flame licks the tissue, it ignites and falls burning to the ground...and look at the expression on his face as he watches it happen.
This, to me, is the greatest joy of the globos. The celebration is one of art and chance and risk and beauty, of disappointment followed by renewed intention. I have laughed 'til my muscles ache watching this wonderfully absurd dance, and the humor to me is earthy, real and raw and so very much an expression of the human condition.
Shit happens. But do we give up? NO, we do not!
Do we throw in the towel at the fiery demise of Spongebob Squarepants?
Heck no! Instead we launch Hello Kitty, who floats off prettily, pink bow unscathed, to land, perhaps, in the back yard of some wonderstruck child.
In my book, though, here's the one that takes today's prize.
Finally the immense balloon is inflated and begins to rise into the sky.
But maybe it's not quite full enough. It wobbles in the wind. The crowd sees smoke and yells in alarm. And it drops.
In moments, it is cinders.
Meanwhile, on the ground under this formerly friendly shade tree, several families are enjoying picnics while watching the action.
The ashes of the smouldering globo rain down upon them. Do they scream in terror? Do they curse the team who launched the firestorm? Do they sue??
And there you have it: the agony and the ecstasy of this entirely and perfectly Mexican celebration.
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