Two weeks ago, in the barren empty lot below my house, a circus sprouted.
In half an afternoon, Circo Italian erected a blue tent with red and yellow flags and an array of lights, and around it parked their small old RV, their big old RV, a peeling and shabby little trailer, and the semi that carries their equipment.
I stopped that afternoon and asked how long they would be in San Pancho, as tiny circuses can sometimes disappear as quickly as they've arrived.
"Cuatro noches," was the reply. Four nights. That day being Friday, and the weekend being a busy one, I knew that Monday night would be our opportunity. What time does it start? I asked. Eight o'clock each night was the reply.
So on Monday night, after Craig's going-away sunset party, a good-sized group of us trooped to the Circo at eight sharp, where music was already playing, accompanied by a completely unintelligible running announcement.
Here, I first encountered the indomitable Andrea, mother and grandmother to the circus family I would get to know over the following days.
Andrea, gatekeeper to the blue tent, keeper of the money box, charged us twenty pesos each for admission (that's about $1.75) and invited us to go inside. We were the only ones there. We're gringos, you see, and we cannot get over the ridiculous idea that eight o'clock means eight o'clock. Soon enough, we saw our mistake...but in the meantime, we absorbed the ambience.
Some of us needed something to do and so pretended to be circus performers in front of the shimmering pink lamé curtain.
Behind this performer, you see the stage: a dusty tarp which one of the circus kids proceeded to sweep as we looked for perches in the cushy box seats.
By and by, we all wandered back outside for a smoke. There I encountered a couple of my neighborhood buddies and sent them scampering to ask their mothers if they'd let me treat them to the circus. The kids were back in a flash with one little brother and another neighbor kid. We went inside and I bought snacks for them at the snack stand, which by now (8:30-ish) had opened, tended by Maria, Andrea's daughter-in-law, in a slinky peach satin gown.
We took a few more photos outside and had another smoke, watching as the local Mexican families, kids, and teens arrived...just before nine o'clock.
And the circus began.
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Andrea is chef and protector to this branch of the Gonzalez family, fifteen of whom travel with Circo Italian. She has five living children, all in the circus. She lost two others, a girl in babyhood, a son in his early twenties. Her eyes grow sad and distant when she tells me this. Two of her sons operate another circus which also travels the circuit of Nayarit, Jalisco, and Michoacan. They see each other when they can. Both circuses travel all year long.
Their home is Acaponeta, Nayarit, a medium-sized town north of Tepic that is primarily agricultural and which, according to Wikipedia, has "high sub-employment and subsequent immigration to the United States of America."
The Gonzalez family found a way to stay in Mexico.
Pancho, Andrea's son, is 42. He is reserved by day, and by night is ringmaster, straight-man, and comic mentor to the youngsters of the family. He seems gifted at ad lib, at instant response to the crowd and to his talented children, nephews and nieces. His is the voice of the circus.
His is married to Maria, 38, the pretty woman behind the snack stand and sometimes performer.
Pancho's sister, Andrea's daughter Norma, is 30 years old (their other sister also travels with this circus but she is away this week). Norma is housekeeper to the travelers and mother of five of the young performers.
She hangs endless lines of clean clothes daily and tends the costumes and the animals.
These are the animals of this circus:
Andrea tells me that her sons bought the circus nineteen years ago. Nobody seems to know why it is called Circo Italian.
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Monday night's performance begins with suitable drama. The multi-talented Josoan balances on his chin and nose a long pole topped by items often afire while climbing a precarious ladder, one supporting foot of which is propped on a handy rock for stability.
The neighbor kids are spellbound.
Once the applause dies down, Orlando enters the ring. Watched carefully by Pancho and assisted by little Abiel, he takes swigs of gasoline into his mouth then lights the fumes with a flaming torch, blowing clouds of fire into the air.
Then he walks to a fifty gallon drum beside the stage which is filled with water. He dunks himself over and over. When he is ready, he stands and locks eyes with his father. Then he nods, takes a deep breath, and submerges himself in the tank. 
Pancho pours gasoline on top of the water, and Orlando's brother Oliver sets it alight.
Then we wait. For what seems like too long a time. Then the water begins agitating madly, the flames are doused, and Orlando emerges unscathed.
I have to admit this isn't the favorite act of most of the gringos. But we don't have long to think about it, as it is followed immediately by some excellent comic relief when a drunken buffoon stumbles into the tent and takes a seat in the bleachers.
And this is where Circo Italian really begins to shine. The ensuing comedy is faultless. Goofy, certainly, but entirely charming. Pancho asks him how he's going to pay for admission, and the clown begins identifying "family members" sitting around the tent who will certainly pay for his ticket, setting all the audience to giggling and denying and blushing with embarrassment and pleasure. Soon, the fellow must be evicted by the seat of his pants.
To the delight of the audience, he keeps sneaking back in. Eventually, Pancho insists that if he wants to stay and can't pay, he needs to work for the privilege. All of us, even those of us who can't understand a word of the patter, are laughing. This clown has impeccable timing and a contagiously joyful demeanor, made all the more marvelous by the fact that he is Pancho and Maria's son Josoan, who just turned 17 years old.
His brother Orlando gives him a hand up to the trapeze, where he must perform in return for his admission.
Look at Orlando's face. As many times as he's seen this act, it still cracks him up every time. Josoan is so talented that I believe he changes the act every night. Even Pancho the straight-man has a hard time keeping a straight face, and, from his responses, it's evident that they evolve their patter constantly.
After intermission, the musical portion of the circus begins with a motley band composed of Josoan again, in the blond wig; Edith; 11 year old Oliver...and Abiel.
One of my favorite schticks of this family circus, and I returned to see them again, was that, no matter how stealthily one raises one's camera to take a surreptitious shot of them clowning, they always notice, they usually turn to look right at the camera...and at least one of them flashes the peace sign.
Or a thumbs-up, in the case of sweet Abi, who wasn't even in the ring when I tried to sneak a shot of him and Orlando.
On the Thursday after the Monday they were supposed to move on, Circo Italian was still in place. I went to visit. I brought lunch. We spent an hour and a half talking. Teenager Dani was my volunteer secretary, writing a list of names and ages and cellphone numbers, of which I now have five. Edith, her 19 year old cousin, told me that the family travels all the time and no, the children don't go to school, but she has taught them all to read and write a little. To show me they could, all the children above age 5 proudly wrote their names into my notebook.
The circus is different in the daylight, sun creeping into the dusty old tent.
But the children are easy-going, outgoing, always smiling and ready to talk and tease. I asked them all, sometimes in a group, sometimes separately, if they liked their life in the circus. They all replied with an adament yes.
Later that day, I returned for another long visit and brought them some gifts: a few prints of Craig Downs' paintings that he had left in my care. Ten-year-old Siamara, on the left, claimed The Fishermen and had it hanging in the trailer inside of three minutes.
That's Edith in the hoody, Abiel below her--he turns 6 on February 4th--then Dani, 13; Orlando, 14; and Jetzael, one of the two babies.
As with most Mexican families, the older ones care for and truly seem to cherish the smaller ones, keeping an eye on them and laughing at their baby tricks.
On one of the nights I attended the circus, another family who owns another circus which is presently in Higuera Blanca and will move soon to Sayulita, came to watch the Gonzalez family show. This is truly a subculture, a big connected extended family that reaches into every rural area of this country.
The warmth among them, the obvious friendship, was as lovely to see as the faces and laughter of the visitors as they watched the performance. The teenagers of both families hung out and enjoyed each other before and during the show, and later all piled into a taxi to go play somewhere. I drove past their tiny taxi as I was driving home: it looked a clown car, filled to bursting with young people and hilarity. We all had our windows down, and as we passed each other I heard them holler in unison, "Tia!!" That means "auntie".
You can tell, I'm sure, that they all captured my heart. In fact, it is now the Thursday after the Thursday after the Monday when they were supposed to move on, and they're still here. Because they are directly below my house, I have heard the entire show every night of their (so far) two week stay. I can hear the laughter and screams of delight from their audiences, which apparently are big enough to keep the circus in San Pancho for now. I know the audience is being thrilled by Dani in her trapeze act...
...by Josoan and Edith in their funny, silly band...
...by sparkling Oliver in his shaggy black wig and by the baby clown Abiel, who turned an accidental tumble the first night into a hilarious slapstick act that had us in hysterics.
Sure, it's loud down there. But still...
...who can resist a Mexican circus?
Not me.
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