War of the Tamales

Today is Candelaria here in Mexico, and in Oaxaca that means tamales. In fact, my collaborator referred to the holiday as 'tamale day'. In fact, if you are the kind of person who reads page 18 of the international section of a newspaper, you may have read about tamales in Oaxaca today as there was a bit of an incident.

Now, I have only been able to read brief translated news stories and accounts by folks on Twitter, but from what I gather there is a regional politician named Hugo Jarquin who wanted to commemorate the day by giving away tamales and atole in the zocalo. And not just a few tamales, but 25,000 of them. And 5000 liters of atole. But in any event, he may or may not have had all the appropriate permits (I know, its the first I have heard of regulations and permits on our whole trip, too!) and the police tried to stop him and people got upset and tamales were thrown and then there was tear gas and riot police were brought in and it was a big event until it all settled down.

We were nowhere near the zocalo when all of that took place, but we did head down tonight to try to see some of the calenda processions that are also part of the holiday (more on that later). And when we got there nearly 5 hours after Jarquin's 'Megatamaliza' started there were in fact still tamales and atole. So we got some and ate them on the zocalo. And they were yummy.