Cohetes and dolphins

Hot, sultry humid air swam above me as I cavorted with the dolphin family, six adults and three juveniles. Waves splashed over my head, salt water entered my mouth, stinging and making me cough. as we frolicked and chased one another through the maze of reefs just off shore.

The experience was ethereal, sublime, transcendental and new. I was weightless and seemingly able to swim as fast and as strongly as the dolphins.

Covering the ocean’s surface was a thin veil of iridescent fish, which caught reflections of sky and sea as the dolphins tried in vain to catch the ball that had been thrown to them by Matilda, the officer in charge of play time at the Palm Palapa Resort, where we were camping with our van for the night. Our van, green and red, nestled invisibly among the coco palms and vivid tropical vegetation that swayed in the late afternoon breeze – a blessing since it was hot and stifling on the Oaxaca coast.

Later I became exhausted, tired of the play and desirous of leaving. But the dolphins would not allow me out of the water. They seemed to be trying to communicate, yearning to express something. Or was it me imagining the desire to interconnect?

I was close to the shore, surrounded by the dolphins, when I heard a low popping sound far off over the hills that surrounded our isolated bay. It was a sharp explosive sound, continuing tat tat tat. Was someone firing at us? Were we under attack or was it backfire from the ancient diesel motor that supplied the electricity for the cooler and night lights? Again and again the sound ricocheted off the water and caught me by surprise. The dolphins, too, were alarmed and dove deep for cover. Finally reaching the shore I was walking to the palapa, when pop pop pop pop...

My eyes reluctantly opened to the sound pounding off the walls of my bedroom, echoing again and again. POP POP POP. I reached for the clock: 6:15 a.m. Damn! The cohetes were earlier than ever this year for the festival in Barrio el Cerrillo. The barrage would continue every five minutes, until at precisely 6:30 a.m. a fusillade of bombs would commence with the morning Mass at Barrio Cerrillo Church.

I arose reluctantly this morning from the warmth of my bed, determined to find the true story of cohetes and to watch first-hand the launching of the missiles from hell.

An old tradition

Cohetes, in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, as in most parts of Mexico, Central and South America, are skyrockets with aerial bombs. The launching of cohetes is a tradition in Mexico going back centuries when the noise was considered to have power to scare the devil and all evil away from towns. Mexicans also used them in funeral marches and, even more importantly, just for amusement. The skyrockets of today are truly a wonder – or a nuisance, depending on whether one wants to sleep or join the faithful in entering the church for the day’s solemn Masses.

Cohetes are used, and at times abused, for every festival, funeral and public gathering in San Cristobal. During their annual festival barrios have competitions to see who can spend the most money buying and exploding hundreds of cohetes and bombas. Barrio el Cerrillo is famed in San Cristobal as “Barrio de los Cohetes,” for its lavish and spendthrift use of cohetes and bombas. Every day for nine days running, from the 27th of July till the 6th of August, hundreds are exploded from the church’s hidden courtyard. Each day of the festival at 6 a.m., which celebrates El Senor de la Transfiguración, dozens of cohetes are shot into the morning sky to announce that Mass is starting at 6:30. The ancient bells are just not loud enough to bring the faithful to Mass. But the cohetes, with their certain ability to awaken perhaps even the dead, are an ideal way to swell the ranks of Mass-goers during the entire day and night.

Entering the Cerrillo church’s hidden patio just in time to witness the 6:30 launch. I watched as three men, whose duty this year was to keep the faithful coming by rising with the sun, launched cohete after cohete by hand. Bundles of the white paper-wrapped cohetes rested on a low table, waiting to join their brothers in a desperate act of self immolation. After rising and bursting with a deafening and sleep-jarring detonation, the remains would land on the barrio’s ancient tile roofs, cracking and misaligning them, then fall into the street, striking parked and moving vehicles alike, or occasionally land on someone’s head, causing immediate genuflection and an outburst of Santa Marias.

The process of launching a cohete is simple: first a small notch is scribed in the bottom of the 25cm (10 inches) long cohete with its attached 90cm (3 foot) reed stabilizer. A cigarette is placed into this groove, igniting the loose gunpowder. The cohetero (launcher) holds the cohete upside down until sparks begin to fly from the base, then rights the cohete and lets it go. The furiously escaping gasses propel them upward into the dawn’s early glare.

The process is dangerous, indeed, for at times the cohetes rise only a few meters then explode with the force of half a stick of dynamite. But the ones that work travel at tremendous velocity, ascending heavenward ahead of a brilliant trail of red glitter that dances in the deep blue morning sky, where at 150 meters (500 feet) they explode with a resounding and deafening concussion, awakening several more souls.

The history of the rockets

The men were pleased to share with me the history of cohetes and their pleasure in awaking the sleeping and tired of Barrio Cerrillo and beyond. Javier, the eldest and official spokesman for the cohete shooters of Cerrillo, had been with the church since his youth when he would assist his father in waking the population. Then, as today, the cohetes were used to awaken the people to attend Mass, but Javier said that the coheteros would use only one or two rockets, never the hundreds that are used today.

He fired his first cohete at age six in the patio of his family’s home where he continues to live. He hopes his young son will one day join him in the ritual of waking the residents of the Cerrillo. He was excited and frightened that first day, for the cohete is a symbol of manhood, a rite of passage and dangerous, standing taller then him. Fearing that if he did not let go in time he would be carried aloft, never to return to the Cerrillo, he was cautious and excited at the same time as the cohete soared from his small hand and then exploded perfectly in the mid-day sky. He was delirious with joy and manliness.

His first experience with rising before dawn to actually work with his father and the official coheteros of Barrio el Cerrillo was when he had just turned 13. Again he was frightened. What if he had a dud, or if the cohete would not light or if it took a downward turn and landed in the church? He would be forever banned from the cohetero society and an embarrassment to his father. The first cohete had him trembling, (as he told me the tale, I could see in his eyes and his trembling hands that he was reliving the experience once again), but gracias a Dios, the cohete zoomed straight into the dawn’s orange mist and exploded, sending him and his proud father into screams and applause of delight.

I was curious where the cohetes were made and Poncho, Javier’s helper, told me that all cohetes are made in Barrio Santa Lucia, just a few kilometers from Barrio Cerrillo. It has been the barrio of the coheteros for hundreds of years. Reeds for the stabilizers are collected from ponds and along the many rivers. Tubes for the rocket engine are bought from the vendors of carrizo, fashioned from a type of tall bamboo-like grass, who bring the four-meter-long (14-foot) by three-centimeter-wide (one inch) tubes in from their gardens in the low valleys of Chenalo, 30 kilometers (18 miles) from San Cristobal. White paper that wraps the bombs is bought from the used paper dealers.

Raw material for the propulsion is potassium nitrate or potassium chlorate, charcoal, sulfur and other inert filler materials, which are purchased at the local ferretería, hardware store. Assembling the cohetes, which is a job done only by men, takes about 20 minutes apiece. Once assembled, the cohetes are wrapped in white paper bundles of 12 and sold for 110 pesos. On Saturday one often sees men carrying many bundles of cohetes on their shoulders as they return to their villages in the surrounding hills and valleys anxious to participate in a town festival or a personal celebration by launching cohete after cohete .

The coheteros told me that this year the Barrio Cerrillo festival will fire over 30 bundles, 360 cohetes, each one resounding and rattling the nerves and sleep of all who live within earshot of the Cerrillo church.

I thanked the coheteros and left the complex happy and pleased to finally know the true story (or is it?) of the fabled and maligned cohetes. The coheteros gave me a going away present, each sending aloft a cohete, one after the other, that exploded in rapid fire as I passed under the masonry arch leading to the Cerrillo plaza. POP POP POP POP……………

Dolphins waited for me as I walked into the warm transparent water of Bahia la Cruz, Oaxaca. We swam and played, the gathering light twisted and turned on the waves that gently rippled the water this morning. Gently grabbing my hand with his mouth, a dolphin led me deeper and deeper into the vibrant indigo blue waters. Descending to 10, 20 meters, I was able to breathe, see and swim as a dolphin.

We stayed underwater, exploring, and playing and dancing together. Needing air, we surfaced. I noticed the other dolphins were waiting and chattering rapidly obviously agitated. Then I heard it: pop pop pop pop......