Mexican mayor weds crocodile
For the past 230 years, a man and a female caiman have married to mark the day when two Indigenous groups came to peace through marriage.
The mayor of the town in southern Mexico, Victor Hugo Sosa, married a female crocodile in a 230-year-old marriage practice. The wedding ceremony is a way for the communities to seek blessings for rain, crop germination, peace, and harmony. pic.twitter.com/7ZMfjDiQ8D
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As bystanders applauded and danced, the mayor of a small southern Mexican town married a female lizard in a customary rite to bring good fortune to his people.
Victor Hugo Sosa, mayor of San Pedro Huamelula, a community of Indigenous Chontal people in Mexico’s Tehuantepec isthmus, re-enacted an ancestral ritual by marrying a reptile named Alicia Adriana.
A caiman is an alligator-like marsh dweller native to Mexico and Central America.
Sosa swore to be true to what local lore calls “the princess girl.”
“I accept responsibility because we love each other. That is what is important. You can’t have a marriage without love… I yield to marriage with the princess girl,” Sosa said during the ritual.
Marriage between a man and a female caiman has happened here for 230 years to commemorate the day when two Indigenous groups came to peace — with a marriage.
According to legend, conflicts were resolved when a Chontal king, represented these days by the mayor, married a princess girl of the Huave Indigenous group, represented by the female alligator.
The Huave people live along the coast of Oaxaca, not far from this inland town.
According to Jaime Zarate, chronicler of San Pedro Huamelula, the wedding allows the parties to “link with what is the emblem of Mother Earth, asking the all-powerful for rain, the germination of the seed, all those things that are peace and harmony for the Chontal man.”
Before the wedding, the reptile is taken from house to house so that the residents can dance with her in their arms. The alligator is dressed in a green skirt, a colourful hand-embroidered tunic, and a ribbon and sequin headdress.
To avoid any pre-marital mishaps, the creature’s snout is bound shut.
Later, she is dressed as a white bride and brought to the city hall for the joyous event.
Joel Vasquez, a local fisherman, tosses his net as part of the ritual and expresses the town’s hopes that the marriage will bring “good fishing, so that there is prosperity, equilibrium, and ways to live in peace.”
Following the wedding, the mayor and his bride dance to traditional music.
“We are happy because we celebrate the union of two cultures. People are content,” Sosa told the media.
As the dance winds down, the king plants a kiss on the snout of the “princess girl.”
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