Zozobra

 

The crowd at Old Fort Marcy Park is shoulder-to-shoulder and huge. The air is thick with the aroma of weed, and a large portion of those gathered are either tripping or enjoying various levels of alcohol poisoning. My first memory of Santa Fe is seeing Zozobra (a.k.a. "Old Man Gloom," or, in Spanish, "anxiety") burn in the late '50s, when I was five or six, back when my grandparents from St. Louis spent their summers here. The second time was two years ago, some months I'd moved here from Denver. The tradition is to write down the past year's woes, mistakes, implements of psychological self-torture, anything from which we hope to move on. These woes are placed in a box at Zozobra's base, in his cloak. When night falls, local dancers perform an elaborately choreographed "fire dance." Finally, Old Man Gloom is torched, along with all of our troubles, to chants of "Burn him!" Zozobra is a 40 foot tall animated marionette, whose amplified groans menace the crowd throughout the conflagration. The miserable groans sound both threatening and horrible, as an expression of the pain of death by fire. Opinions vary concerning the appropriateness of this public spectacle. I can't help but think it recalls the auto da fe of the Inquisition, our New Mexican Spanish heritage.

 

When the festivities end, the generally jubilant crowd floods back into town, filling whichever bars and extraordinary restaurants of Santa Fe that are still open. This is but one of many public events that have become long-standing traditions here, largely to attract tourists, the Spanish Market, Indian Market and Fiesta (wherein Zozobra is burned) being notable--all terrific and worth experiencing.

                                                                                     

I haven't returned for a third Zozobra experience in the two years I've been here inasmuch as dense crowds are not among the things I enjoy suffering. However, if my woes had truly dissipated with Zozobra's carbon and flames, I would have made it a priority.

 

From the time of that first Zozobra experience I held the romantic notion that this tradition was an ancient Pueblo Indian ceremony that had been incorporated to local popular culture. I was not pleased to learn that it was actually created in 1924 by a local artist called Will Shuster, one of the seminal artists in the Santa Fe artist community. Like so many other attractions here, Zozobra was created largely by Anglo people who actively sought to create a "Santa Fe style," in order to draw tourists. Santa Feans were crushed when the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway actually bypassed Santa Fe because of the difficult terrain. A spur route from Lamy had to be created to get people into Santa Fe via the rails. From then up to now the city fathers and mothers have purposefully, creatively, and successfully created and embellished the popular image of Santa Fe that drew my grandparents here beginning in 1939, and their grandson in 2010. Santa Fe is a hybrid encompassing the spirit of Disneyland, history, and reality.