through familial and communal ritual. Every town stages an
annual fiesta for its patron saint; most towns organize four
to six such affairs each year, each for a different saint; and
at least one town, Ocumicho, puts on a fiesta every month—
with a correspondingly great expenditure of time and energy.
These fiestas are run by elected officials or cargueros (Span.,
“load bearers”), who, with the support of dozens or even
scores of kin or ritual kin, may spend huge amounts of pesos
on the bands, elaborate fireworks, alcohol, ceremonial dishes,
Catholic masses, livestock for slaughter, and other elements
of the fiesta. While these expenses are often said to be ruin-
ous, the average person is quite ready to incur them, or at
least resigned to them because of the social status they imply.
Also, the debts can be a source of prestige that links the car-
guero into a larger human network. In some of the more con-
servative towns the offices of the different saints are ranked
in terms of prestige, forming a sort of “ceremonial ladder,”
in which the carguero who sponsors the associated fiestas
gradually ascends a series of metaphorical rungs. Although
most cargueros are men, women do most of the work of orga-
nizing and preparation. Some annual fiestas—for example,
to Our Virgin of the Assumption—are purely religious, but
the great majority involve commercial and market functions
(these functions constitute the primary emphasis of some fes-
tivals).
Religious ritual is diagnostically regional. Some fiestas
are essentially local—for example, that of Saint Cecilia in
tiny San José, where many of the men actually are musicians.
But people are aware of fiestas and practices in their entire
region as well, and a large number of fiestas are pan-
Tarascan, either because they attract many pilgrims or be-
cause the day is celebrated in the several villages where a
given saint is patron, as in the cases of the popular San José
and San Francisco. All Saints and All Souls days are observed
in all towns by quiet vigils with flowers and bread figures at
the graves of the recently deceased. In Janitzio, on the other
hand, a thousand candle-bearing canoes hover around the is-
land during the night of November 1. An individual whose
personal saint coincides with that of a village often makes a
pilgrimage, or at least says a special prayer. (Prayer generally
focuses on help with practical, personal problems such as ill-
ness or jealousy and envy, and so is inextricably intertwined
with the culture’s pervasive witchcraft and sorcery.)
A notable feature is the great variation in the religious
autonomy of a village, which is reticulated closely with its
political orientation and economic standing. At one extreme
the annual and personal rituals (baptism, confirmation, mar-
riage, and the wake) are managed by local societies and reli-
gious specialists (who, for example, may know an oration by
heart). A priest may come to a village once a month (or even
less often), or the person or persons concerned may go to the
county seat for the priest’s ministrations. Some villages cate-
gorically refuse to allow a priest to participate in such sacred
matters as the construction of a new church or the organiza-
tion of a passion play because they realistically fear financial
loss. At the other extreme a local priest may be active and
highly influential not only in religious ritual but also in local
politics—to the extent of controlling the external relations
of the village. The grass-roots role of the priest is so impor-
tant because the Tarascan do not in general own or read the
Bible or other religious literature (with the exception of a few
thousand Protestants, limited to a few pueblos, who do have
a superb Tarascan translation of both Testaments). The
Tarascan concern is not with doctrine, argument, theology,
or texts, but with a costly ritual and its economic, social, and
political implications.
Nevertheless, the Tarascan share a network of explicit
and implicit understandings, symbols, and attitudes that
have been synthesized and transmitted largely by word of
mouth. Every village, family, and individual holds to a differ-
ent subset of these beliefs—pagan, local, Catholic, and secu-
lar—but there is cohesion in the area as a whole. This is in
large part due to the fiestas. “Because of the fiestas,” modern
industry has attracted few Tarascan; “because of the fiestas,”
Protestant missionaries have made few converts; agrarian re-
form has had to compromise with the fiestas; and work and
the family are strongly motivated by their roots in the fiestas.
Fiestas, not as symbols or surface phenomena only, but as
vivid, primary experiences, are the basis of Tarascan religion.BIBLIOGRAPHY
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PAUL FRIEDRICH (1987 AND 2005)9002 TARASCAN RELIGION