Upwards of 500 people filled St. Patrick’s Catholic Church in Perry Saturday night for the annual Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe / Our Lady of Guadalupe service.
The two-hour Mass was followed by a procession bearing the image of Guadalupe to the gymnasium in St. Patrick’s School and a fiesta celebrating both the holy day and Mexican national identity.
The fiesta included a generous meal, complemented with mariachi music and folk dancers in vividly colored costumes.
This was the fourth annual celebration in Perry, organized by the Grupo Guadalupano at Saint Patrick’s Church. The organizing committee includes Ignacia Diaz, Rosa Gonzalez, Ignacio Calderón, Paola Romero, Anali Balthazar and Guadalupe Ruiz.
Donations for the event were provided by Tyson, La Panaderia Mexico, El Rey Meat Market, and Casa de Oro.
Mariachi music at the Mass and the dinner celebration was provided by Pablo Aguilar and his children from Des Moines.
There were several groups of folk dancers performing during the community dinner. Local children were organized by Ivana Santis and Laura Gonzalez. The local men’s group was organized by Alvaro Balthazar. The local dance troops performed folk dances from the Mexican state of Michoacan, including the popular Los Viejitos (the old men) dance.
Special guest dancers came from all over Iowa from the dance troop Comparsa. In their brightly colored outfits and masks, the Compares group performed a traditional dance from the Mexican state of Guerrero.
Traditional Mexican dishes — tamales, birria, and posole — were served at the community dinner after the mass. Based on the number of plates served, event organizers estimated that between 600 and 700 people attended the event.
Cultural historians say Our Lady of Guadalupe became the recognized symbol of Catholic Mexicans by the mid-1500s and has served since as the most powerful unifying image of Mexican national history and culture. Many Perry residents have cultural and ancestral roots in Mexico.
In the view of some historians, Guadalupe continues to unify the mixture of cultures that blended to form Mexico, both racially and religiously. She has been called the first mestiza and the first Mexican, symbolically “bringing together people of distinct cultural heritages, while at the same time affirming their distinctness,” according to anthropologist Mary O’Connor.
According to the Wikipedia article on Our Lady of Guadalupe, the Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes once said that “you cannot truly be considered a Mexican unless you believe in the Virgin of Guadalupe,” and Nobel Literature laureate Octavio Paz said that “the Mexican people, after more than two centuries of experiments, have faith only in the Virgin of Guadalupe and the National Lottery.”
This week’s holiday will be followed next week with the beginning of Las Posadas, the nine-day celebration commemorating Mary and Joseph’s search for lodgings. An ecumenical service is planned.
Guadalupe will again move in procession, leaving the First Christian Church after a 6 p.m. ecumenical service and proceeding through Perry’s downtown business district before arriving at the First United Methodist Church for a 7 p.m. meal.
Tickets for Las Posadas are $5 for adults and $3 for children over the age of 10. For more information or to buy tickets, call 515-465-4387.
