A group of onlookers were ecstatic for the mayor of small town in Mexico after he finally tied the knot with the girl of his dreams, which just happened to be a female reptile. According to Yahoo News, this odd ceremony is actually a traditional rite that is said to bring about good fortune for the people of his town. Victor Hugo Sosa, mayor of San Dpedro Huamelula, which is a town where the Indigenous Chontal people in the Tehuantepec isthmus of Mexico, marred a reptile named Alicia Adriana, in a re-enactment of an ancient ancestral rite.
You’re probably wondering what kind of reptile Sosa wed. It’s called a caiman, which is very similar to an alligator and dwells in marshes located in Mexico and other parts of South America. Sosa took an oath to be faithful to what lore in the area refers to as the “princess girl.” Yes, these folks refer to a reptilian creature as “the princess girl.” The world, at times, is a very, very strange place, wouldn’t you agree?
“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 went on to say during the marriage ritual. This particular ritual, where a human male and a female caiman get hitched has been happening in this part of the world for a whopping 230 years as a means to commemorate the day when two groups of Indigenous people finally developed peace between each other. The caiman is the symbol of this peace.
According to tradition, the tension between the people groups was finally overcome after a king of the Chontal people, who is symbolized by the human male who occupies the office of mayor, married a princess from the Huave people, who is represented by the alligator-like people.
The wedding ceremony allows both sides in the skirmish 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,” Jaime Zarate, who is a chronicler of San Pedro Huamelula, explained.
If you thought this whole thing could not possibly get any stranger, allow me to inform you what happens before the wedding. The reptile is taken house-to-house so that those living in them can dance with the caiman. During this, the creature sports a green skirt, an embroidered tunic splashed with all kinds of color, along with a headdress of ribbons and sequins. So how do they keep the alligator from biting the groom? They bind it’s snout shut.
Later on, they put the caiman in a white bride’s costume and is transported to town hall for the ceremony. Joel Vasquez, a local fisherman, throws out his net and represents the hopes of the town that the marriage might bring about “good fishing, so that there is prosperity, equilibrium and ways to live in peace.”
Once the ceremony is concluded, the mayor takes his blushing bride for a dance to some traditional music.“We are happy because we celebrate the union of two cultures. People are content,” Sosa said in an interview with AFP.
And yes, the mayor does indeed kiss the bride, once the dance winds down.
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