Christ which wee Indians of nine years carry with their thumb and forefinger, before which are burned tapers as slender as cigarettes. All the sizes, all the colors, all the meagerness of form, all the wounds, all the deformities, all the humped-backs, all the dislocations, all the absurdities which can be perpetrated in sculpture, are represented in this procession. When by the light of torches (for this procession ends at night), this immense line of suspended, behaired and bloody bodies is seen in movement, one might believe himself oppressed by a frightful nightmare or imagine himself traversing some forest of the middle ages in which a tribe of naked gypsies had been hung.
Callot in his wild imagination never saw a procession more fantastic, more original.
Yet this spectacle was the delight of my boyhood days!
Then the Christs withdrew with their padrinos and retinues to the houses whence they issued and there the family prepared a savory feast. The atole of cornmeal called champol and the sweet and delicate totopos.
Ah, General Riva Palacio, never in thy days of campaign in Michoacan, have you had a more sumptuous banquet than that which you have enjoyed in the land of your fathers, an evening of the Christs—and of champol!