TEOTIHUACAN, Mexico -- The crowds, half a million people dressed in white
with red headbands, clambered over a towering ancient pyramid and packed the
broad ceremonial avenue below it. When the sun reached its noon zenith they
closed their eyes and turned to it, stretching their palms upward to absorb
the invigorating rays.
"I am recharging with positive energy," said Alma Lourdes Gonzalez, a
23-year-old shopkeeper, who radiated calm contentment despite the huge throng
pressing around her. "I am opening my heart and body to let out the bad
vibrations and fill up with everything positive."
To honor what they took to be the last spring equinox before the millennium,
multitudes of Mexicans across the country flocked on Sunday to pyramids and
sacred shrines of their pre-Columbian ancestors, communing with the cosmos and
soaking in force from the luminous sun that their forebears venerated.
Pained by economic crises and political scandals, countless Mexicans are
responding to the millennium's approach by summoning spiritual reserves and
turning to mystical beliefs. Many have mixed their deep Catholic faith with a
search for modern meaning in the civilizations that arose in these lands
before the Spanish conquest.
By far the largest celebration took place at the stately ruins at
Teotihuacan, a city founded 1,900 years ago, which became a flourishing
religious capital before fading mysteriously in the seventh century.
The event here overshadowed any of the political demonstrations in Mexico in
recent years. At least a thousand people spent the frigid night Saturday on a
ledge near the top of the 200-foot-high Pyramid of the Sun, to be present at
the all-important moment of sunrise. By midday the lines into the huge
archeological park were so long that many thousands of people were not able to
enter in time for the noon ceremony worshipping the sun. The highway to the
site was clogged for miles.
There were bricklayers and doctors, teen-agers and grandparents. What they
seemed to have in common was a longing for relief from bad news about their
political leaders, family pressures and the grind of work.
"I'm gathering enough springtime energy to last me the whole year," said
Maria de la Paz Hernandez, a 47-year-old lawyer who perched near the pyramid's
top. "The sun comes up all over the world. It will help me to think positive
thoughts always and to ask for blessings for all of humanity and not just for
myself."
Nearby, Miguel Angel Kirel Macedo, 36, a painter who said he had been drawn
in recent years to pre-Hispanic imagery, emerged serene from an hour of
meditation. "Our physical bodies activate an energy which is concentrated in
the pyramid," he said.
With its many enigmas, Teotihuacan is an appropriate setting for religious
quest. After a century of excavation, it is not known exactly who lived here,
what language they spoke or all the gods they worshipped.
But the Mexicans here did not seem worried about the specifics of the
cultures they sought to recontact. Magdalena Perez, 40, a merchant, said she
brought her two daughters to the equinox festivities "to make sure they
understand our Mayan past." The Maya did thrive in Mexico, but hundreds of
miles to the south of Teotihuacan.
Instead of scientific inquiry, the day brought a glorious potpourri of
religions and re-creations of an idealized past. At 6:46 a.m., when the sun
burst out from behind the black hills circling the ruin, a group of residents
from surrounding villages who called themselves Tlahuizcalpantecutli (a phrase
said to mean "followers of the lord of the star of dawn" in some pre-Hispanic
language) held a welcoming ceremony at the pyramid's summit.
They blew on conch shells, held up braziers of fire and copal incense and
played on drums. On a cloth altar they laid out amaranth seeds, corn kernels
and black beans for Tonatiuh, a sun deity.
"We make these offerings to open the doors of the cosmos and receive this
great sacred illumination in our hearts," said Ricardo Cervantes Cervantes, a
taxi driver who led the proceedings.
A long line formed for a spiritual healer in a tall black hat who waved a
cluster of feathers and recited prayers to cleanse his patients. Humberto
Garcia Lopez, a 20-year-old student, wept after the purification rite. He said
he hoped it would bring peace to his family, torn by fights between his two
teen-age brothers and his father.
At the foot of the pyramid, dancers in ostrich feather headdresses and
loincloths performed an Aztec ritual, although the Aztecs lived in
Teotihuacan. A few feet away, a determined Catholic priest celebrated a
traditional Sunday morning Mass for a small contingent.
In fact, the last time Mexicans gathered in these numbers was when Pope John
Paul II visited in January. Many of the visitors here said they had also been
in the streets to see the pope. They saw no tension between his strict
Catholic teachings and their choice to spend a day garnering strength from the
sun.
"We were sent here by God," said Cruz Villegas Diaz, 46, a truck driver who
led a delegation of Christians to greet the equinox. "Our Lord will spill His
light down on us and fortify the outer physical wrapping of our bodies to
deepen our spiritual faith."
