Iztacalco

Fiestas in Pueblo Iztacalco | Part I Commemorating the Past, Enjoying the Present: 

Delegación/Alcaldía (mayoralty, borough) Iztacalco, is the smallest delegación or alcaldía (borough) in the city (9 sq. miles). It is no more than fifteen minutes north from our home base in Delegacion/Alcaldía Coyoacán. Immediately southeast of Delegación Cuauhtémoc (Centro Histórico's location), it has major highways and avenues surrounding and crossing it, so it is easy to access. San Matías church, from the 16th century, is the central church of the original pueblo, while each of its seven barrios, Santa Cruz, La Asunción, San Miguel, Los Reyes, San Sebastián Zapotla, San Francisco Xicaltongo and Santiago Atoyac, has its own chapel.

Fiestas in Pueblo Iztacalco, Part II: Playing With The Paradox of Mexican Identity 

Iztacalco's fiesta venerating San Matías proved to be a striking combination of ritual and play, one that puzzled, even bewildered us as it slowly unfolded before our eyes. It seemed to present a contradiction between the purpose of the ritual, i.e., the veneration of a patron saint, and the particular persona (from the Greek for mask) chosen as a disfraz (disguise) by the persons carrying it out. It was one that we had never encountered among all the disfraces, such as chinelos (Nahuatl for disguised ones) and charros (fancily dressed Spanish cowboys), we have met. It was a conundrum that took some time for us to come to an insight that, if correct, makes sense of the apparent paradox. 

Iztacalco's Barrio Santiago Atoyac Honors the Virgin of Guadalupe

The Facebook page, Fiestas Mágicas de los Pueblos y Barrios Originarios de la Cuenca de México, Magical Fiestas of the Original Villages and Neighborhoods of the Valley of Mexico, our source for finding fiestas to attend, posted an announcement of a fiesta in the Barrio Santiago (St. James) Atoyac, to be held the weekend of January 12. Curiously, it is to be a celebration of the Virgin of Guadalupe, whose feast day was exactly a month prior, on December 12. We wonder why this fiesta is being held a month after the biggest saint's fiesta in Mexico, but we jump at the chance to visit a barrio in Iztacalco.
The posted schedule says a procession through the barrio will begin at noon on Saturday, the 13th. So half an hour before, we take a taxi north. We arrive at the church just as the procession of the saint through the streets is beginning.