A spy; Holy Wednesday, March 22, 1978.
On Holy Wednesday all good Catholics confess, and the spies appear for the first time. A half dozen boys of 18 or so, dressed in brilliant satin dresses of their mothers and wearing cotton stockings are mounted on horseback. Their pointed red flannel caps and hooded faces give them the appearance of latter-day Ku Klux Klanners. Bareback, and without shoes, they ride down parallel streets, stopping at each intersection. The first blows a plaintive note on a whistle, and as it dies out the next spy takes up the sound, and so on down the length of the line. Then all ride to the next series of intersections where the act is repeated. According to local tradition these boys represent the men who spied on Christ and carried him off to be sentenced. Formerly, when work was forbidden in Tzintzuntzan during all of Holy Week, the spies had a real function. It was their job to see that nobody was working, and if they found someone so engaged, they took his tools and locked them up in the courtroom, forcing the owner to pay a fine to regain them. The spies are forbidden to speak, and one of the pastimes of small boys is to try to trick them into breaking their silence and thus reveal their identity (1948).
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