Flames lick up people’s fears in ritual effigy burning

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The first was about a hospitalized sister and a brother recovering from brain surgery. Then came a note about the U.S. president, and a hand-scrawled prayer for friends and former neighbours besieged by floods in League City, Texas — a community sandwiched between Houston and the Gulf of Mexico.

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“I put down, ‘Get rid of Donald Trump!’” said Garcia, while still counting her blessings. “I’m very blessed personally, my immediate family.”

Yinka Adeniji, a 40-year-old technology consultant, said he wanted to join others in washing away all internal feelings of bad will and also perhaps get rid of an inept U.S. political system and start from scratch.

“I think it’s going to take a lot more than Zozobra,” he said. “We’re a country that doesn’t want to care for its people.”

The invention of Will Shuster — a painter from Philadelphia who migrated to the Southwest — Zozobra was first built and ignited in 1924, adding a madcap celebration to a Santa Fe’s weeklong community “fiestas” that include historic and religious processions. The festival’s name was derived from a Spanish word for anguish.

Modern pyrotechnics have transformed the nighttime burning, now preceded by hours of live music and performances on an adjacent stage. A team of a dozen puppeteers heaves on cords to flex the groaning marionette’s arms, head and jaw.

The spectacle appeals to people’s “better angels” in a year marked by disaster and political upheaval, said Ray Sandoval, who organizes Zozobra for the local Kiwanis Club to raise money for youth charities.

He spied credit card bills and a paid-off mortgage papers among the messages in the Zozobra stuffing this year — along with worries about nuclear war.

“We’re getting a lot of political messages to be quite honest,” Sandoval said. “People are really worried about the path of the country and their leadership. There are a lot of them that are more hopeful for the country.”

Morgan Lee, The Associated Press