San Miguel de Allende will celebrate the Festivity in Honor of the Lord of the Conquest

Published March 1st, 2022

As is a tradition in San Miguel de Allende, the first Friday of March will be celebrated the Festivity in Honor of the Lord of the Conquest or also venerated as “El Cristo del Buen temporal”, in which different religious activities will take place such as the recitation of the 33 creeds that mark each year of the life of Jesus, as well as dances in front of the Parish of San Miguel Arcángel.

It will be next Friday, March 4th, when the streets of San Miguel de Allende will once again be filled with color, where dozens of dancers, from dawn to dusk, venerate the Lord of the Conquest through their dances in front of the Parish of San Miguel Arcángel, a tradition that spans more than 400 years, and where dozens of faithful and indigenous communities of the municipality and surrounding areas also gather on this day.

The dancers wear elaborate pre-Hispanic costumes, headdresses of beautiful feathers, and other indigenous attire that reflect how the great emperors, Aztec, Mayan, and Toltec warriors dressed.

This date marks the beginning of the food growing season and the dance in front of the parish church throughout the day, being a way to ask for prosperity for all; a celebration of special significance for the Otomi natives.

All attendees will be able to witness ancestral ceremonies (velaciones), dances, music, praises, spoon elements, and parandes, offered by the historic neighborhoods, traditional communities, and especially those who have kept the “word”, commitment and “obligation” with “El Cristo del Buen temporal”.

Also, among the hundreds of dancers who attend this significant celebration, we can highlight the presence of the concheros, whose existence and collective memory, carry in their devotional banners the slogans of union, conformity, and conquest, which has been strengthened through successive generations, to prevail in history.

During the veneration of the Lord of the Conquest in San Miguel de Allende, each parishioner is asked to recite the 33 credos (one for each year of Jesus’ life on Earth) before the image of Christ made with the Tarascan technique of “Pasta de Caña”, a treasure of the cultural and sculptural heritage of the Parish of San Miguel Arcángel.