Algunas Ofrendas

After hearing the organ at the cathedral, we met Del and went to get Jo, who was dancing in one of the many parks where groups of people gather: almost any kind of dancing, from beginners to professionals, live and recorded music. On the way we got sidetracked by the sight of large orange mounds: marigolds piled at the entrance to a pedestrian street where people were building ofrendas. They were just getting started, so we decided to return later in the day. Although there were folks dancing, it wan quieter than usual for the dancon, but Jo and Del managed to delight a crowd when a swing toon came on, and they showed their stuff. Impressive rug-cutting! we headed off to the Pantéon Dolores, specifically to look for the grave of Don Carlos Balmori:
From the TIMES, Monday, December 10, 1945 Mexico
The Society of Dupes
Forty people who could not forget a charwoman gathered at her grave on the outskirts of Mexico City last week. In honor of the 14th anniversary of her death they sang, made speeches, and organized a society of her worshipful dupes.
For the first 60 years of her life the charwoman so honored was Conchita Jurado, a born actress who never got a chance to act. One day in 1926 she forsook her scrubbing brush. She donned trousers, overcoat, slouch felt hat, a false-diamond stickpin and a false black mustache, and sortied into Mexican society. That day and until her death five years later, she was Don Carlos Balmori, an eccentric bachelor grandee with vast fortunes and castles in Spain.
With a fat checkbook and telepathic adroitness, "Don Carlos" promised people anything—usually what they wanted most. As fast as they succumbed and took the worthless checks, "Don Carlos" swore them to secrecy and admitted them to the society of the greedy but gullible. Most of them loved it. The late, onetime President Plutarco Elías Calles was said to have attended one of the meetings, called Noches de Balmori. The initiates included bankers who sought power, generals who grasped for office, musicians who wanted a career, women who wanted palatial homes. More than 100 women reportedly married "Don Carlos.
The grave, neglected, impossible to see on one side because of the overgrown bushes, is covered with hand-painted tiles that depict a visual narrative of various antics from the life of Don Carlos. Hopefully someone will take an interest in preserving and restoring it before all of the tiles are lost.
We headed back down the hill, only to get lost in the maze of side streets, stopping at an oferenda, but eventually getting back to the street of ofrendas at about 9:30, enough time to see them all before they were dismantled.

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