El Batizado del primavera de 2006

Well, to start out with, this previous weekend was a longer one. I've no idea why, something to do about one of the historic figures in Mexico's history, I guess. So while many of the other Americans went travelling to such places as Veracruz, Veracruz, right on the coast... I went to a small city about 45 minutes away from Querétaro called San Juan del Rio with the Academia Nacional de Capoeira for the Batizado Spring 2006. To be honest, I can probably go to Veracruz later, and have the same experience they had, and I can go back to San Juan del Rio, but I won't ever have the same experience as I did this weekend.

We all met up at the park in the middle of the city and we left an hour later than we meant to. But we still got there, and everybody changed into our abadas and other shirts (I don't have a black shirt, though... I hope that will change later), and we had a class in a field with 52 students, plus the six playing the instruments, and the professor, Yaqui Grande. After our practice, we all sat down in a double roda (two big rings) and Yaqui talked to us about the importance of things (I understood it all at the time, but I don't really remember things). And a fire was made to make rocks hot, and we all jumped back on the busses and headed to the downtown area of San Juan del Rio.

There, we formed a roda and it was my first public roda ever. I should have participated, but... I didn't. I watched. Mostly in awe. But it still takes a bit of concentration on my part to clap the beat, sing the refrain (in Portguese no less), and not get lost in the movements within the roda. While everything was pretty cool, one of the more advanced students danced with fire. His name is Orlando, and his capoeira name is Zero (I think it's pronounced Schero, but I don't know Portuguese). After all this was over, we headed back to camp.

And there, a tent was set up with a big hole in the middle, and we all changed clothes to bathing suits. We all got set up, and we entered the tent and we had what is called a "temascal," kinda like a sauna. We sat in there while Yaqui explained things about capoeira and I understood at the time, I just can't recall what was said. He explained the levels of capoeira in the Academia. Afterwards, we had the chance to go swimming, but I passed. I slept under the stars in a sleeping bag with a towel - it got kinda cold in the morning.




And I woke up much too early, but this is where we slept. Lots of people had tents, I had the chance to sleep in a tent, but I thought, "Well, I'm in Mexico. Why not sleep under the stars, I don't think I've ever done it before." And I woke up much too early and slept not quite enough. But it was all good.



And then everybody woke up. About 8am or so everybody started moving. It took me awhile, but I found Yaqui and managed to get some white abadas for the Batizado. And at about this time, I stopped using the shoes. The grass was a bit cold. But after a bit, all of the young'uns getting the first rank got to choose a capoeira name. Which means that I've got a capoeira name. To get all the translations, well, one meaning of translations, anyway, in English, it's "Lonely Lion" or perhaps "Solitary Lion" and in Spanish, "León Solitario," and in Portuguese, "Laõo Solinho." (I think it's pronounced "Layao Solinso" or "Layao Soliño," I'm not entirely positive. My other choice was gazelle/gacela/gazela (Pron: gaschela) but I liked the three vowels together in Laõo. But Yaqui informed us of what was going on, and the nine of us headed to the roda to get welcomed into the Academia.

We played a few rounds before receiving our cords, and it's difficult to choose which pictures I like. And it wasn't quite me taking pictures because, well, I was playing capoeira.



I can't remember names, but this is the guy that got to batizar me. At one point, my head was nearly taken off by a kick. I mostly only know this because everyone in the roda gasped. It was pretty fun. But this picture is neat because if you look closely, he's not on the ground at all. There's no pictures of me in any kicks or anything really cool looking...



But we do have a picture of me on the ground and we finished me in the batizado. I don't think I was hit (which was allowed at this point and there were some vicious take downs during the day), it's mostly my own fault that I try to do things and I get confused and end up doing things not quite correctly and falling down. But what can I do, eh?



But I got my cord! In the line of things, I think it goes, cruda (cotton color), amarilla (yellow), amarilla avanzada (one yellow two green twisted together), verde (green), verde avanzada (two white one green), azul (blue), azul avanzada (two white one red), roja (red), roja avanzada (I think... it'd be two white one purple), and violeta (purple) plus two more above this of blanca (really white) and dorada (really yellow). I only thought I'd be getting a cruda, but I got a yellow! Whoo-hoo!



But this is about what it looked like as I received my cord. The berimbau is is the stick with the gourd on one end. It's got approximately six notes: close to the body, away from the body, open, closed (above and below), and with a rattle. And the drum, I think is called a tambor, but also present are different types of African drums.

Otherwise, that was kinda it. When we received our cords, we played the roda again, and I've got a 435 MB video that lasts about 14 minutes. Until I'm able to edit it, or when I get back to Michigan, one or the other and I'm not sure which will happen first, I'll be able to get it online. But to let everybody know, I lasted about 40 seconds, partly because I tried things I saw in my head... It didn't quite work. But it was still fun.



But this picture is from Bernal that I forgot last time. No idea how I missed it, but from left to right, we've got Bere, Ryan, Ángeles and myself.