In this Mexican town, the union between a man and a female alligator has been celebrated for more than 230 years, in search of prosperity.
Between applause, dancing and a kiss full of good wishes, the mayor of a town in southern Mexico married a female alligator. He fulfilled a traditional rite that seeks prosperity and abundance for his people.
This is Víctor Hugo Sosa, the mayor of San Pedro Huamelula, an indigenous Chontal community on the Tehuantepec isthmus (Oaxaca state). He expressed affection for his reptilian bride, named Alicia Adriana, who assumed the role of the princess girl in this ancient celebration.
“I accept the responsibility, because we love each other, that is the important thing. There can’t be a marriage if they don’t love each other. We love each other and I agree to marry the princess girl,” Sosa said during the ceremony.
The union between a man and a female alligator has been celebrated in this town for more than 230 years to commemorate the day on which two ethnic groups from the region, the Huaves and the Chontales, were integrated thanks to a wedding.
Tradition tells that the friction between the two towns ended with the marriage of the Chontal king, today represented by the mayor, and the Huave princess girl, a community settled in the town of San Mateo del Mar, embodied in the female alligator.
The wedding allows them to “connect with what is the emblem of mother earth. All asking the powerful, the rain, the germination of the seed, all those things that are peace, the harmony of the Chontal man”, explains Jaime Zárate, chronicler of San Pedro Huamelula.