The Purépecha New Year started with the arrival of the Grandfather Fire to Tingambato

Morelia, Mich., Yesterday afternoon the New Fire walk arrived at the indigenous community of Tingambato, where at night the ceremony was held to welcome the Purépecha New Year. The embers will remain lit until January 2027, and then be moved to another indigenous town as part of an ancestral tradition, which was resumed in 1983.

From Santa Clara del Cobre, where the fire embers remained for a year, hundreds of inhabitants of this region of the municipality of Salvador Escalante – called porters – left with the brazier on their backs to Tingambato on the morning of January 30; The day before, they toured the streets of the town and offered blessings.

The fire walk left Santa Clara heading to Iramuco, and from there to Santa Rita, Agua Verde, on the shores of Lake Zirahuén, among other towns. The Fuego Abuelo, guarded by the cargo ships, was received in Tingambato with pirecuas, sones abajeños and copal. The cycle is finished and last night the cycle concluded.

Since yesterday morning, preparations began to light the New Fire before midnight; The ceremony began with the sound of conch shells. Everyone silently waited for the wood placed on the stone to start burning; Thus, the flames rose and the Purépecha New Year arrived, to begin a cycle today.

Pavel Guzmán, member of the New Fire Council, commented that the ceremony begins just when the zenith of the Orion constellation is at its highest point. He recalled that this is the most important ceremony in the Meseta, Ribera de las Pátzcuaro and Zirahuén, Cañada de los Once Pueblos, Sierra and Ciénega de Zacapu regions.

The ritual “is outside political parties and governments; it represents the conservation of our culture and customs in times of globalization and loss of values,” Guzmán emphasized.

He added that it is an ancestral ceremony, which was resumed in 1983, in Tzintzuntzan, capital of the Purépecha kingdom.

The Purépecha New Year is an original, autonomous and historical celebration of that town. “It is an element that generates pride and identity in the face of the mestizo world. It also seeks indigenous cultural autonomy, a means for the rescue and strengthening of their language, a system of criticism and self-criticism of the Catholic religion and political parties, in addition to being a symbol of resistance, and, above all, the path for the construction of their historical future,” stressed Pavel Guzmán.