Long Ride.

This is coolbert:

"A pharmacist, a ranch hand, and two priests!!"

The 1927 Cristero War, a rebellion by those opposed to the anti-clerical measures of the Mexican government, is still remembered by the average Mexican, the cowboy, the vaquero, the rider on the horse.

In an amazing manner! An apparently spontaneous, unrehearsed, "grass-roots" style remembrance of things past. Much as was the insurgency of the Cristeros to a degree spontaneous, unrehearsed, a "grass-roots" rebellion.

The Cristero War. A particularly bloody guerrilla insurrection - - the conflict only being ended in large measure because of the mediation of the American Ambassador.

A guerrilla army of Mexican peasantry led most successfully by "a pharmacist, a ranch hand, and two priests!!" Intuitive military commanders and leaders. Well, if that is all you need, that is all you need!!

An insurrection commemorated by an annual ceremony that has occurred for fifty-one years now. As described in the August 2007 edition of the National Geographic: "Mexico's PILGRIM COWBOYS"

"In central Mexico, time and place are fluid, and history runs into the present, and the present is always straining in the the afterlife so that nothing is only what it seems. For example, at dawn on January 5, the day before Epiphany, on a dusty rancho in El Rodeo"

"Clusters of riders - - dozens, hundreds in a group - - cross Guanajuato state . . . This pilgrimage has no official routes, no central organization, but it's been happening for more than half a century, and it's growing."

Thousands [three to four thousand] cowboys [vaqueros] making a sacred pilgrimage, wearing the obligatory and symbolic white cowboy hat, a trek via horseback across desolate terrain to a high mountain peak, and, again, in remembrance [?] of the failed uprising and those that died in the conflict.

Makes for a very impressive devotional and spiritual exercise.

"History runs into the present"! Very true.

coolbert.