Two Major Cultural Festivals Get Cracking in Mexico

A pair of top cultural festivals is taking place simultaneously in the north and south of Mexico: the Mayan World and the 2004 Zacatecas. With huge turnouts from the Mexican states of Yucatan, Tabasco, Quintana Roo, Campeche and Chiapas, the tenth edition of the Mayan World Cultural Festival will come to a close next April 11.

Summoned by the Chiapas Tourism Department and planned by the Palenque Mayor´s Office, the event is targeting the promotion of different travel destinations.

The weeklong celebration includes a variety of cultural, artisan, tourist and commercial activities being attended by both national and foreign visitors.

According to the federal Tourism Department, around 77 percent of Mexico´s tourists visit one of the destinations in the Mayan World that embraces the southern states and generates hefty earnings for the whole nation.

And beginning on Saturday with the aroma of Copal and the sound of pre-Hispanic music, the 2004 Zacatecas Cultural Festival will get underway for a weeklong celebration.

Most shows will be held in colonial sites teeming with baroque, neoclassic and Gothic beauty and along narrow cobblestone streets.

The opening ceremony will take place at the historic Arms Squares in Zacatecas on a makeshift alfresco stage with huge snow-capped mountains in the background.

Indian drums carried by Jorge Reyes, the king of pre-Hispanic music, will give way to a gala concert featuring the performance of singers Eugenia Leon and Fernando de la Mora. A mariachis band will wrap up the first night.

In the meantime, local galleries and museums will showcase exhibits by artists of renowned pre-Hispanic tradition in the village of Bufa. The town is named after a 1,657-meter-high mountain that provided shelter to Francisco Villa´s revolutionary fighters who eventually settled down there on June 23, 1914.