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The San Marcos Fair, held from the second week in April to the first week of May each year, attracts thousands of visitors from all over Mexico and the United States. It dates back to 1604 when a small indigenous Indian settlement, San Marcos, was founded within walking distance of the growing Spanish city of Aguascalientes. The fair's religious origins, long forgotten, have given way to a lively, colorful three week spectacular, in which bullfights, folkloric dancing, mechanical games, cockfights, cultural events and merrymaking all compete for visitor's attentions.
An impressive eighteenth century church overlooks the main arena, the San Marcos Gardens, laid out over a hundred years ago. Protected by pink stone balustrades and graceful wrought- ironwork, thick foliage and tall trees shade romantic paths and fountains, a beautiful setting for this most exciting of fairs. The sounds of birdlife normally heard in the park are replaced by shouting and laughing, earnest conversations between young lovers, spectacular firework displays and the cries of innumerable ambulatory vendors selling everything from delicious chicken enchiladas and the local culinary speciality turkey in rich chocolate mole sauce, to candy floss, giant balloons, ingenious handcrafted toys and cheap souvenirs.
Stop and have your fortune told by a trained and supposedly clairvoyant canary, which selects your future from a deck of fortune cards; sample a meringue, engaging the vendor in the traditional, entertaining 'Heads I win, tails you do' system of payment; watch the colorful folkloric dancing; listen to mariachi bands; see Mexico's top matadors in action at the San Marcos bullring; place your bets on fighting cocks in the modern 'Casino' which houses Latin America's biggest 'palenque'; or indulge in the time-honored tradition of watching or participating in the paseo in which young women walk around the park in one direction, young men in the other.
In recent years a wine pavilion has been set up where the major local producers (and Aguascalientes has grapes in its coat-of-arms) including, naturally, the San Marcos company, vie to press free samples of their best vintages on visitors. The fair is an occasion for superlatives: the oldest, most famous and largest in all of Mexico.
The warm climate and thermal spa waters of Aguascalientes are an attraction at any time of the year and, whenever you visit, the colorful and exciting atmosphere of the San Marcos Fair can be relived by spending a few minutes admiring the mural on the first floor of the architecturally magnificent Government Palace on the main plaza. Painted in 1961 by Oswaldo Barra, a Chilean disciple of Diego Rivera, it shows fairs past and present in their vibrant intensity by vivid use of form and color, a truly memorable tribute to a truly marvellous annual extravaganza.
AND A CHANGE OF PACE IN ZACATECAS
For a change of pace from the San Marcos Fair, it is only 90 minutes drive to the lovely colonial city of Zacatecas, an important mining city built on more hills than Rome. The town of Guadalupe, nowadays...
For more on Aguascalientes and Zacatecas, as well as driving directions and where to stay, we invite you to join our family of subscribers... it isn't expensive. A monthly subscription is just $5.00 USD - that's $1.15 per week. An annual subscription costs $30.00 USD - only $2.50 per month or 58 cents per week. We think you'll find it's money well spent.
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