The mayor of a small southern Mexico town has married a female reptile in a traditional rite to bring good fortune to his people.
Victor Hugo Sosa, mayor of San Pedro Huamelula, a settlement of indigenous Chontal people, took as his betrothed the creature named Alicia Adriana.
The reptile is a caiman, an alligator-like marsh dweller endemic to Mexico and Central America.
Sosa swore to be true to what local lore calls “the princess girl.”
“I accept responsibility because we love each other. That is what is important. You can’t have a marriage without love… I yield to marriage with the princess girl,” Sosa said during the ritual.
Marriage between a man and a female caiman has happened in the region for 230 years to commemorate the day when two rival indigenous groups were brought together in peace via a marriage.
Legend has it that frictions were overcome when a Chontal king, embodied in modern times by the mayor, wedded a princess girl of the Huave Indigenous group – as represented by the female alligator.
The Huave live along coastal Oaxaca state, not far from the inland town in the Tehuantepec isthmus of Mexico.
The wedding allows the sides to “link with what is the emblem of Mother Earth, asking the all-powerful for rain, the germination of the seed, all those things that are peace and harmony for the Chontal man,” explained Jaime Zarate, a chronicler of San Pedro Huamelula.
Before the ceremony, the reptile was dressed in a green skirt, a colourful hand-embroidered tunic and a headdress of ribbons and sequins – with its snout bound shut to avoid any pre-marital mishaps.
It was then taken house to house to allow locals to hold her in their arms and dance.
Later, she was put in a white bride’s costume and taken to the town hall for the blessed event.
As part of the ritual, Joel Vasquez, a local fisherman, tossed his net and intoned the town’s hopes that the marriage would bring “good fishing, so that there is prosperity, equilibrium and ways to live in peace.”
After the wedding, the mayor danced with his bride to the sounds of traditional music.
