A small-town Mexican village mayor sealed the nuptials with a kiss with an “alligator bride” in a colorful ceremony as traditional music rang out and revelers danced.
“You may now kiss the bride” would be the words that one expects to hear at the end of a wedding. However, what if the bride at the altar is not a human but an alligator? Yes! You read it right. This is exactly what happened at a mayor’s centuries-old traditional “wedding” in a Mexican village. While it may seem bizarre, he was only following an old-age tradition.
Huamelula, San Pedro Mayor Victor Hugo Sosa recently married an alligator in a traditional ceremony whose photos and videos have taken social media by storm.
Social media is seeing this marriage ceremony as a bizarre event and mocking the act, while the village is justifying it as a centuries-old tradition dating back to pre-Hispanic times among Oaxaca State’s Chontal and Huave indigenous communities, where these marriages were done as a prayer to plead for nature’s bounty.
Oaxaca, located in the poorly developed south of Mexico, is arguably the country’s richest in indigenous culture and is home to many communities that have stubbornly preserved their languages and traditions.
Sosa can be seen marching through the town with the villagers playing music and traditional instruments while donning a flowing white gown and a veil and holding his bride in his arms. The seven-year-old reptile, the Little Princess, is regarded as a deity representing Mother Earth, and her marriage to the local mayor symbolizes the union of humans with divine nature.
Sosa, the mayor of Mexican village San Pedro Huamelula, a small fishing village on Oaxaca’s steamy Pacific coast, said: “We ask nature for enough rain, for enough food, that we have fish in the river.”
“It gives me so much happiness and makes me proud of my roots,” said Elia Edith Aguilar, known as the godmother who organized the wedding. She said that she felt privileged to carry out the ceremony and spent a lot of time fretting about what the alligator bride would wear at her marriage. “It is a very beautiful tradition,” she added with a smile.
