The Parade that I Did Not Attend

This afternoon Mexico City's Day of the Dead parade was held.  Last year's parade was cancelled due to the pandemic, but the city government claimed that this year's was going to be bigger and better than ever.  In spite of that, Alejandro and I had no intention of attending the parade.  Standing in a crowd of people for hours... even if we were outside and even if we were wearing masks... did not seem very safe to us.  Even if there had been no pandemic, I would not have been keen on attending.  

Since the annual parade was started in 2016, it has grown in popularity, and the number of spectators has increased.  I saw the parade with Alejandro in 2017, and we had a great time.  In 2018 we took my friends Nancy and Fred.  We enjoyed it, but we had to stand and wait for a long time in order to get a decent spot along the street to view the parade.  When the parade was over, there was a mad crush of people.  In 2019 I attended a couple of the preliminary events.  I stood waited along Reforma for more than two hours to see the Procession of Catrinas, but midway through the procession, there was a downpour and I had to run for cover.  I did not bother to attend the main parade (which also had a downpour).  There were an estimated two million spectators for that event.

So instead of going to the parade, we watched it on television.  The government said that the spectators should keep a safe distance.  Ha!  On TV we could see that people were jammed together as always.  People in the crowd who were interviewed said that they had been waiting since early morning.  And although most people were wearing facemasks, there were some who were not. 

I tried to take pictures of the parade from the television screen, but they did not turn out very well.

Admittedly, watching the parade on TV is not the same as being there, but I was sorely disappointed in this event that was touted as the best ever.  Alejandro was of the same opinion that it was not nearly as good as in previous years.  I'm glad that we did not make the effort to attend.