Zozobra, Santa Fe's Original "Burning Man"

Sep 06, 2024

Fort Marcy is the first U.S. fort built in the New Mexico Territory and the only fort left in the United States from the Mexican-American War. It was built by General Stephen W. Kearny, who marched his troops West along the Santa Fe Trail from Independence, Missouri, shortly after New Mexico was peacefully surrendered by Mexican Governor Juan Bautista Vigil y Alarid to the United States on August 19, 1846, just before the violence of the Mexican-American War began. With its thick adobe walls nine feet tall and five feet thick, able to hold up to one thousand soldiers, sitting at an elevation 50 yards higher than the nearby downtown Central Plaza, the Fort also had roles in protecting Sante Fe during the Civil War, the Westward crawl of Manifest Destiny across America, and the “Indian Wars”, until much degraded over time and weather, it was decommissioned and sadly sold at an auction by the U.S. government in 1891.

Today it is the site of the Fort Marcy Recreation Complex, a beautiful facility located in the heart of downtown Santa Fe. The complex boasts a baseball field, winding stone paths, storybook wooden bridges, a mostly dried-up creek, a 25-yard pool, a fully equipped weight room, cardio-vascular equipment, racket and pickleball courts, and a full-court gymnasium. Naturally, it’s where yours Trulesly plays pickleball whenever the weather is good outdoors in Santa Fe, which is basically from Spring to Fall, before the snows come around Turkey Day, when all the pickleballers, except the polar bears, take shelter indoors at the nearby Chavez Center, a stone’s throw from The Rodeo and our house.

Fort Marcy is also… taDAH… the annual site of the burning of Zozobra, who most of the locals (I don’t quite claim to be one quite yet) know to be… “the Original Burning Man”!

For on the Friday of Labor Day Weekend, for the last 100 years, the largest marionette in the world, “The Old Man of Gloom”, is burned in effigy - containing all the peoples’ miseries, maladies, worries, hardships, complaints, anxieties, regrets, and GLOOMS… all going up in flames!

And this year, yes, this past Labor Day Weekend, was indeed Zozobra’s 100th anniversary. I went last year, to his 99th. It was spectacular, although quite the ordeal to get there, amongst the 60,000 other celebrants, all clamoring to Fort Marcy to see the biggest bonfire and most theatrical production in, at least, the Great Southwest. It was soooo crowded that I had to park at a local “RailRunner” train station, wait standing in line for an hour, just to get on a shuttle bus - for a distance that would usually take me 10 minutes to drive. And getting back? A 2-hour line - and a 40-minute bus - just back to the train station! But- what can I say? That 50-foot tall marionette, burning with a gloriously manic pyro-technology that I’d never dreamed of, or imagined, even being in the theater my whole life, it was hella worth the two shuttles… and FAR MORE!

Not that I went back for the centennial celebration this year…..

A little Zozobra history:

Artist William Howard “Will” Shuster, Jr. created the first Zozobra in 1924 as the signature highlight of a private party for “Los Cinco Pintores”, a group of artists and writers who made their way to New Mexico in the 1920s. He was inspired by Easter Holy Week traditions in the Yaqui Indian communities of Arizona and Mexico, in which an effigy of Judas is led around the village on a donkey and ultimately set alight. Shuster and his friend, E. Dana Johnson, editor of the local newspaper, came up with the name “Zozobra”, which in Spanish means “anguish, anxiety, or gloom.”

Shuster’s creation first burned in his backyard in 1924 as a 6-foot effigy, and over the years, grew to a towering 50-foot high marionette. Made of wood, wire, and cotton cloth and stuffed with bushels of shredded paper, which traditionally includes obsolete police reports, unrequited and Dear John love letters, paid-off mortgages, and even divorce papers, Zozobra is a dark and eerie character, part ghost and part monster. Since those early days, the people of Santa Fe, their families, and friends now annually make their way to Zozobra Field at Fort Marcy Park, to view this one-of-a-kind “holy” pageant, that coincides with the 300-year-old Fiesta de Santa Fe, the oldest religious festival in the U.S., proclaimed by the Spanish Governor in 1712, specifying a mass, vespers, and a sermon, setting the religious tone still characterizing the modern fiesta today.

Shuster, although primarily a painter, personally oversaw the construction of the Zozobra figure for 40 years, until 1964, when he gave his detailed model, archived drawings, and scripts to the Kiwanis Club of Santa Fe, which has successfully continued his historic tradition.

In an interview, Shuster commented on one reason for his continuing interest in producing the annual Zozobra show:

… the look in the youngsters’ faces as they saw this monster who might have stepped out of a fairy tale go up in smoke. That is a reason for Zozobra. He appeals to the childish fancy – in all of us. It is a scene from a fairy tale of our own making.

Zozobra’s arch-enemy, The Fire Spirit, dressed in a flowing red costume and headdress, is armed with a pair of blazing torches with which to end Zozobra’s reign of terror. The role of the Fire Spirit was originated by Jacques Cartier, former New York City ballet dancer and local dance teacher, who performed for an amazing 37 years. Cartier talked about his experience over years spent as the Fire Dancer.

It damn near killed me half a dozen times. I even broke both my ankles; thank God, not at the same time. The idea of Zozobra grew out of a gang of Santa Fe deep-thinkers who met in something called ‘Society of Quien Sabe.’ They met once a month, and membership was based on how well you could tell yarns.

Once he sees the dancing Fire Spirit, the giant Zozobra marionette growls, jerking its head menacingly, stuffed from head to toe with glooms. As music blares and grows in intensity, the Fire Spirit takes centerstage. He taunts Zozobra, whose frenzied antics and howling increases, while the crowd goes wild and breaks into a frenzy. Finally, the Fire Spirit lights Zozobra’s head on fire, sealing the monster’s fate. The flames grow and rise into a burning pyre. The crowd screams!

BURN HIM!

Zozobra goes up in fire, flames, and smoke….and gloom is vanquished… for yet - another year.

I think why soooo many people turn out for the burning of Zozobra, year after year, is because they take the ritual personally. It is their gloom, their fears, sorrows, losses, and weaknesses, that are burned away in the ritual pyre. The ritual is their own catharsis, their own transformation - from old pain and failure - to rebirth and renewal. Like the phoenix rising from the ashes. Like Christ rising from the dead. Overcoming Old Man Gloom is like defeating Father Time, almost like defeating Satan himself.

“Old Man Gloom”, who regenerates himself annually, like a poisoness snake growing a new skin year after year, Zozobra emerges from the Sangre de Cristo Mountains surrounding Sante Fe, and he comes down to snatch children away from their parents, to rob, cheat, and steal, to wreak havoc and death upon the entire town. He is an enormous monstrous plague. Invincible. Yet… by looking deeply with each of themselves, each Santa Fean, each person who has had the courage to name his most private gloom and soul-shaking fear, is able to, ritualistically and miraculously, overcome it, at the blazing pyre at Fort Marcy Park, by burning the biggest and meanest-hearted marionette in the world, Zozobra! Each person is him or herself - reborn.

So ok… Burning Man may, by now, have some longevity, 1986, but I tell you, it doesn’t come close to Zozobra!

Burning Man, in Black Rock City, a temporary city in the Black Rock Desert in northwestern Nevada, located about 141 miles north of Reno, is now, almost forty years after its birth, a trendy, multi-day, multi-hundred dollar thang, known around the globe, sporting expensive adjacent hotel rooms, catered meals, and helicopter celebrity drop-offs, like an annual Woodstock Festival of Peace and Love, at 100 times the ticket price. And although the Zozobra marionette has grown from 6-feet to 50-feet, and the effigy-burning is no longer in Will Shuster’s 1924 backyard, it still is basically, a one day event, for local Santa Feans, and those in the surrounding New Mexican environs: Albuquerque, Taos, Espanola, and lots of other places you non-New Mexicans may have never heard of. It’s still an exciting and fiery finale to the last days of summer - which will only set you back $20-30, depending on when you buy your ticket.

Will Shuster noted in a card that he sent to a friend after the 1924 burning,

After the flames consumed the effigy, and the embers faded into the starlit Santa Fe sky, we stood together, a group unburdened. In the ashes of this effigy lay the worries of the past year, and from them, we shall rise anew, our spirits ablaze with hope and renewal. Tonight, we have not just witnessed a spectacle; we have participated in a sacred rite of purification, laughter, and rebirth.

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So… it’s ok with me - that they close the pickleball courts at Fort Marcy for three days - to set up for the Burning of Zozobra. The parking lots are closed from Wednesday - until Friday - for the event itself. The pickleball courts are locked - until Saturday morning - which is pretty impressive - for an overnight cleanup of 60,000 Zozobra revelers, fire, and ash.

And the best thing is - I can send in all my anxieties, worries, maladies, complaints, and glooms - beforehand. And know - that they’ll all be going up in smoke and flames.

It’s like an early Yom Kippur, the High Hoiday for Jews, otherwise known as “The Day of Atonement”. Late Summer instead of early Fall.

Hey, it’s like a Twofer - now that I’ve moved to Santa Fe!!

From Gloom to Doom.

I mean. No more Gloom or Dooooooom!

As the Zozobra crowd screams at the top of their lungs,

BURN HIM!

And Zozobra, going up in flames, is defeated and turned away, for yet one more year.

Zozobra, Santa Fe's Original "Burning Man"

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