Burn It

Feeling some gloom in your life? Of course you are, but what to do?

If you’re a New Mexican, you burn it.

That’s the concept behind Zozobra, a 50-foot marionette meant to represent the troubles, hardships and other obstacles of the past year. Into this monster we pour that which has been done to us, what we’ve done to others and all the rest we want to leave behind.

Then, we light a match.

Event chair Ray Sandoval says on this week’s episode of New Mexico in Focus that folks have described this ritual torching as their New Years — and that many of them have hewed more closely to resolutions proclaimed in late August than those uttered on Dec. 31.

The burning of Zozobra turns 100 this year. For me, there is some symmetry: I turned 50 five days before Sandoval sent the effigy packing in a conflagration of relief and release. I have lived half as long as our sorrows have died.

To celebrate, I took a few days off work. That meant I missed NMiF Senior Producer Lou DiVizio’s interview with Sandoval. I caught up to the conversation when I returned to NMPBS and was delighted in the watching.

Much ink and many pixels have been spent on Zozobra during the past century, and I’m not here to try and make sense of why this event has endured. Instead, I want to direct you to a story Sandoval told at the end of his interview. Lou had asked if any burnt “glooms” had stood out over the years.

Sandoval was introduced to a woman who was holding what he thought was a blue blanket. He quickly realized it was a hospital gown, then learned that year earlier, the woman had been diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer. She told Sandoval of a conversation she’d had with her physician.

“The doctor was trying to emphasize the point of how serious her condition was,” Sandoval told Lou. “He pointed to her hospital gown and said, ‘You need to take this seriously; this is the last article of clothing you’ll ever wear. And she said that it actually had the opposite effect on her, that she was going to survive and that she actually went into remission.”

What business did she have at Zozobra?

“She wanted to know if I would put the hospital gown into Zozobra,” Sandoval continued. “And I remember looking up at her and saying, ‘No.’ She looked at me kind of shocked, and I said, ‘You need to do this.’ And so we walked over to Zozobra together, and she placed it inside Zozobra. I remember later that evening as I ignited our monster, I was standing back and I was watching it, and I actually saw the hospital gown burn. And it was definitely an emotional thing.”

If you’re a New Mexican, you burn it.

– Jeff Proctor, Executive Producer