In Mexico, a celebration of the mother cult
The Washington Post, by William Booth
Published: May 12, 2012
In the annual celebration of the mother cult, Mexico is especially devout, and every year on May 10 (they don’t move the date around to fall on a Sunday), the entire nation stops what it is doing in the afternoon and eats some serious lunch with Mom.
“For us Mexicans, first, there is the Virgin of Guadalupe, and, second, there is our mother,” said Maxine Woodside, radio host of the popular show “Todo Para La Mujer,” or “All About Women,” and the mother of two boys.
“Mexicans are very attached to family, not like in the United States, where they throw the kids out of the house at age 18,” Woodside said. “Here we see men in their 40s who still live with their mothers, and why not? Their moms still do their laundry.”
A popular Mother’s Day gift? Irons. Also big, blenders (not to make margaritas, but soups, sauces, salsas).
Mexican thinker Octavio Paz, in his classic work on the national psyche, “The Labyrinth of Solitude,” spends a lot of pages mulling Mexico’s worship of saintly, suffering, giving mother figures.
In Mexican slang, to insult the mother, to take in vain “la madre,” is to swear with serious intent.
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