As preparations to celebrate the 100th burning of Zozobra get underway, the New Mexico History Museum for the first time issued an open call for people to loan memorabilia of the ritual for an upcoming exhibit.
On Saturday, Eli Zamora, aged 9, brought along two pencil drawings of the 50 foot marionette also known as Old Man Gloom to offer them as loans for the exhibit.
He remembered seeing a picture of something intriguing on his dad's wall, and asking about it.
"And he was like, 'oh, that's Zozobra'. And I was like, 'hmm I want to know who that is'."
So his dad took him along to the annual burning of the giant effigy, and he was fascinated. Zamora has built several of his own Zozobras now, always trying to figure out how all the moving parts work.
"I've been wanting to know about Zozobra's eyes for like 10 billion years," he confided.
Curator Delaney Hoffman carefully bagged up the pictures and took down Zamora's details to stay in touch. Later, a man named Robert Francis 'Mudman' Johnson, who is 81, came to contribute a poem, which begins:
Fiesta glooms over the horizon in holy darkness
As the pagan Zozobra moans for all our pain, all of our suffering.
Johnson has been going to the ritual catharsis of all things gloomy for decades. His poem ends:
Grief is how we remember how to love and celebrate again
Community members can also submit their memorabilia and ephemera online at https://burnzozobra.com/lend/. The exhibit is set to open in the recently reopened Palace of the Governors later this year.
