CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 6/20/2019

Celebrating Corpus Christi with 'Phyllis Galembo: Mexico Masks Rituals'

Today the Catholic world celebrates the festival of Corpus Christi, honoring the real presence of the body and blood of Jesus Christ, the flesh-and-blood person who was also the son of God. So we're featuring this 2016 photograph, "Xita Corpus," from Mexico Masks Rituals, Phyllis Galembo's new monograph documenting the ritual mask cultures of Mexico. In the Corpus Christi festival in Temascalcingo in the state of Mexico, "the townsfolk make huge masks, don outlandish costumes and transform themselves into characters known as the xita or huehues (the old ones)," George Otis writes. "They represent the ancestors who send the rains, and the theatrical ceremony is a kind of offering to them. The body of Christ is referred to as corpu viejo (the body of the old one), and this is probably not a coincidence: in many indigenous traditions the deceased Christ is considered to be the embodiment of all the ancestors."