Mexican villagers beseech volcano goddess for rain, safety.
The inhabitants of Santiago Xalitzintla rise well before dawn to prepare their offerings to The Sleeping Woman, as they affectionately call the dormant Iztaccíhuatl volcano that hovers above their town in central Mexico.
Santiago Xalitzintla has the distinction of being the community closest to Popocatepetl, whose crater has increasingly been belching lava and spewing ash that sometimes reaches Mexico City, 90 kilometers to the northwest. The community is now on evacuation alert, with alarms sounding to tell residents when they should escape to the nearby city of Cholula.
It's the Day of the Holy Cross, a religious holiday celebrated in many parts of Latin America that marks Byzantine Empress Saint Helena's search for the cross on which Jesus was crucified. Nasario Galicia tends the altar, tucked inside a nook in the stone walls of The Sleeping Woman. He blows incense. He ladles steaming, chili-infused tripe stew into bowls and presents them to the mountain deity. Next come mugs of coffee with brown sugar and cinnamon.
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