Elvis Romero and Fiesta de Santa Fe Featuring Zozobra's Great Escape

by Andrew Leo Lovato

Overview

For three centuries, the Fiesta de Santa Fe has commemorated historical events including the Spanish reconquest of New Mexico by Don Diego de Vargas in 1692 and the confraternity of the Rosary named in honor of La Conquistadors. Over the generations the oldest community celebration in the country has evolved to include elaborate parades and processions, including the royal court of De Vargas and La Reins, and memorably, the burning in effigy of Zozobra, or Old Man Gloom, drawing locals and visitors each autumn. Accompanied by rare historical photographs, this book illuminates what is special about Santa Fe's yearly celebration in a fiesta memoir and novella centered around Zozobra by Santa Fe native and cultural observer Andrew Leo Lovato. "Children are the heart of Fiesta," writes Lovato. And so enters Lovato's altar ego, a fictional character named Elvis Romero, who, with his cousin Pepa, engages in a scheme to rescue Zozobra from his inevitable demise. In a Huck Finn tale for all ages, Lovato captures the essence of Fiesta de Santa Fe as only a child can experience it. It is a heartwarming tale that will make readers cheer for Elvis--and Zozobra.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780890135327
Publisher:	Museum of New Mexico Press
Publication date:	07/15/2011
Pages:	76
Product dimensions:	7.60(w) x 9.50(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Andrew Leo Lovato is a professor of speech communication at Santa Fe Community College. He is the author of numerous books and articles relating to New Mexico history and culture, including Santa Fe Hispanic Culture: Preserving Identity in a Tourist Town (University of New Mexico Press).

Editorial Reviews

A history of Santa Fe's distinctive annual festival is packaged with old photos, bundled with an uninspired short story and unlikely to find either an adult or a child audience.

After opening with a mini-memoir addressed to adults, Lovato harks back to memories of Santa Fe in the early 1960s for a tale of two 10-year-olds who conceive a sudden sympathy for the giant puppet constructed to be ritually burnt each year during Fiesta. "Despite our heavy yoke of apprehension, we felt compelled to fight this impending crime," young Elvis woodenly recollects. Then, having hauled "Zozobra" into hiding, the narrator guiltily confesses to a priest ("the pit in my stomach began to dissipate"), who agrees to spill the beans without naming the culprits. Following this anticlimactic episode, the author goes on to trace the Fiesta's history from its 18th-century origins through the invention of Zozobra and the Historical/Hysterical Parade by the town's Anglo artist's colony in the 1920s to its modern blend of civic and religious, as well as multicultural, elements. The photos, all taken between 1911 and 1964, cover only a relatively small span of the Fiesta's history, and, being all black and white, fail to capture the colors of the floats and costumes.

Klunky and unfocused—steer young readers to Jennifer Owings Dewey's more dramatic Zozobra! The Story of Old Man Gloom, with photographs by Jeanie Puleston Fleming (2004). (Fact/fiction blend. 10-12, adult)

Kirkus Reviews