The ritual of the voladores

The ritual ceremony of the voladores is among the oldest surviving rites of Mesoamerica, kept most faithfully by the Totonac of the Veracruz highlands around Papantla and the ancient city of El Tajín. A tall pole — once a tree felled and raised with prayers asking the mountain's pardon — stands at the centre. Five men in red and white, hung with mirrors and feathered headdresses, climb to a small rotating platform at the top. There the caporal stands and plays a flute and small drum, turning to salute the sun and each of the four cardinal directions, while the other four bind their waists to ropes wound around the pole's crown. At the caporal's signal the four launch backwards into space, arms spread, and spiral slowly head-down toward the ground as the unwinding ropes lower them; each makes thirteen revolutions, and four flyers times thirteen turns gives the fifty-two years of the Mesoamerican calendar round. The flight is an offering — a petition for the fertility of the earth and harmony with the sun and the winds — and the caporal's music, played while he balances unroped on the summit, is its devotional core. UNESCO inscribed the rite in 2009, recognising the Totonac performance as the most faithful to its origins. The voladores fly at El Tajín for visitors through the year and most fully at the feast of Corpus Christi in Papantla; the rite is taught in dedicated schools to keep it alive for the next generation.