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Monday, October 26, 2009
El Kookooee's Lady Friend Goes Up in Smoke
By Aurelio Sanchez
Journal Staff Writer
April Williams hesitantly disclosed the burning fear she hoped would be burned away along with a stylishly appointed "La Novia del Coco," aka the Boogeyman's girlfriend, stoically awaiting her infernal fate.
"I'm afraid of the swine flu," Williams said, holding 8-month-old son, Zayland, in her arms.
"I'm hoping we don't get it and that God blesses us with a good life, and that my son grows up and has a good life," she said Sunday, sitting on a small chair next to her husband, Joe Ingram, at Rio Bravo Park on Isleta SW.
As a cool, brisk wind blew and to background music like Jackie Wilson's rendition of "Light My Fire," and the Pointer Sisters' "Fire," several hundred people gathered to immolate a 25-foot El Kookooee at the 19th annual festival in Albuquerque's South Valley.
It's believed that if you write down or express your fears and send them to the flames, you need not fear anymore. Some also said that putting one's hopes into the cleansing flames will help to bring them to fruition.
This time, for the first time, the burning figure had a figure: a haughty, rather snooty and soon-to-be-sooty woman draped in a little black dress fashionably appointed with silver glitter, pink buttons, pink ballerina shoes, white pearl necklace and black bracelet.
"I think it's cool; I like her outfit, and her hair, and her earrings are pretty cool," Nicole, 26, said, flanked by her 10-year-old son, Antonio Trujillo, who was at the festival for the first time.
"It's supposed to take away your fears, but I don't know," Antonio said skeptically.
Meanwhile, James Lopez and his fiancee, Claudia, were there with their two children, Destiny, 23 months, and Christopher, 10 months.
"Destiny has a habit of just getting up and wanting to leave," James Lopez said of his daughter, who is about to enter her "terrible twos."
"So when she does that, we tell her el Coco is going to get her. It seems to work on her," he said of the imaginary monster used by parents for generations to scare their children into good behavior.
"I know one thing, it used to work on me," he said.
As for their hopes, the couple yearn for a nice home and for their children to grow up in a nice environment, they said.
Patricia Hernandez was busily writing on scraps of paper she planned to put into a flammable collection bag at the base of La Novia. Asked what fears she would be subjecting to the flames, she replied, "Those are my secrets."
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