Tenosique, Tabasco January 19, 2006
Dating back to pre-Hispanic times, the traditional "Pochó" dance means it’s Carnaval time in Tabasco.The Pochó is a series of dances and other ancestral ceremonies, executed well to the compass of a melodious and sad music that symbolizes the man's purification through the fight among the and the bad. This dance is performed by masked locals, many dressed as jaguars and tigers.
The characters of this dance are those ' cojoes', superior creatures of the nature in who the gods have deposited positive and negative features, act that you/they represent when being placed the masks. It is a return to the innocence by means of a purification act since, at the end, all decide ' to pick up their pasos', that is to say, to retrace their life of reproof acts, and to destroy inside themselves, to the god Pochó, wicked god that he/she wants the destruction of the men for what sends to those “tigers” to eliminate them.
The Pochó performances begin on January 19 at the main park in Tenosique and on all subsequent Sundays prior to the commencement of Carnival. On the last day, the dancers, "pick up their steps" or dance backwards from the main square to the church where the dance began.
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