Convite de Locos

The Convite de Locos is a parade held every year and is one of San Miguel’s biggest celebrations. Convite means, invitation to celebrate, and just about everyone in the town and surrounding area does. It’s held in honor of Saint Anthony of Padua (our neighborhood’s namesake), who, among many other things, is also known as the Saint of the Gardeners. The tradition began a couple hundred years ago when the orchard workers would dress up as scarecrows and go around town distributing fruits and vegetables to celebrate the harvest.

Over time the scarecrow costumes evolved into “Locos” costumes. There are now scarecrows, clowns, Disney characters, political figures, and just about anything you can think of.

The modern day parade began about 100 years ago with groups of neighborhoods beginning to form into organized parade groups (families, neighbors, coworkers, etc.) that dress alike and dance down the streets together distributing TONS of candy instead of fruits and vegetables.

The population of San Miguel de Allende is ~75,000, with another 100,000 in the surrounding municipality. Estimates for the parade this year were 13,000 participants, and 80,000 spectators. So, yeah, this parade is huge by San Miguel standards. Not to be missed.

The candy haul was already getting heavy for these little arms.

This older lady was having as much fun at the parade as anyone else I saw. Dancing and laughing the entire time.

Her husband was a very nice guy who was shooting Facebook videos the entire time and kept trying to tag us, though I don’t think that ever worked out.

After a full morning of eating candy and cheering on the parade we needed tacos. Tacos de Alambre—my kids don’t like cheese on their tacos, but every so often I can’t resist ordering a plate of this deliciousness for myself. Pastor, cheese, onions and peppers.