A 42-foot-tall monstrosity will burn into the night sky over Santa Fe tonight, taking with it the past year's glooms and despair of the chanting crowd below.
Will Shuster's Zozobra, an effigy of "old man gloom" that has become part of New Mexico's culture since its inception in 1924, is named after the Santa Fe artist who began the annual tradition that sets off the Fiestas de Santa Fe.
"Turned off by the exclusiveness and religious tone of the fiesta, Schuster and his artist friends built an 18-foot-tall marionette and burned it in his back yard to give the event a little more spice," event producer Ray Valdez said.
Valdez said that over the years, the concept of burning the figure came to represent the cleansing of all festival particpants' bad luck. By 1927, the marionette was enlarged to 42 feet and was burned in public the day before the beginning of the fiestas, he said.
The event has since moved to Fort Marcy Park in Santa Fe to accommodate the ever- growing crowd.
"Legend has it that a Santa Fe newspaper eventually named the figure after opening an old dictionary to the last word, and it had everything in it that they (Shuster and crew) wanted it to mean," Valdez said. "It means despair, anxiety and gloom."
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Valdez said while the event's cultural aspect is important, its most important attribute is that all the proceeds of the event, which garners close to $100,000 a year, go to benefit local youth.
Shuster handed all Zozobra rights over to the Santa Fe Downtown Kiwanis Foundation around 1960 so the money raised from the event could support youth programs, Valdez said.
According to the event's Web site, proceeds from Zozobra provide college scholarships to local high school seniors, grants to local nonprofit organizations that focus on Santa Fe youth and an endowment fund for college scholarships.
UNM senior Jennifer Gonzales said she and her boyfriend make the annual pilgrimage to Santa Fe because they enjoy being part of something historical and feel "cleansed" when they leave.
"I know it sounds corny, but I feel like I have a clean slate when I leave the park that night," Gonzales said. "Besides, it is nice to see all the people and see what changes they've made to the doll that year."
Eric Johnson, deputy chief of the Santa Fe Police Department, said between 40,000 and 60,000 people usually attend the burning of Zozobra, which takes about six weeks to build. Thousands of dollars and hundreds of pounds of materials go into the marionette's construction, he added.
Valdez said 250 yards of fabric are needed to dress the doll, which has grown to 49 feet in recent years. He said more than 200 yards of chicken wire are needed to construct the body's frame, and one of the event's most recent and creative additions is 900 pounds of shredded legal documents belonging to local residents seeking to rid themselves of bad luck.
Johnson said the event was moved from Friday to Thursday night in 1998 to ease the problem of dispersing the large crowd.
"Unlike Friday night, there is nothing going on afterwards that would make the crowd want to linger in the park," Johnson said. "That helps alleviate the possibility of unfortunate incidents."
In 1998 a shooting near the venue left one local teenager dead.
Laura Montoya, coordinator of UNM's Getaway Adventures, which has been sponsoring a bus transporting students to Zozobra since 1981, said international and out of state students are amazed by the event.
"Students from out of state are dumbfounded that such an event occurs, much less that it has become part of our culture," Montoya said. "Going to Zozobra gives them a first hand opportunity to see just how rich the traditions of our state are."
