Sixteenth-century fiestas were announced by drums and the chirimía—a shrill flute from Aztec-Toltec-Mayan days. Dancers performed in front of the big house or danced in a patio or on the tiles of the church plaza. They wore harlequin-like costumes, feathered headdresses, conquest clothes, white trousers sashed with red, giant sombreros, masks; they flaunted wands, shields, spears, bows, and arrows. Ankle rattles hissed. Gourds thumped and rustled. Only male dancers participated.
In the far south, at estates in Chiapas, Yucatán, Quintana Roo, and Campeche, the marimba replaced the flute and drum. Sometimes six or eight musicians pounded out music simultaneously on four or five instruments.
In the north, on Sonoran and Chihuahuan haciendas, the violin was the chief instrument. Fashioned with no other tools than pieces of glass and a knife, it supplied basic rhythms, one or several instruments wailing for Yaqui and Tarahumaran dances.
Flowers decked every fiesta. Gardenias were tossed into the fountains, carnations were woven into bell ropes, and rambler roses were spun around ox cart wheels and wagon wheels. Blossoms filled churches and chapels with fragrance, they crisscrossed patios on wires, they brightened roadside shrines.
Food and drink were plentiful: tortillas, beans, beans cooked with beef or chicken, pots and pots of beans, iron caldrons of soup, meat barbecued on spits, ox and goat, barrels of punch, buckets of pulque, barrels of beer, bottles of tequila, and, of course, cognac—for the gente de razón (gentry).