AP PHOTOS: Cubans 'bury' man alive in mock funeral
AP PHOTOS: Cubans 'bury' man alive in mock funeral
By ANNE-MARIE GARCIA
Associated Press
February 7, 2014 Updated 3 hours ago
SANTIAGO DE LAS VEGAS, Cuba — Cuban villagers staged a mock funeral and burial of a living man this week in a boozy festival that has become an annual tradition in a small town near Havana.
A tractor pulled a trailer slowly through the streets in the early morning carrying the man in a coffin and a four-piece tropical band. Behind it, dozens of people drank, clapped and sashayed to the music, as a white-haired woman pretending to be the bereaved widow wept loudly for the "deceased."
"What a good man he was," Carmen Zamora cried, dabbing at her eyes with a kerchief. "He's leaving me all alone. I don't want them to bury him in the ground. My God, no."
The celebration in Santiago de las Vegas, about 12 miles (20 kilometers) south of the Cuban capital, has been held each Feb. 5 for the last 30 years and is known as the Burial of Pachencho.
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http://www.thestate.com/2014/02/07/3250213/cubans-bury-man-alive-in-mock.html#storylink=cpy