Santa Fe National Historic Trail (Part 3)

Children dressed in white represent "glooms" who dance beneath Zozobra. 

A fire spirit dancer dressed in red leads the event and also dances around Zozobra. Her role is to scare away the small “glooms” as she represents the light that sends away the bad energy of the year. After her dance is completed, the fireworks attached to Zozobra are lit and the effigy is burned.  

The first Burning of Zozobra was conducted in 1924 by artist William Howard Shuster, Jr. for a group of friends and fellow artists known as Los Cinco Pintores, or “The Five Painters.” He adapted the practice from the Holy Week traditions of the Yaqui indigenous peoples of Arizona and Mexico who would lead a donkey carrying an effigy of Judas through the village before setting it on fire. Shuster and his friend E. Dana Johnson came up with the name Zozobra.  

The first Zozobra was only six feet tall but the effigy created two years later for the first public Burning of Zozobra measured 20 feet tall. Over the years, the size of the effigy continued to grow until reaching its current height of 50 feet. Shuster directed the construction of Zozobra until 1964 after which point the Kiwanis Club of Santa Fe was entrusted with the responsibility. The Burning of Zozobra, which started 62 years before the more well-known Burning Man, is now part of the F