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There are forty nine important mostly secular festivals through the year, with the most important being the Feria de la Nieve, Feria de la Alegría y el Olivo, and the Flor más Bellas del Ejido.

The “ Flor más Bella del Ejido ” ( Most Beautiful Flower of the Ejido or Field ) pageant is a borough-wide event dedicated to fjthe beauty of Mexican indigenous women.

The origins of this event are traced back over 220 years with symbolism that is based on the pre-Hispanic notion of a “ flower-woman ” representative of Mother Earth and fertility.

This flower-woman is based on the goddess Xochiquetzal, the goddess of flowers and love, robbed from her husband Tlaloc by Tezcatlipoca.

After the Conquest, this “ flower-woman ” symbol survived and would appear at certain Catholic festivals such as the Viernes de Dolores, or the Friday before Palm Sunday.

An official pageant dedicated to this was established in 1786.

Originally, its purpose was religious but it eventually became secularized.

For this reason, the event was moved to a week before the Viernes de Dolores and then called the Viernes de las Amapolas.

The event existed in this form for 170 years, with dancing, food, pulque, charros and pageants featuring china poblanas.

In 1902, the tradition diminished as the last of the canals connecting the area with the Jamaica market closed.

In 1921, the El Universal newspaper held a beauty pageant for the 100th anniversary of the end of the Mexican War of Independence, calling it “ La India Bonita ” dedicated to indigenous women.

The first winner was María Bibiana Uribe.

In 1936, another pageant was created for mestizo women called “ la Flor Más Bella del Ejido ” or the Most Beautiful Flower of the Ejido, which occurred each year on the Viernes de Dolores in the Santa Anita area.

This event was moved to San Andres Mixquic in the 1950s, but the lack of crowds had it move again in 1955 to Xochimilco, where it remains.