Bear riding ceremony?

[yabob]

The discussion on flagellents and the Penitentes of New Mexico reminded me of this.

In Richard Bradford’s novel “Red Sky at Morning”, set in New Mexico, he has a section involving a Christmas celebration in a remote Spanish-speaking village where the people are members of an unapproved offshoot Catholic sect. A reenactment of the nativity takes place, with an interaction between the pregnant woman playing the part of the Virgin Mary and a chained live bear:

Now, beside her thin wet dress and boots, she wore a pair of canvas work gloves - for bite protection I guessed - and a crown made of wreathed evergreens. It was a ridiculous costume, but something about her, her huge belly perhaps, or her serene expression, kept it from being funny. She approached the the tethered bear with no sign of fear, walked around the men who were holding the animal and, raising her wet dress almost to her hips, clumsily straddled the bear’s wide back.

The crowd was silent, the men struggled noiselessly with their chains, and the woman on the bear stroked its thick neck and whispered to it, leaning forward on its shoulder hump. Amadeo was watching intently, with a faint look of disapproval. Victoria was hiding her eyes. There was no sound except the sharp cracking of the fire and the bear’s panting.

(The woman’s dress is wet because earlier in the ceremony when she was enacting getting turned away from the inn, a bucket of water was thrown on her)

Is Bradford describing a ceremony that is actually practiced? After this point, its “normal” progress is interrupted by an action by the character in the book. I can’t find any references for it. Bradford seems to use authentic settings, but this incident wasn’t the central point of the book - he was essentially using it as a plot device in what is a “coming of age” story.