Any help/thoughts on religious folk art(?) primitive(?) painting I found at thrift store today?

I found this at a thrift early this morning; it was the only thing I found today but it's so different it was worth it!
It looks like a religious scene - like they are lining up to give gifts to a angel floating over a cross?
It has some writing in Spanish (I think) at the bottom - can anyone tell what it says?
I think it looks primitive/folk art but there is a 198 (something) date at the very end, so I'm not sure if primitive qualifies (they wouldn't put a date?)
Any thoughts/help would be greatly appreciated!

 

A close up of half - my damn photo program acting up again & won't let me reduce size of front half of painting - I'm sorry.

 

I'm seeing something like 22nd Biennial Congress... at the start of the writing.

 

In 1980 there was a "XXII Congreso Bienal Mundial Del Colegio internacional de Cirujanos" in Mexico which, according to Google, translates as "XXII Biennial World Congress of the International College of Surgeons". What, if anything, that has to do with this image is a mystery to me.

 

Well done! The work itself is an amate or bark painting. And it is a religious procession of some kind.

Debora

 

Thank you - and I'm wondering what it has to do with painting too - maybe homage to a patient who died while under a conference doctor's care? (Only thing I could think of)

 

I wouldn't be too sure there's a connection between the subject of the painting and the nature of the congress. It's more than possible that each attendee received a different work and the subjects varied.

Debora

 

Or a souvenir sold outside the hall. I hope the painter charged a surgeon's price.

 

What would you call it - folk art? Primitive?

 

I suppose folk art applies.

 

I agree, folk art. Don't forget to add the terms 'amate' and 'bark painting'.