La Feria

Last week was fair week in San Cristóbal Verapaz, which is one of the two biggest celebrations of the year. A week of parades, dances, music . . . and oh yes, fireworks . . . led up to Saint Christopher's day, July 25, which was the climax of all activity.

I started the week off with a Sunday trip to an evangelical church in a small village called El Rancho, where I had been invited to a service by the pastor. I took the morning to walk around the village and enjoy the beautiful mountain air. It reminds me a lot of Colorado--clear blue skies, mountians with towering pine trees, the smell of wood-burning fires--if you just ignore the palm trees.

Traditional Pokom House

My pew-mate at church

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The week of events started on Monday with the parade for all of the elementary school kids in the municipality of San Cristóbal. This includes all of the aldeas (villages) in the hills. Some students traveled for 2 hours to come march in the parade!

They were cute, but I ended up following a different parade, a procession of dancers accompanied by a marimba trio who split off from the main parade and carved their own path through the town. (It turns out that it is quite common to have two, or even three, parades going on at the same time during fair week in San Cristóbal. In such a small town, one can even get trapped in a "bermuda triangle" of parades from which it is impossible to escape until they all end).

I followed the procession to the Barrio of San Cristóbal (there are several different "barrios" or neighborhoods in the Town of San Cristóbal, one of which is itself called Barrio San Cristóbal). I saw them perform the "Baile del Venado," which is actually a medley of 5 or so different bailes which lasts for around two hours. They invited me for lunch (picture me surrounded by 35 drunk sweaty men speaking a language I can't understand), and I proceeded to come back to the barrio every day that week. They danced every day, accompanying an array of other traditions, such as sacrificing--and sharing the meat of--a bull (I had to bring a pineapple in exchange for my share of meat), marching through the streets with various patron saints, lots of eating, drinking aguardiente . . . and oh yes fireworks. I went from morning to night with cotton in my ears (no such thing as ear plugs here) because I never knew when someone would light a bomb right next to me, or start a set of fireworks. The bombs are actually very useful. They're the San Cristóbal version of twitter--you can hear from anywhere in town exactly where the procession is at any given time. I never had to ask anyone where the procession was going that day. I'd just wake up, get dressed, and follow the bombs.

Marimba Trio accompanied by deer dancers in the parade

Baile del Venado in the Barrio San Cristóbal

Don Cupertino, looking ultra-hip with my sunglasses on

Vicktor and me dancing to a marimba corrido on the last night of the fair week

Me trying to distribute the correct photo of each one of the venado dancers. This proved impossible to do; photo prints are pretty expensive there so they were so excited that they grabbed them right out of my hands. Here, I'm trying, in vain, to restore order.

El Diablo, preparing to dance around while his "wings" are aflame.

No such thing as "liability" in Guatemala

I was very lucky to be invited to all of these amazing, and somewhat exclusive events. San Cristóbal is rich with color, culture, sights, sounds, and sabór. This is my final week here, and I'll be busy finishing the theater workshops I've been teaching in the aldeas around San Cristóbal. Next week off to Tactic for their fair week, then to Chamelco and finally a little R & R on the Caribbean coast before returning back to the states.