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The Christmas bushes, twinkling lights, and crimson and inexperienced streamers had been up, and the principle avenue was lined with tents promoting sausages and popcorn, as horse-drawn carts clopped by.
It seemed like a typical Christmas competition avenue scene — besides it was February.
Yearly, Quinamayó, a city of about 6,000 in southwestern Colombia, observes a convention that dates again to the period of slavery and has endured as a technique to flip a historical past of oppression and struggling right into a celebration of pleasure.
Within the early 1800s, the city’s Afro-Colombian inhabitants was enslaved and compelled to work by way of December, attending to slaveholders’ vacation festivities. So Christmas was celebrated 40 days after the standard delivery date of Jesus — the period of time that the Virgin Mary is alleged to have rested after supply, and proper after the top of harvest season.
On a Saturday evening in February, the competition’s predominant procession started with a bunch of ladies in conventional ruffled floral attire, strolling by way of the moonlit streets. They had been quickly joined by ladies in grass skirts, representing Indigenous teams that Quinamayó’s Black residents think about as a part of their shared historical past of slavery.
Then got here three kids dressed as Joseph, Mary and the star of Bethlehem. Small angels in matching braids with white beads, and guardian troopers with pretend wood rifles, adopted.
Subsequent had been three youngsters, two ladies wearing flamingo-pink tulle hoop skirts and glittering tiaras, and a boy in a vibrant white go well with. Of their arms, they carried a gold child basket that held a doll representing the infant Jesus, who, like most individuals on this neighborhood, was Black.
The ceremony “is in our blood, it’s in our veins,” stated Mirna Rodríguez, 60, the procession’s coordinator.
When the Spanish colonized Colombia within the sixteenth century, they forbade the standard religions noticed by Indigenous and Afro-descendant populations, making Roman Catholicism because the regulation of the land.
“It was their tradition, their historical past, their ancestry, and it was ripped away from them within the worst means,” stated Miguel Ibarra, a doctoral researcher of Afro-Latino historical past within the close by metropolis of Palmira.
Lots of Colombia’s enslaved and Indigenous communities mixed Western Christian tradition with their very own ancestral traditions. Or within the case of Quinamayó’s residents, they developed new customs.
Whereas the Christmas-in-February custom has been commemorated because it started almost 200 years in the past, the celebration has exploded in reputation over the previous 20 years.
At this 12 months’s occasion, hundreds of individuals arrived by automobile, motorbike and public bus to this city surrounded by sugarcane fields, the place working water and electrical energy are spotty. A complete amusement park was trucked in.
Quinamayó is about an hour’s drive from Cali, Colombia’s third-largest metropolis on the Pacific coast, and has no accommodations, so friends stayed with buddies or stayed out all evening, partying into the subsequent day after the principle procession. On Sunday morning, revelers sobered up with fried pork and potatoes. Some had fallen asleep at restaurant tables because the bars continued to blare salsa.
Music is a crucial a part of the competition, with the echo of drums resounding far past the principle stage on the opening ceremony on Friday evening within the city’s central plaza.
“By the rhythm of the drum we give an vital message,” stated Norman Viáfara, one of many competition’s organizers. “We inform the world, society usually, that we’re prepared and keen to additionally be capable of attain the decision-making areas.”
The competition was canceled the previous two years due to the pandemic. Lots of Quinamayó’s elder members, who had been answerable for the festivities, died from Covid-19, stated Hugo Lasso, vice chairman of the competition’s planning committee.
After the principle procession completed, the city erupted into jubilation, the odor of gunpowder from sparklers hanging within the air as two males wearing elaborate ox and mule costumes carried out a mock struggle — a homage to the characters within the Bible’s Nativity scene.
All through the weekend, ladies in conventional costume danced the juga, characterised by a shuffling motion as dancers transfer in rotating circles, accompanied by musicians, or “jugueritos,” taking part in trombone and drums. Additionally generally referred to as fuga or “flee,” the dance is supposed to signify shackles and chains.
“One identifies with these customs,” stated Arbey Mina, a former director of the competition’s official jugueritos band. “In actual fact, that id isn’t immediately with slavery, however with what was performed to indicate that one was free, that possibly the physique was chained, however the soul had freedom.”
The essence of the competition for Mr. Mina, and lots of others, is a preservation of that id.
On Sunday, three teenage ladies within the city competed in a pageant, carrying handmade attire representing conventional elements of Quinamayó’s tradition.
The ladies strutted down the principle street towards the stage, accompanied by the jugueritos. After a juga dance efficiency, the time got here for questions.
When the judges requested Mabel Mancilla, 14, how the city’s residents might safeguard their id, she responded: “We should settle for ourselves as we’re. Meaning carrying the hair we had been born with. We shouldn’t be ashamed of being who we’re. Being Black is a privilege.”
Instantly the gang cheered: “That’s the one! That’s the one!”
Minutes later, Mabel was topped the winner.
“She shall be answerable for safeguarding our custom for a 12 months,” stated a neighborhood chief, Vanessa Peña.
Simply as Mabel was about to make a speech, a drizzle became rain, and wind knocked the facility out.
“We’re chilly, play the juga,” shouted some revelers. The jugueritos complied as viewers members danced within the rain.
Nothing, not even a storm, was going to cease Christmas in February.
Jaír Coll contributed reporting.
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