Presentation in the school yard.
The 15th of September is Guatemala’s independence day, but they have a tradition here where they light a torch in Antigua, Guatemala on the 13th, and delegates from all over the country go to light a flame off it, which they then carry back to their homes. The delegates from our town were made up largely of the school director and teachers, and the whole thing plays out a bit like the olympic torch where they don’t just bring the flame back, they run it here in teams. We, of course, had no clue about much of this until it all happened. We’d been asked a few weeks earlier to judge the Niña de la Independencia beauty contest on the evening of the 14th, and we knew the torch would arrive before the contest which was to start at 8pm, which meant it would really start about 9.
Sunday the 14th was pouring down rain and cold, so we spent most of the day inside just hanging out. About 3:30 in the afternoon just after I’d fixed myself some coffee and sat down with a book, Fletch was standing at the window and said, “There’s a ton of people heading down the road! I’m going with them!” He threw on his rain coat and took off. I opted to enjoy my coffee. An hour or so later I started to wonder where he’d gone, and then I felt a little bad I hadn’t gone to see what was up myself, but not too bad. I kept reading until about 6 when Reigna came to tell me the torch was coming. I headed down to the school to wait for its arrival along with my host family and everyone else in the village.
We waited for probably a half hour with marimba music blaring in the background before anything happened. As the sky was darking you could see in the distance a snake of light getting longer and longer as it curved up the road to the school. It was really quite pretty, and kind of reminded me of the scene in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast when the villagers storm the castle. Luckily this was much less violent, as in, not at all violent. In fact, it was quite pretty, and I was glad to have stayed behind to watch from where I was. The messenger runner arrived to tell us the torch was on its way, but didn’t say much, since we could all pretty well see that for ourselves. I started taking pictures and as all the school kids with gasoline soaked rags in coffee cans attached to turned wooden legs (and why not, since just about everyone’s dad here is a carpenter) came running past me and in to the school yard, so too came Fletch running and waving the Guatemalan flag like crazy.
Everyone stood in the school yard for speeches and then national anthem. The school director gave a big speech and at one point thanked God everything had gone so well and nothing bad had happened. I looked around at 200 kids with lit torches and thought, “Yeah, someone probably should thank God.” The kids were happy as clams holding their torches high, and happier still when the whole thing was over and they got to spill the contents out on the pavement and dance around the flames. Pretty funny.
As contest judges we ate with the school teachers beforehand, and they invited us to run with them next year for the torch–an offer I do believe we’ll take them up on. And all of them praised dear Jaime, who showed up out of nowhere to help get the kids to the school house running with torches. “He’s was just so wonderful, so helpful!” 🙂
Just as we had anticipated, the beauty contest started about 9pm. I had been fairly dreading the whole thing, being that I’m pretty opposed to the whole idea of beauty contests. But more than anything, this was a great show of patriotism, and there were only 4 candidates–ranging in age from 6 to 13.
The coolest part was the show of regional trajes, the traditional indigenous wear, but all in all the experience was quite strange. The two littlest girls were cute and occassionally frightened looking, but when we smiled at them they beamed back at us. The two older girls where a different story. One looked like she was going to throw up at any second for the entire duration of the contest, and the other just looked like she was pissed as hell. I tried smiling at them, and nothing. I tried it over and over and their expressions never changed. It was so bizarre, and kind of disturbing. There have been lots of studies done that indicate pre-pubescent girls have far fewer inhibitions than matured girls, but it was like we were looking at happy little girls and beat down young women. How does one judge that? The numbers on my score sheet had the two little girls winning first and second place. The overall results gave one of the little girls first place and one of the older girls second place. Jaime and I got to thank everyone for their beautiful presentations and announce the winners. The experience was pretty funny, but I was also quite thankful when it ended, if for no other reason than that the two older contestants were released from their apparent misery.
Jaime gettin' his dance on with Catarina.
A dance followed the contest, and the judges and contestants got to kick it all off. The music was, of course, marimba, which means it didn’t vary much, and the dance is this double step in a circle over and over and over and over. Men and women never touch. It was fun for a few rounds, though as midnight approached and no one continued to dance after the judges stopped, we decided to go home and sleep.
The actual 15th was interesting in that there was marimba ALL day, and randomly some bombas (huge firecracker) so loud they shook the house when they went off. Everyone who walked by our door asked if we were going to go to the dance (that was where all the music was coming from) and kept telling us we had to get there before it ended! There was much talk in the weeks before the 15th of me donning a traje to go dance in, and the talk continued all day long. All the women wanted to see me dressed up and I kept saying, “Sure come on over and show me how to tie up the corte, then we’ll go dance.” They all seemed pretty amused at the idea, but no one ever came. The two of us wondered down to dance a few rounds right before the evening ending, so as to show our support for the whole event, but once we’d shown our faces we went home to enjoy the freshly killed sheep in the form of stew for Nas Palas’ birthday celebration.