Demons Dancing in the Streets

The last week in September marked the annual festival of San Jeronimo. San Jeronimo is the local patron saint of the area of Cusco where I live (also called, amazingly enough, San Jeronimo). In English, you may know him as Saint Jerome, who translated the Latin version of the Bible known as the Vulgate. San Jeronimo here is a large statue that dwells inside the church, comes out over Holy Week in March or April, returns a week later (accompanied by much dancing, food, and drinking), and is taken out of the church and paraded around again during the last week in September. Most schools in San Jeronimo have holidays over this time. Since PROMESA is not exactly into saint worship, we don't. But as we are in classes, we are hear strains of horn and drum music (typical fare for a saintly procession) floating across the air. For months before the actual event, leaving from the school in the afternoon, we see people practicing typical dances in the roofed concrete sport court close to the school. These people have to sign themselves up for these dances and pay for the teacher to come teach them. There is one family in charge of each dance. Someone estimated that these families probably spend 3000-4000 soles each on this event. This is equal to roughly $1000-$1300 American money, which is quite a considerably larger percentage of one's resources here than in the States. Unfortunately, the use of this money on the festival of San Jeronimo usually means that the money is not used on things that it really should be, things such as improving one's house or taking care of one's children. The actual festival seems to be mostly an excuse for a lot of drunkenness. Alcoholism is a real stronghold here. The picture of the horn player with the beer bottle in his hand shows this well. Our friend Marga's husband Cesar has a barber shop right along the main street in San Jeronimo. During the week of celebration, one afternoon contains a parade which passes right by the front door of the barber shop. Marga invited my roommate Carrie and I to go with her and her family to watch the parades in front of the barber shop. For me, it was a very interesting afternoon full of questions and thoughts. I was surprised by the number of dances that involved demons (hence the title of this blog post). My thought was "If San Jeronimo is a saint (to the Catholics here) and people worship him as such, then why in the world would there be so many demon dances during a festival to honor him? What fellowship does light have with darkness?" In my way of thinking, it didn't make sense. I think it really hit me when the parade got stopped a little ways down from us. Two girls ran down the middle of the street to look at it. They came back yelling "Saqra! (Devil in Quechua)" with the chill of thrilling terror that ghost stories around a camp fire often give children. Even some of the dances contained "Saqra" in the name. My friend Lisi gave me an explanation for this phenomenon that I really liked and which really made sense to me. She said, "If San Jeronimo is a demon (from an evangelical point of view, since he is worshipped as an idol), then it makes sense that other demons would be around him and be a part of the celebration." Simple. True. Another interesting fact that Marga shared with us later, while reflecting on the dances, is that they are changing as the world changes. Skirt hems move from knees to thighs to upper thighs. More dances involve demons and ugly masks. Fewer are innocent and beautiful. There are more dances. It was interesting to note this bit of information. All in all, it was an interesting, afternoon of dances, music, food and lots of color. It made me realize again just how lost those of the world are, those who carry around their unmoving gods on their shoulders, dancing as demons for demons.