Slaughter

Don’t tell them I was a vegetarian once.

Last Friday night I stood in the back of a heavy diesel truck, clinging to the bars of the cage that enclosed the truck bed, and prayed as we tugged our way up a muddy, slippery road somewhere in the hills of Macaracas.  The rainy season, which we have just entered, left the unpaved, ungraveled road to the house where the party was a sticky mess, but we somehow managed to arrive to a house neatly tucked in a low pasture, already blasting tipico music from speakers the same size as the truck bed.  Earlier that day the family had slaughtered a cow and a pig in honor of their son’s graduation and were preparing for the multitude to arrive and eat every last piece of cooked meat on the property.  We came in with the man of the hour himself and enjoyed a quiet night of increasingly drunk farmers and pre-game dancing.

The following morning my first serving of meat was at approximately 7 AM, when I was handed a plate of stewed beef over bollo (boy-yo), which is something resembling a dense tamale.  I put myself to work helping make chicha de junta—a juice of ground cooked corn mixed with sugar cane honey and ginger.  After working in the back and showering, I came out to the front of the house to find, to my surprise, a totally full house.  In spite of the rain that refused to let up the night before, people came, arriving by the truckload or hiking in, sliding precariously through the continuously worsening entrance to yard. 

A tipico band started to play and the day flew by as follows: dancing, meat, dancing, rice, soup, dancing, spinning, drinking (juice for me and beer and liquor for the men), singing, clapping, meat, dancing, followed by more dancing followed by more meat followed by more dancing, until finally we sang and jumped our eyeballs out to a CD of pop reggaeton songs and I could barely stir up the energy to say no thanks I’m tired to a few over-eager teenage dance partner hopefuls.  As everyone hung up hammocks or rolled out mattresses in the back room of the house, I curled up in a corner and fell into a deep meat-induced coma.

The morning cooking. That giant pot in the back is soup!

A matanza (mah-tahn-zah), or slaughter, is the Panamanian equivalent of a barbeque, in the sense that whenever there is something big to celebrate, get together for, or raise funds for, a slaughter is generally the answer.  In all other senses it is completely different.  Every usable part of the cow is cooked.  There is always music, which is always accompanied by dancing.  There is no ketchup, no hot dog buns, no bread. Instead, rice, boiled cassava, and bollo are the side dishes.  The food and drink comes in waves that never seem to end.

And the party favors?  As we left on Sunday, my friend (the graduate) handed me several thin strips of smoked beef to cook and eat when I got home.

The video below is what I caught of some of the dancing at the height of the party in the afternoon.  Enjoy:

Queening

The gymnasium was unlike I had ever seen it before.  Kids, parents, community members rolled in dressed to the nines and/or sporting the colors of the girl they were supporting for this year's Chica Rubi (Miss Ruby).  Pink. Purple.  Orange. Celeste.  I was bombarded by a group of seventh graders covered in fuchsia, one sticking a bright pink price tag to my white shirt (which I had purposefully worn so as to be neutral).  "Support Maricris!" she shouted, playing with her pink mardi gras beads and top hat, and moved on to tag my friend Jaimito, who was already fanning himself, sweating in the sauna created by hundreds of spectators.  We immediately moved into the voting line, where the very tickets we paid for were cast back into boxes decorated by the candidates, the booth monitored on both sides by professors.

Camps were set up throughout the crowd, pink and purple being the clear true contenders with helium balloon creations and gigantic blobs of rowdy fans, flags, noisemakers, candy.  The ceremony began.

And then...murga (see word of the week for definition).  My favorite part.  A thumping brass band brought in specifically to animate the crowd, plays while the candidates and their supports and everyone else dances, jumps, screams.  I liken murga bands to New Orleans brass bands, but murga crowds are nothing like their US counterparts.  Everyone knows this dance, grew up with it, knows when to jump and scream and when it's all coming.  Queen supporters use murga time as the time to prove to all the other queens that their queen is the best, deserves the biggest crowd, the most excitement, the best dancing. Each queen entered, to much fanfare, while the murga played and they did their dance up to the stage (that's right, queens aren't just escorted in.  They dance in.).

Several murga breaks, performances from a break dance team, folkloric dancers, and one passa-passa (kind of like pop-n-lock) dancer later, the votes had been counted.  The whole crowd on it's feet, the girls in their gowns, everyone sweating, a teacher announced the winner.

Fuchia.

The crowd erupted.  More flag waving, dancing, dancing, and more dancing, which finally filed out into the street with the band to make the circle through town all the way back to Maricris' house.  Miss Ruby, a blooming seventh grader, will be the school's representative at every event until next year's crowning, arriving to festivals, parades, and fairs amidst more murga to dance and wave.

As you may have already guessed, being a queen is a huge deal here, and people put a huge amount of effort into it.  Girls start waving and dancing as young as five years old (seriously, my friend's school had a five year old queen this year).  Reaching the big time means being a contender at carnaval, your face everywhere in the streets starting only a month after the last carnaval ends.  There are songs, lights, glitter.  Our high school coronation is only one part, one humble reflection of what it's like.

In any case, here's a part of it:

Maricris' (fuchsia) entrance

trying to capture the fans dancing

all the candidates on stage with last year's queen