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: