Today we had a bit of a cutural experience. My Spanish class went to a village called San Andres Iztapa. The village is fairly typical except that they have a special chapel there to worship the wicked Saint Simon. To call it a church is a bit of an stretch, although it’s in the shape of the church. There were a couple of rituals occuring simultaniously. Inside the church, people were lining up to go up to the alter and be hit all over their bodies with herbs and then have aguardiente (alcohol) spit out all over them by a lady in front of the statue of Saint Simon. There were people kneeling and liting cadles as well. Outside people were making small fires of incense, wood, candles, eggs, candies, and a number of other odd and sundry items. There would be some words said and then the fire was lit. Some people knelt really close to it and others jumped over it. We watched this for close to two hours waiting in anticipation to see what would happen with a chicken we saw one group of ladies bring into the courtyard. As the ladies were getting the fire ready, the two young girls were playing with the chicken. The chicken’s minutes were numbers because when the fire got going this nice old lady pulled the head off the Chicken (about 10 feet from where I was sitting). With blood soaked hands, she proceeded to throw the head on the fire and then when the body stopped moving (as in “running around like a chicken with your head cut off”) she threw the torso on the fire. The worshiping of, or perhaps praying to, San Simon is a mixture of some Catholic rituals and some indiginous riturals, although neither would claim it and I’m certainly not ready to sign-up. It wasn’t at all tourisy, but we didn’t feel out of place or unwelcome either. I’ve seen a lot of things in my time, but the sacrificing of a Chicken now ranks up there. After our few ours in Iztapa we returned to the town of Chimalentango for lunch…I had beef.
No comments:
Post a Comment