I spent the last 5 days up in Huamanchuco with Greg, first visiting the baños termales (hot springs) in Yanasara, and then staying in Huamanchuco itself for the Festival de los Negritos.
Yes, Festival de los Negritos translates to the "Festival of Black People." And it really does involve kids and adults alike painting themselves face, hands and feet in black paint and dancing around the city. I am still trying to figure out where it came from. Last week I posted a link on Facebook/Google+ to the Wikipedia page about the Festival de San Blas in Spain--it was at the time the only information I could find that remotely explained why, in a sierra town where there probably isn´t a single black person, this tradition might have started: In Spain, according to legend (according to Wikipedia), there was once a family of 7 brothers who came to dance at the Festival de San Blas and beg for money. After 16 years doing 16 different dances, they apparently ran out of dances and decided to instead paint their faces black to avoid recognition (because that makes sense). Now Spain celebrates their dances (in blackface) the 2-3 of February, and apparently Huamanchuco, Peru does the same on October 4th. (http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Negritos_de_San_Blas)
But then on Sunday, I had lunch with Greg´s family and other Huamanchuco volunteers, and from what they have gathered, this festival is completely separate from Spain´s (there are TWO blackface festivals in the world?!). For one, it coincides with the festival for San Francisco de Asis (not San Blas), hence the difference in dates. And according to Huamanchuco´s legends, there was once a slave who died, and then came back to life with a rose in his mouth, the symbol of San Fran himself. How the slave died, and why the saint chose this particular slave to resurrect, remains a mystery to me, but whatever the reason, the memory of this miracle is still celebrated during his festival.
Once I got over being horrified by the thought of what would happen if anyone tried to replicate this in the United States, the costumes were pretty intense. There was a whole parade of students dressed up as San Francisco de Asis (with black and white saintly-looking robes), barefoot and painted black from head to toe, dancing around the plaza. Earlier in the day, they had "painted" giant murals on the streets around the plaza with colored sawdust and fresh flowers, and unfortunately the parade went right through them and destroyed the drawings before I could get a picture. You´ll just have to take my word for it that it was pretty neat.
Of course, something that Greg and I ate in Yanasara (or was it the street gelatina we had right before we left?) made me sick, so I spent most of the actual festival day in the hotel, sneaking out to watch the parade from the balcony for all of 2 minutes. Such is the life of a PCV :)
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