La Cofradía

Last weekend I found myself in Sacapulas for the fair there. While there were to be typical fair games and Ferris wheel, etc, the real draw for me was to see the ceremony of Diego's cofradía in honor of Santo Domingo.

Roberto and I arrived late in the afternoon at a covered area where an idol of Santo Domingo stood in front of a flower-strewn altar with pine needles spread around it on the floor. An ancient-looking man played chirimía, a kind of windwood that sounds like a bagpipe chanter, over the stumbling rhythm of a large drum.

After a time, a man and a boy emerged from a room behind the altar dressed head-to-toe in elaborate red costumes adorned with beads and sequins, complete with red mustachioed masks and thuribles. Diego explained to me that they were at once symbols of the Spaniards and of demons. After a while other men from the cofradía, dressed in nice suits, arrived and began a procession with the idol through the town, the musicians and Spanish demons dancing back and forth in tow.

As they left it began to rain. I sat with Roberto and his daughter Julia under the tin roof and waited as the clatter of the rain grew to a thundering din of great buckets from the sky. Water falling from the roof became a curtain and the gutters ran like hoses.

After a about an hour it subsided and a little later the cofradía returned with two more idols. Men spread pine needles throughout the space while members of the cofradía draped a new robe over one of the idols and placed all of them in glass cases over the altar. They sat on three benches surrounding the room and were each in turn served shots of Quetzalteca, a local liquor that packs a punch and tastes like vodka. Between the perhaps twenty-five of them, they downed nine quarts of the stuff.

After some speeches and formalities, dinner was served to all of beef broth and tomales and a marimba band began to play. People danced hand-in-hand in circles of five or six. After a dance with Julia, it was time to go.