Ecuador: La Mama Negra
Each September a small Andean village in the heart of Ecuador springs to life with a chaotic mix of music, dance, drink and tradition, as John Dennehy discovered.
Latacunga is a small, mostly indigenous city right in the middle of Ecuador, built in the shadow of one of the world’s tallest active volcanoes: Cotopaxi. In recorded history the city has been destroyed and rebuilt three times by eruptions. Out of this devastation and a deep religious faith within the community, La Mama Negra was born.
For such a hectic and confusing festival it is fitting that the actual origin is very much open to debate.
The further you are from Latacunga, seemingly, the more diverse its history becomes, but closer to home there is somewhat of a general consensus. During Cotopaxi’s last major eruption a black slave prayed to the Virgin to spare the city from further destruction. The prayer was answered, the city was saved and thus a tradition began each year to pay tribute to both the black slave, as well as the Virgin who protects the city from Cotopaxi’s wrath.
Every year, as September nears its end, this normally quiet and private city begins the fiestas, which last for 6 weeks, climaxing the first week of November with an orgy of tradition and alcohol. The September Mama Negra can best be described as a huge and interactive play that is put on every year inside the city’s churches and through its streets. Most of those involved take it very seriously and it is regarded as a great honor to be asked to participate as one of the main characters.
The highest honor of all, of course, is reserved for the lucky man asked to be La Mama Negra – which translates to ‘The Black Mother’.
Thus the greatest honor in this small socially conservative town is to dress up as a black woman and ride around on a horse spraying alcohol into a crowd. Latacunga, and especially its festival is absolutely teeming with contradictions and strange irony; and it’s truly fascinating.
The festival kicks off with mass, and a sort of, changing of the guards, when each main character from the previous year hands off the title to a new honoree in an elaborate ceremony, each one giving a speech to the surrounding faithful. The main event is the parade, which actually happens a total of eight times in September. The first parade is the morning of September 23rd, followed by a very similar parade that same afternoon and then repeated the following day. The next week, on September 27th and 28th, there are similar parades in the morning and afternoon each day; these are the traditional dates meant to honor the Virgin that saved the city.
The parade is absolutely hectic and it appears to be extremely disorganized.
There are boys dressed as women who run up and down the streets ‘whipping’ anyone who ventures too far into the street. There are men dressed as giant birds that walk up and down the streets in groups, sometimes choosing a random victim to surround and peck. Brass bands play cheerful tunes and the streets are filled with barefoot men and women in colorful Incan dress dancing to the fast paced music.
There are the young men with painted faces that run up and down the crowd with liquor bottles, the crowd chants: “Loa! Loa!” – the name of this character. If you’re lucky he will come over to you and as everyone hushes to listen he will tell a joke, probably about you, and then pour a healthy amount of his poison down your throat. There are also men that carry vats of a purple liquid pouring it on anyone who dare venture too far out, but if he’s feeling good he might just give you candy instead. Men dressed as what appears to be clowns will pull you out into the street, and dance around you until a shaman or witch doctor spits alcohol on your face. This somehow cleanses your soul.
Every few minutes an oversized man dressed in strange clothes will walk by with the most gruesome backpack I’ve ever seen. Strapped to his back is a slaughtered adult pig, fanning out around the pig like the feathers of a peacock are impaled and roasted guinea pigs, spaced between bottles of liquor. It’s so heavy that he has assistants that carry a table close behind so that he may rest his load every now and whenever he does rest its usually with a few swigs of the nearest bottle. And all that doesn’t even include the five or six main characters of this play. It’s a strange sight, full of outrageous contradictions. Half the characters try and pull you into it, and half try and keep you away, severely blurring the lines between participant and observer.
It’s deeply religious and every character has real meaning but to a casual observer it’s pretty much just drunken chaos.
The morning parades tend to have fewer spectators and less alcohol. The traditional enthusiast will line up to watch in the mornings and closer to the start of the parade. They will go to the special masses and explain what each person represents to their children. However, the afternoons begin to look more like a party; and as much as these September parades seem like a spectacle they are far outdone by the climax in November.
Independence date is November 11th and back in the 1960’s when the September parades were beginning to wane, the city decided to do it all over again the first Saturday in November to celebrate their independence. The parade has many of the same characters but while in September its all local, in November the city invites dancers and performers from all over Ecuador. Tourists also flock in from all corners of the nation and globe to bare witness to it all. Starting with the finish of the September Mama Negras the city begins preparing for its big finale.
Each day there are larger and larger parties, more and more fireworks that all build up until the big day.
While the September parades are rooted in tradition and mainly organized by the men and women from local markets, the November one claims to be little more then a giant party the city throws itself.
Despite its outward appearance, at its root the whole thing has deep meaning. Often marching nearby La Mama Negra is a man dressed as a General, wildly waving an oversized flag made up of small multi-colored squares patched together. The colors represent ‘the thousand nations from which we came’.
If you can step back from the booze briefly, and if you look hard enough, the festival seems to capture the tradition, chaos, diversity and charm of Ecuador and patch it all together as well as anything I have ever seen.
John Dennehy is a teacher, writer, dreamer and traveler. He spent 4 years living and working in Latin America and recently moved to New York where he works as a reporter and is finishing up his first book, which is about sneaking across South American borders. For more on his book and other projects or adventures check out: www.johndennehy.org
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