On Thursday after school, which finished early, I headed over to my Mexican family`s shop to try and procure a costume for the Fiesta de Chuntas. This fabled event that I`d heard about prior to arrival and subsequently since last Saturday is one of the jewels in the crown of the fiesta month, in which I had unwittingly arrived. All I knew was that the men of the town dress as women (which was, in all fairness, an event in itself), but tonight I was to find out a great deal more. My family had asked me, grinning over the dinner table some days ago, if I would be interested in cross dressing with everyone else and, still pursing my dream of cultural immersion, I enthusiastically (and rather naively) accepted.
On my arrival at the shop, Madre Tone rushed me around the corner to a seamstresses house where we were duly rejected (no more clothes for a man of my size), thus leaving me standing, clad in traditional women's garb of a long flowing purple skirt with floral print and a low cut cream blouse with frilly sleeves and lace lining in the house of Tone`s sister some ten minutes later. The occupants of the house watched with glee as extensive makeup was applied to my face, my hair was gelled back and a floral headpiece duly clipped in place. Tone and her sister spared no expense; beauty spots, eyeliner, mascara, lipstick - my first experience of being made up was thorough to say the least.
My transformation complete and the trappings of my previous male persona dispatched to my house via Tone, there was no escape. Her sister Icha, my incredibly kindly self nominated guardian and guide for the evening bundled me into the back of the family car with her grinning husband and deposited me around at the house of one of her relatives, to meet with other participants of the impending party. Sat on their sofa, dressed in full regalia and sandwiched between two archetypal Mexican men, large and trying very hard to assert their machismo, I began to wonder if I had made a terrible mistake. Thankfully I wasn`t subjected to this for long and in all fairness the people who had introduced themselves to me all seemed to be impressed and very encouraging of my plight, despite the fact that I couldn`t understand a bloody word that they were saying. Now amongst a selection of women wearing the same outfit as me, we progressed from the house into the night. Apparently heading for the heart of the party, I saw groups of men swaggering around in dresses and the crowds of spectators begin to swell as we approached the centre of town. I was quite a spectacle, with cars honking their horns and winding down their windows to shout at me; I dutifully shook the maraca at them with which I had been issued.
We rounded the corner by the base of the steps below the waterfront Church and suddenly encountered the procession of the Chuntas. It was a vast, pulsing mass of colour, noise, movement and pure, powerful energy, preceded by a single figure covered from head to toe in black body paint and cut off jeans, sporting a broom with which he swept the streets in a shuffling, hopping dance before the mob. Licha and I were swallowed up by the procession, and I found myself surrounded on all sides by jubilant dancing cross dressed Mexican men. The procession was driven by the relentless pounding of marching drums and whistle flutes, groups of three or four musicians interspersed throughout the spectacle, and elevated to incredible proportions by the rhythm that came from every single member of the party, stamped out with their feet as they danced and from the thousands of maracas shaken simultaneously. It was a beautiful, jubilant racket, punctuated by wild cries from indiscriminate callers within the crowd, most indecipherable to my ear but some like "Viva Chiapa de Corzo!" conveying the passion of the night, and answered with a roar from the rest of the crowd within earshot.
The procession crawled its way up the hill to a church where the revellers spilled into it, filling the building to capacity within minutes. The noise and passion from the participants was truly something to behold, amplified by the the high, arched ceilings. As quickly as the had arrived, the Chuntas surged for the small exit doors on the side of the church, and the vast mass of people squeezed through the tiny apertures, firing out into the street like a champagne cork from a bottle.
My initial feelings, aside from complete overawe and detached amusement were of inhibition. I didn`t understand the words of the people around me, felt intimidated by the passion and intensity and was very self conscious about all the attention I was attracting from my fellow party goers and the army of spectators; I really was the only white guy in a dress.
A glass and a bottle of Jose Cuervo tequila were thrust in my face by a dancer and his group, grinning encouragement at me. I obliged, several times, and my inhibitions slowly melted away, allowing me to become infused with the spirit and energy of the night. Icha was dancing and shaking with gusto dutifully beside me as I picked up my skirts like everyone around me and began to issue calls and joyful drunken exclamation to the Mexican skies. Fireworks exploded above and ahead of us sporadically set off, as I was later to learn, by an elderly gentleman with a full arsenal inside a huge backpack who trudged ahead of the revelry to direct the masses.
The crowd squeezed through the constricted streets, at times so tightly packed that it was almost impossible to walk. The beat of the drummers would waver and die at these times, crushed and drowned by the press of bodies, but the crowd would rumble at the silence and shift and within seconds the pounding rhythm would begin again, accompanied by a roar from the surrounding people.
Icha suddenly took me by the arm and pulled me inside an empty house whose doorway faced the street. Before I knew what was happening, the single, empty room with a huge alter at one end that constituted the interior was packed to the rafters with Chuntas and wild dancing, as in the church before, ensued. At some point the beat slowed and Icha bade me lower the maraca that I`d been shaking relentlessly for the last hour and a half. Only the dancing persisted until, without warning, the beat quickened and the assembled revellers cheered and the maracas were sounded again in earnest. As quickly as it had filled, the small room emptied leaving only a tiny wrinkled elderly woman with nut brown skin sat on a chair before the alter, head bowed.
We had, as far as I could ascertain in my awful Spanish, just paid homage to a saint by dancing in their house. The purpose of the procession was to visit each saint house and church in the town over the course of the next seven or eight hours, ending at about four in the morning. I still have no idea as to the purpose of the cross dressing.
I ended up dancing in that wonderful procession for four hours, finally conceding at midnight. I can`t possible write about every moment, much as I would like to, but some defining moments deserve a mention:
Showers of balloons; sweets and confetti falling from the balconies and roofs above the streets; sharing ice cold beers with Icha, bought from the coolbox on the tailgate of a truck parked opportunistically in a street swamped by the procession; ascending the long steps to a cathedral at the end of town and turning amidst all the colour and noise to look back down the steps and along the street overhung with flags of many colours to see the procession stretching for blocks; thousands and thousands of jubilant, dancing people, shining with sweat and dusted with confetti in a long, rippling crowd that ran through pools of streetlight and darkness, utterly immersed in something that would ebb and flow for many hours, but always be possessed by the same raw energy and lust for life that made me thank my lucky stars for deciding, all those months ago, to cast myself into the unknown.
Chiapa de Corzo
10th January 2009
Footnote: It was retrospectively brought to my attention that the short interview that was forced upon me mid-procession by a cameraman and interviewer who were undeterred by my inability to understand them or speak Spanish has made national television. I am now a celebrity among the children that I teach. Viva Jon.
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Soft spoken and rather unassuming, you wouldn’t really think much of Ron Brennenman. Until, that is, you find out one of the countless facts that seem to nonchalantly crop up, like when the FMLN guerrillas organised a major offensive on his kitchen table during the civil war. Ron (seen here modelling a very fashionable cowboy hat and the even more fashionable Whitaker Sisters) has seen El Salvador go to pieces during the 80s, and then try and pull itself back together again, with fairly lacklustre results.
This has, in a nutshell, prompted him to start Amun Shea, an educational project run out of Perquin up in the remote wooded hills of the North East. The project is an inspiring attempt to provide a heavily subsidised private education for the local children which is not subject to the fairly unsatisfactory rigours of the public school system. The short term aim, which is to generate significant academic success in comparison to national results and thus force education reform, is well underway. The much harder long term goal of building and retaining desperately needed community leaders to stop the incessant traffic of talented individuals out of the country (who mostly head to the US illegally looking for a better life) is proving much more elusive; results, if any, won’t be seen for years.
It is incredible to hear Ron describe what is happening in El Salvador, and to see quite clearly how the country is a shell, hollowed out by war, leaving the resulting wasteland of possibility for the population. With the option of living hand to mouth indefinitely in a country that stalls its progress of international development or leaving for faraway lands of golden opportunity, which would you choose?
A series of carnival floats followed, each intricate in its own design and showcasing a range of "carnival queens", who waved regally to the crowds (an adorable sight in the case of the chubby 7 year old versions) and dispensed a range of candies, money and corporate merchandise. Every community group seemed to have their own float, from the cheeky "forest pixie" primary school childrens float to the beautifully presented and noticably aloof chinese society. 
The Chinese Societies` float was supplimented with a Chinese dragon procession and entusiastic percussion, which came to blows somewhat with the following masses of Parachicos, eager to blow off steam before their dormancy for the rest of the year. Squabbles and bickering spread among the two different factions due to the commonly held perception that the Chinese lot were moving too slowly, and finally with a display of restrained democracy the dragon moved to one side as the Parachicos thundered past them, spreading everyone thin in their overcooked desire for progress and concluding with a rather sweet and confused regrouping a short distance down the street. Meanwhile the the dragon and the rest of the Chinese Wannabe Mexicans re-established their cohort with a lot of unecessary reversing of vehicles, shouting and pointing and, to the cheers of the crowd, proceeded to enthusiastically charge up and down the street once more, scattering pedestrians and spectators in all directions.
The carnival queen followed this debacle, smiling and waving to the onlookers laden with chocolate, money and vegetables and, finally, it was over. In retrospect, I wonder what I would have made of the bizzare cow baiting, cross dressing and masked antics if I did not have the benefit of a couple of weeks orientation with the various different components of the wonderful events of the last month. I can only think that, as opposed to being consumed by the randomness of it all, I was able to appreciate the synergy of the various different elements of the traditions and truly appreciate the pride and passion of the participants, as well as the perceptable sorrow that they would, for the next 11 months, sink into a state of expectant longing for next January.
