celebrating san andrés apostal

it was a lovely fiestas this year. i know i posted about the fiestas last year, but this year i was around for some of the things that i missed last year. i also learned a bit more about the traditions surrounding the celebration of san andrés de apostal (the patron saint of apaneca).

a couple weeks before the fiestas actually start, on november 11th, apaneca has what is called the "desfile de correos" (desfile means "parade"). there are actually two of these - one is put on by the mayor's office and the other is put on by the catholic church (everything that the catholic church does is way bigger than whatever the mayor's office does). the desfile de correos is where apaneca rounds up all the cantones, caseríos and barrios that have candidates for king/queen of their respective town for the fiestas that year. the catholic church's parade begins with the entrance of these two enormous male and female figures made out of sticks and dressed with material, called "marcelino and marcelina." then what follows is mayhem. it's called the "casimiento de los viejos." all these men and women dressed up in costumes, with some in wedding attire, and all wearing these crazy halloween masks, follow marcelino and marcelina. most of the participants in the casimiento de los viejos are men, and they seem to love dressing up like women. they dance with the crowd and with each other. it's so hilarious. i don't know why they call them "viejos" which means old people. this is somehow related to the same viejos ceremony that i saw in molineros last year. anyway, in the desfile de correos they have bands and the viejos and then all the candidates sitting atop their pickups throwing candy out into the waiting crowd.

marcelino and marcelina

the start of the bands and the viejos

















san pedro













starting on november 12th, the day following the desfile de correos, each cantón or caserío surrounding apaneca begins the start of the month of fiestas by bringing san andrés from apaneca to the prospective cantón or caserío. the day that the cantón or caserío has san andrés is also the day they celebrate their own individual fiesta de patronales. for example, san jorge's day for doing this is always november 22nd. that is the day they have san andrés and the day for the fiesta de patronales in san jorge. there is a similar type of parade, with the viejos again, and the candidates for queen (and king, if there is one) of the fiestas.

when a town has responsibility for san andrés, people from the town get up at 4:30 a.m. and start the journey on foot to apaneca to go pick up the statue of san andrés from the catholic church, carry him through apaneca and back to the town. each town has it's own way of doing this as well. some let off a ton of fireworks. some yell and shout. some carry guitars and play tunes and sing. when the fiestas in the individual cantón or caserío are finished for the day, the people bring san andrés back to apaneca so that he's ready for the next day, when another cantón or caserío gets to host san andrés in their town.


two girls from my school, with their dad, waiting for the desfile in san jorge for the fiestas there

san jorge's own casimiento de los viejos



one of the candidates for queen of san jorge's fiestas

people from san jorge following the parade up the main road


after all the cantones and caseríos have done this it's then time for each barrio of apaneca to do the same. this happens the actual week that the fiestas start....the 25th of november. on the day that each barrio is responsible for san andrés, that barrio has a fiesta of it's own in one of the streets in the pueblo. for example, my barrio - barrio san josé - has it's day with san andrés and it's fiesta on november 26th. the following day, barrio santiago has it's fiesta. the 25th belongs to barrio san pedro, etc., etc. last year i posted pictures of the procesión de santiago, which is when they reunite santiago with san andrés, and the day barrio santiago has it's fiesta. (i already posted last year about roles of santiago and san pedro in our fiestas, so i'll skip that part.)

after the desfile de correos and all the cantones and caseríos have had their fiestas and their time with san andrés, the fiestas in apaneca actually start on november 25th. this begins with the fiestas of the various individual barrios in apaneca, as i mentioned above....as well as the procesiones of santiago and san pedro. the 29th is the day when everyone parties, or has bailes (dances). i know i've mentioned this before, about that group that has taken form in apaneca that is against everything the mayor does. well, they did the same thing they did last year - had a free dance at the same time that the mayor had the los hermanos flores baile, which cost $5.00. last year i told you that not many people went to the mayor's dance, but this year a ton more people went because it was los hermanos flores. anyway, before the dance there was the mayor's fireworks display which was pretty, even if it was dangerous as all hell. then we went on to the cumbia baile with los hermanos. i didn't care about paying $5.00 because i wanted to see los hermanos. it was soooo fun! everyone danced the whole time and it was just a really fun time. we hung out with maria laura and her husband and saw just about everyone else i know in the pueblo.

los hermanos flores

the dancing begins!

the following day, the 30th, was the last day of the fiestas. there was one final parade with all the king/queen winners, as well as the statutes of san andrés, santiago and san pedro.

one of the "chicago" ferris wheels in apaneca





the guy on the left is eating what's called "elote loco." it's an ear of corn on a stick, covered with mayonnaise, ketchup and hot sauce. salvadorans LOVE elote loco.

the final parade....here is san andrés. check out the one of the padres with a machete. haha. only in el salvador. (he was cutting down the lines above the streets where they had hung decorations for the fiestas in the barrios, so that the huge san andrés statue wouldn't get caught.)



san pedro

santiago







just like the year before, there was a huge and dangerous fireworks display in front of the catholic church. it was even more dangerous this year though. there is this traditional dance here called "el torito pinto" - where a guy holds this wooden structure above his head in kind of the shape of a bull. he dances around a bunch of other guys and girls dressed in traditional clothing and they fend him off. anyway, so during the fireworks, there was a guy holding one of these wooden "bulls" above his head, only it was loaded with fireworks instead of having guy/girl dancers that he danced around, he ran into the crowd and these fireworks were all going off....like shooting off into the crowd. everyone started screaming every time he came close. it was sooooo crazy! then they had the castillo, same as last year, with the spinning wheels of fire - only there was a different message this year...."san andrés apostal, protege a apaneca."

i know you can hardly see it, but that's "el torito pinto" threatening to take all our heads off with it's shooting fireworks

the final castillo

so, all in all, it was a GREAT fiestas this year! i had so much fun and while i'm sad they're overwith, it was kind of nice to NOT hear cohetes at 4:30 a.m.! after the fiestas ended i started preparing for my trip home, which, as always, involves mindless packing and trying to figure out what to bring home. this time it was more difficult as i was going to courtney's pueblo before my trip home. her pueblo has it's fiestas the week after apaneca's, and courtney and i were traveling together to the states (as far as houston), so we figured i'd come to her site for her last days of her fiestas and then we'd share on taxicab fare to the airport from san salvador.

so next post, i'll tell you all how we had a fantastic time at her fiestas and how we ended up dancing the cumbia ONSTAGE with orquesta san vicente (the OTHER famous and fabulous cumbia band from el salvador) in front of her whole pueblo...yeah, i know. whaaaat???

on top of the world

well, not exactly on top of the "world"....that'd be more like everest or k2 or something. but i did stand on top of el salvador...2,700 meters high and freezing. el pital is the highest point in el salvador and it's located in chalatenango and sits just a little bit south of the border of honduras and el salvador.

after a whole day of bus travel, antonio and i made it to la palma - a pretty well-known pueblo. it was basically the first "pueblo pintorado" in el salvador because artist fernando llort came to la palma and painted a bunch of murals on the buildings there….before anyone else in the country decided to start painting postes and murals (like they are in apaneca and salcoatitan and other places around here). he then taught the citizens of the town how to paint like that and now the majority of people in the town are artisans. i'd only passed through la palma a couple of times on my way up to the border so it was nice to stop and take a look at everything. we walked around town and took some pictures and then stopped in the catholic church by the park. it's a simple church, but like the church i visited in guatemala, near lago atitlán, it had it's own decor, specific to la palma. all the designs fit within the same type of painting that you see throughout the town. also, the church was filled with photos, posters and information about oscar romero. romero was the salvadoran catholic archbishop that was assassinated in 1980 by a someone representing the ARENA-sponsored salvadoran death squads during the civil war. romero was giving his sermon and whoever it was, stood in the back of the church with a rifle and shot him in the heart. anyway, i was startled as we walked through the church, to see a big photo time-line of romero's assassination. the first photo showed the congregation getting up as romero had just been shot. then the photos that followed were closeup photos of romero laying there in a pool of blood while various nuns and other church members surrounded him. the photos went on to show him being lifted out of the church and into a waiting van and carried off to the hospital or morgue. it was so weird to see all those photos like that in the middle of the church. romero famously spoke out against the war and criticized the violation of human rights in the country during the war. thousands of people were being killed on a daily basis, and romero spoke out against this. he was seen as a threat to the military and accused of siding with the guerillas. anyway, this photo mural was dotted with famous romero quotes and it was quite sad.

nativity scene outside the feria de artesanias in san salvador

antonio in front of one of the murals in la palma



the church in the park

poster of romero (the instituto de maíz issues a poster every year in rememberance of romero)

another romero tribute

one of the signs of the cross, painted with bright colors on a piece of wood



so, this church was he site of the peace accords struck between the government and the FMLN (the guerillas) putting an official end to the war in 1994 and this plaque is a commemoration of that









the ubiquitous ¨che¨ mural, every latin american pueblo has one somewhere






later that day we tried to find out just exactly when the bus to río chiquito, the desvio to el pital, left the next day. nobody seemed to have a real answer, and in true salvadoran style, we asked about 6 people and got 6 different answers. so the next morning we left the hotel and 6:00 a.m. and ran into an old man that said the bus to san ignacio (a neighboring pueblo) didn't leave until 7:30. so we went back to the hotel and let ourselves in. the night before, the woman at the hotel told us she had to go home that night and was going to leave us the keys. she left us alone in the hotel that night and all night i kept thinking about all those horror films where people are alone in a hotel and some axe murderer does them in. anyway, we waited until about 7:00 and then re-exited the hotel and stopped and asked this woman when the bus to san ignacio left and she's like - oh, you missed it. we were like "what the hell!" then this bus that says on the front that it's going to san ignacio, pulls up around the corner and she says "but maybe this bus will take us." so we three got on and we asked the driver if this bus was going to río chiquito and he said yes. so we sat back talking about how we lucked out by catching this bus. so the bus stops for gas and then makes its way to san ignacio, where the driver pulls up next to this building and turns the bus off. then the cobredor goes "so we're leaving at 9:30 for río chiquito and las pilas." antonio and i looked at each other and were like "what the hell is this??" we were seriously confused. so we had two choices: sit on the bus and wait for 2 hours until the bus left; or go up to the road leading out of town and wait for a pickup and hopefully hitch a ride. we opted to take our chances with a pickup and started walking through town up to the road that led out of town and up into the mountains. at the desvio we stopped and waited around with this other woman for probably an hour. finally, a pickup passed that was willing to take us up and we were finally on our way to el pital.

from rio chiquito it's about an hour and a half hike up to el pital, so it wasn't like we had to climb all 2,700 meters ourselves, thank god. the pickup driver left us off at the desvio and the hike was on. it was a great hike, i've hiked worse on the full moon hikes...or even chichontepec volcano. this was a nice little hike, steep at times, but not too steep. it was freezing though, as we got near the top. not one single person passed us - except for one little kid that passed us going super fast, making us look like sloths. no vehicles passed us, no other tourists, nobody. it was quite tranquilo. from the dirt road we could see all the way to the santa ana and cerro verde volcanoes, and the mountain chain that leads all the way around apaneca and onto ahuachapan. we could also see el boquerón, the volcano in san salvador. then from the other side we could see chichontepec as well. it was so cool seeing the flat land, and then the volcanoes rising up out of nowhere.

right before we made it to the entrance of the park a pickup passed us with a family of salvadorans. we made it to the entrance and paid $2 each to enter. the top of el pital is privately owned, but the public is allowed access for a fee. i completely agree with this. i wish they would do this with more areas of el salvador. the fact of the matter is, the majority of salvadorans do not care about the naturaleza here. they cut down trees, cut orquids out of the trees and then sell them on the street in juayua and san salvador and apaneca. you already know their relationship with trash. they just don't take care of the land. anyway, so this guy owns el pital, charges a fee to enter, and then uses that money to take care of the place. there are signs throughout the hike up to the top saying things like "take care of the trees and plants," "don't cut the plants," etc. anyway, so we get to the top and i see that pickup parked to the side and wouldn't you know it but the old lady that was in the pickup was cutting down some orchids from a tree. i was fuming mad. salvadorans do not follow rules. they don't. i've had a ton of salvadorans that used to live in the states at one point, come up to me and say "oh, in the states there are too many laws, too many rules." this is why they think that. they simply don't follow rules or laws here, and nobody enforces them. they drive as fast they want, they steal whole bus stops to sell the metal, they throw their trash on the ground, the list goes on. salvadorans simply do not like to follow rules, and so they don't follow them. i'm not saying that in the states, we LIKE to follow rules, but we do follow them, for the most part. obviously, we all don´t, but i´m comparing here. there's a simple unspoken etiquette about other things as well that we have in the states, that may not look like much in the states, but after living here for 2 years, to me, we seem so organized. and it's a nice thing. it's nice to get to the airport and have lines and organization and all that, as opposed to here where it's just a free for all and you have to become a friggin' maniac, pushing old women and kids out of the way, just to board the bus.

so even though el pital's a private place and all and it's a protected area in a sense, this stupid old woman is carrying her pirated orchid back to the pickup truck without any hesitation whatsoever. even though the orchid isn't going to flower again in her lifetime, or anybody else's lifetime, because she's taking it back to an area that's not suited for the orchid. the orchids here are native to high, cool, cloudforest climates.

anyway, so we hung out at the top of el pital for a while and ate our lunch of avocados and tortillas and apples. it was soooo cold, let me tell you. we then took this trail that said led to the "nacimiento del agua," (birth of water) which i thought would be like a waterfall or something. well we hiked uphill a while, then started into the forest and it was damp and wet and the trail was muddy and what-not. then the trail led down and down and i mentioned to antonio that we should pay attention to how far we were going because we'd have to hike up again and we wanted to make it back to río chiquito by at least 2:00 to hopefully catch a bus going back down. so antonio led the way and we kept following the trail and we get to one part and antonio hollers back at me "guess where we are?" and i have no idea and when i come up to where he is, i notice we are right back where we started, just on another side of the park. so basically we had just made a loop, up to the very, very top of el pital, where the "nacimiento del agua" was and back down. the nacimiento meant that the clouds pass through the forest, depositing moisture on the trees and plants and then that filters down through the mountain and into the land. duh.

so we hiked down again, in less than 45 minutes! we made it back to río chiquito and waited for an hour before the bus passed. the bus said it was going to la palma, but when we get to san ignacio the bus driver says "ok, we're stopping. everybody off!" seriously, i'm glad i live in an area where there's a bus schedule and they stick to it and the bus goes where it's supposed to go. but we caught a bus back to la palma and everything was fine.

view from the back of the pickup on the way up to río chiquito

view of el pital from the road on the way up to río chiquito

on the hike up....you can see volcán santa ana in the distance, behind he clouds

volcán san salvador (or el boquerón) on the left and volcán santa ana on the right behind the clouds

flowers on the mountain

volcán chichontepec in the distance

antonio and i at the top

the sign welcoming visitors to el pital....official altitude, 2,730 meters

more flowers



weird plants growing out of the side of the mountain

in the cloudforest...antonio was telling me the official names of all these plants, but i couldn´t keep track of all of them

more of the nacimiento del agua



orchids growing happily on the trees (not yet flowering yet)

weird little salamander-like creature that antonio said was called a ¨candíl,¨ hanging out on the park grass

on the way down, just past the official entrance of the park

last view of el pital from río chiquito

so that was el pital. it was a beautiful place, a great hike and had some fantastic views of all of el salvador. i am so glad i finally went to check it out. hopefully i´ll get one last entry in before my trip home! until then, salú!