And I for being the first
Let us sing with plenitude
We celebrate tonight
Saint John and the Holy Cross
We celebrate tonight
Saint John and the Holy Cross
More than a century ago, my maternal great-grandfather started a festival in Membrillal – Jipijapa – south of Manabí – Ecuador. The festival is called Los Juanes, as part of the celebration, on the night of June 23, a game called Gitanas is played, women who sing in honor of San Juan and the Holy Cross, cast lots for those present and dance with a bull and a black bullfighter who tries to touch their buttocks. (Diana Zavala)
The first is Miquita Consuelo, I estimate she is 1.30 meters tall, her eyes are two blue-green dots, she is so white, so red, so freckled. She is the Gypsy Mayor of Membrillal, a rural parish of Jipijapa, south of Manabí. It is June 23 and on this night of San Juan she commands the women that this cholo people call gypsies because they cast lots and/or mares because they dance jumping like mares.
The party is set up on the field that divides this community of 255 houses in half. Next to a square chapel, bamboo poles have been set up and multicoloured pennants and lights have been hung. Inside the chapel, the inhabitants worship a small plaster Saint John and a wooden cross with a woman's face and dress, so feminine that she wears earrings and even a doll's wig. Consuelo lends her delicate voice to the old and young gypsies who forget to sing while they are wrapped in scarves. They all wear long red skirts, white blouses, straw hats and a wooden horse tied to their waists with little bells.
The party is set up on the field that divides this community of 255 houses in half. Next to a square chapel, bamboo poles have been set up and multicoloured pennants and lights have been hung. Inside the chapel, the inhabitants worship a small plaster Saint John and a wooden cross with a woman's face and dress, so feminine that she wears earrings and even a doll's wig. Consuelo lends her delicate voice to the old and young gypsies who forget to sing while they are wrapped in scarves. They all wear long red skirts, white blouses, straw hats and a wooden horse tied to their waists with little bells.
The gypsies - who have never heard the word caló and are not nomadic at all - leave the chapel and head to the center of the ring where there is a bull made of sticks and real horns, below is the man who will give it life. Also waiting with his rope ready is El Negro, a cholo blackened with coal who has the task of herding the mares and lassoing the bull to protect them from its horns. The women surround the bull and Consuelo Toala (Miquita has an indigenous surname) harangues them until a voice emerges, as Rulfo would say, made of human threads.
The guitars are ready to accompany this game, which has been performed as a ritual for almost a century and which nobody knows exactly where it came from, although the Spanish and Andean influence is clear; in this mix, the most striking element is black. Some spectators check their pockets, the gypsies - who are not fortune tellers at all - find out the names and surnames of the people for whom they will draw lots: godfathers, godmothers, devotees and the occasional foreigner.
Charge me, brave bull
Hit me with a bullet
The luck that I'm going to do
It's for Miss Diana Zavala
And achojo bull dog
Hurry up, here comes the bull
Hit me with a bullet
The luck that I'm going to do
It's for Miss Diana Zavala
And achojo bull dog
Hurry up, here comes the bull
The gypsy begins to walk around the dance floor dancing the rhythm that comes from the guitars, the bells on the horse she carries at her waist jingle and the Negro helps her to avoid the bull, so that it crosses, from time to time he tries to touch its buttocks.
-Play black.
"Pay close attention," the spectators shout.
Palermo, a photographer who is visiting this town for the first time, located 12 kilometers and 560 meters from Sancán (on the road to Jipijapa), is delighted with the aquiline noses of many of the inhabitants. With a friend who is a researcher of cultures, he repeats: they are authentic manteños. He is also surprised by the runs that Miquita Consuelo, at almost 77 years old, runs; her eyes fixed on the viewfinder do not notice the rope that approaches and easily goes up to her neck. She moves her hands as if asking, “What now?” I tell her that she has to pay the Negro to free him and that I will pay for the fate they gave me when they give me a prey.
- A dam?
– Wait and see.
-Play black.
"Pay close attention," the spectators shout.
Palermo, a photographer who is visiting this town for the first time, located 12 kilometers and 560 meters from Sancán (on the road to Jipijapa), is delighted with the aquiline noses of many of the inhabitants. With a friend who is a researcher of cultures, he repeats: they are authentic manteños. He is also surprised by the runs that Miquita Consuelo, at almost 77 years old, runs; her eyes fixed on the viewfinder do not notice the rope that approaches and easily goes up to her neck. She moves her hands as if asking, “What now?” I tell her that she has to pay the Negro to free him and that I will pay for the fate they gave me when they give me a prey.
- A dam?
– Wait and see.
Tilín, tilín, tilínnnn. Dodging the bull and the Negro touches buttocks, the gypsy crosses the track and distributes
Miss Zavala
You have nothing to complain about me
I will give you the rib of my bull
So that I can have dinner
And achojo bull dog
And hey, here comes the bull
You have nothing to complain about me
I will give you the rib of my bull
So that I can have dinner
And achojo bull dog
And hey, here comes the bull
***
The festival held on June 23 and 24 is known in Membrillal as Los Juanes. Not only in honor of San Juan (the preacher who baptized Jesus), but because its first steward was called Juan Idelfonso Reyes Santana, after his death his son Juan Emilio Reyes Muñiz took over, who died in 1972. The mourning lasted two years and from 1974 to the present the festival is organized by his brother Juan Idelfonso Reyes Muñiz, a red-faced man who turns redder when he speaks and whose firmness of word has allowed the date of the celebration not to change. In this community of a thousand inhabitants they dance and drink in the name of the Virgin of Fatima, San Alejo, Las Cruces, the descent of the Kings, but not precisely on the day marked by the calendar of saints, they do it on Saturday so that those who migrated to Guayaquil and other cities can return. Not even the celebration of the parish anniversary is spared from this. This makes Los Juanes a celebration of locals only, there are no tourists and therefore no restaurants or places to stay. Only this year did the Ministry of Culture learn of its existence through the invitation of a member of the Reyes family who was not satisfied with the fact that this festival was left out of the inventory made by the Ministry of Natural and Cultural Heritage.
-My family started this, but I always say: Pueblo de Membrillal, this is your festival and the date is respected. Every year they bother me when I leave it for Saturday, when the dance is full and I say, come on Saturday, have a few beers, hire the music, but as for the saint, we celebrate him on the 23rd, dawn and the 24th-, Don Juan Idelfonso comments energetically, each word is as if it fills his face with blood. They call him Dicho.
-My family started this, but I always say: Pueblo de Membrillal, this is your festival and the date is respected. Every year they bother me when I leave it for Saturday, when the dance is full and I say, come on Saturday, have a few beers, hire the music, but as for the saint, we celebrate him on the 23rd, dawn and the 24th-, Don Juan Idelfonso comments energetically, each word is as if it fills his face with blood. They call him Dicho.
Guillermo Reyes, Juan Emilio's son, tells that during the times of the bubonic epidemic, the dead were taken to be buried in Jipijapa because there was no cemetery, and carrying coffins along the horse trails was so difficult that some were left behind. "Until the inhabitants of that time realized that in the center of the village (where the chapel is today) there was a blessed space of land and they buried three little angels. On May 3, 1910, Manuel Reyes Santana celebrated the Holy Cross there and in the same place and year his brother Juan Idelfonso, who is my grandfather, celebrated the feast of Saint John on June 24, but without the plaster saint, only with the Cross present. It was not until the 60s that they changed the image of Saint John that is still venerated today. The Holy Cross is no longer celebrated alone on May 3, the day on which according to history the cross of Christ was found, but on any Saturday.
– Why do they dress the cross as a woman?
– Because she is a saint and saints wear dresses. In every house there is one, long ago when there was more forest than houses and the devil was on the loose, she was the ultimate protection, that is why even here when someone dies in the house of mourning a white cloth with a black cross is hung.
– Why do they dress the cross as a woman?
– Because she is a saint and saints wear dresses. In every house there is one, long ago when there was more forest than houses and the devil was on the loose, she was the ultimate protection, that is why even here when someone dies in the house of mourning a white cloth with a black cross is hung.
– Where do the Kings come from, why are they so red?
They say that my grandfather, who started the festival, came from Cuenca, I think his ancestors must have been Spanish.
They say that my grandfather, who started the festival, came from Cuenca, I think his ancestors must have been Spanish.
– Did you bring the gypsy dance from there?
-I know that they did that dance in the Manabita canton of 24 de Mayo, perhaps it came to them there from the Sierra, in Membrillal it has been done since 1912, says Guillermo, the only one of the Kings who is clearer about the dates.
-I know that they did that dance in the Manabita canton of 24 de Mayo, perhaps it came to them there from the Sierra, in Membrillal it has been done since 1912, says Guillermo, the only one of the Kings who is clearer about the dates.
Felícita, Guillermo's sister, has been animating the festival for more than 30 years. She is the one who, microphone in hand, introduces the gypsies, announces the godfathers and godmothers, and gives an account of the contributions received, which can be 50 cents, three dollars, a sardine for the greased cane, a hen to bury as part of the popular games that she animates on June 24 with the collaboration of her uncle Dicho's grandchildren. She is also red-haired.
The party belongs to everyone, yes, but those who take the bull by the horns so that it does not die are the family. On the eve of San Juan, at seven fifty at night, I met Jorge Luis Reyes, son of Don Guillermo, at the Sancán gas station. He had arrived from Guayaquil and had hired a truck with a wooden box to take him to Membrillal. He knows that finding a car that enters the town, after one in the afternoon, is a matter of Divine Providence. I asked him to wait a moment to go in with the photographer who was traveling in a car from Portoviejo and who did not know the way, I argued that we would give him a ride. He told the driver that at that moment he no longer needed his services. After 20 minutes he hired him again, the important thing for him was not to save eight dollars, but to arrive on time with his guitar to the procession, for that and only that he asked permission from his job where he is new. He endured the four hours of travel that joins and separates him from Manabí.
During those few minutes of waiting, Jorge does not have time to bathe his tiredness. He joins the Kings of Rhythm and their cumbias, guarachas, pasacalles or sanjuanitos in the middle of the procession. His father cheers with the guitar, together with Pastor Barcia, his aunt Felícita, his mother Solanda Zavala, Marzo Pincay and Anselmo Pincay sing and shout: Long live San Juan, Long live the Holy Cross and its godparents, Long live the Butler.
The devotees carry bows made of tissue paper with signs that read: “MEMORY OF THE GODMOTHER.” The priest lights rockets in a bottle that make the dogs howl when they explode. Godfathers and godmothers carry the floats dressed with artificial flowers. They walk with candles melting in their hands. A godmother or godfather of San Juan and one of the Holy Cross (there are eight in total) hold wakes in their homes. In less than an hour they serve canelazo, corn chicha (the most cultivated in this town where more than 90 percent of the inhabitants are dedicated to agriculture), and dance to the sound of guitars. Then they advance through the dusty streets. In each house where they find lit candles, the Kings of Rhythm play a song. People get excited when they see their saints arrive at the chapel. The gypsies tie the horses to their waists.
***
Although not exclusive to gypsy dancing, it is also a family affair. Currently, the main figure is Miquita Consuelo. This year, for example, the dancers included her sisters Margarita, 69, Teresa, 61, and her granddaughter Gabriela Reyes, 17.
“I started dancing when I was nine years old. My sister Olaya was also a gypsy. Our mother Luz Martina Reyes taught us, as did our grandmother Dolores Anathalia Muñiz, who was the mother of Juan Emilio Reyes. They were the founders of this dance, along with Dorila and Carmen, the sisters of Juan Idelfonso, the first steward. My aunt Petronila, who has since passed away, was also a gypsy. The daughters of Juan Emilio and Mrs. Rosa Ele…” I interrupt Miquita’s story before I get lost in the family tree.
***
Although not exclusive to gypsy dancing, it is also a family affair. Currently, the main figure is Miquita Consuelo. This year, for example, the dancers included her sisters Margarita, 69, Teresa, 61, and her granddaughter Gabriela Reyes, 17.
“I started dancing when I was nine years old. My sister Olaya was also a gypsy. Our mother Luz Martina Reyes taught us, as did our grandmother Dolores Anathalia Muñiz, who was the mother of Juan Emilio Reyes. They were the founders of this dance, along with Dorila and Carmen, the sisters of Juan Idelfonso, the first steward. My aunt Petronila, who has since passed away, was also a gypsy. The daughters of Juan Emilio and Mrs. Rosa Ele…” I interrupt Miquita’s story before I get lost in the family tree.
– It always has to be someone from the family.
- No.
– So why are there no dancers other than the Toala or the Kings?
– Nobody wants to be a gypsy anymore, I'll pay, but the girls are embarrassed.
- About what?
– Of having her butt touched, then.
It doesn't matter if it's day or night, Anazario Reyes spends a long time in a kennel. His family says he's sick because he smoked his life. It seems that because he was born in 1912 they've hung up a label on him: expired. I talk to him about Los Juanes and his memory wakes up, he asks to be helped to sit down. "I smeared my face and arms with pot soot, I touched their tails, I also rang the bells of the horses saying they were eggs. The onlookers encouraged me: where did this little black boy come from, perhaps from Esmeraldas? At the end of the game, those present paid me so that I would let them dance with a little mare."
- No.
– So why are there no dancers other than the Toala or the Kings?
– Nobody wants to be a gypsy anymore, I'll pay, but the girls are embarrassed.
- About what?
– Of having her butt touched, then.
It doesn't matter if it's day or night, Anazario Reyes spends a long time in a kennel. His family says he's sick because he smoked his life. It seems that because he was born in 1912 they've hung up a label on him: expired. I talk to him about Los Juanes and his memory wakes up, he asks to be helped to sit down. "I smeared my face and arms with pot soot, I touched their tails, I also rang the bells of the horses saying they were eggs. The onlookers encouraged me: where did this little black boy come from, perhaps from Esmeraldas? At the end of the game, those present paid me so that I would let them dance with a little mare."
How many years did you participate as a black man?
– So much that I don't remember anymore, he answers raising his arms, his son who is watching us assures us that there were more than 40.
-And why did he retire?
-Because the young mares began to spoil the fun of the game, they wouldn't let themselves be touched. And where are they going to get this that I'm telling you?
-In a magazine called Mundo Diners
– Let it be quick, girl, because I’m almost done and I want to know that the party will be written, that it won’t die. Anazario squeezes my hands, it’s cold and he keeps them warm.
– So much that I don't remember anymore, he answers raising his arms, his son who is watching us assures us that there were more than 40.
-And why did he retire?
-Because the young mares began to spoil the fun of the game, they wouldn't let themselves be touched. And where are they going to get this that I'm telling you?
-In a magazine called Mundo Diners
– Let it be quick, girl, because I’m almost done and I want to know that the party will be written, that it won’t die. Anazario squeezes my hands, it’s cold and he keeps them warm.
***
All the gypsies have cast their lots. They head to the centre of the ring to kill the bull and give it to those who did not catch any prey to try.
And the gentlemen onlookers
They have no complaints about me
I will give you the giblets of my bull
The lung and the shit.
They have no complaints about me
I will give you the giblets of my bull
The lung and the shit.
It is almost midnight, San Juan and the Holy Cross go out on the last parade, identified as the delivery, because godfathers and godmothers give up their places to other devotees. They say goodbye by bathing themselves with talcum powder and fragrances, in this rite the horse cologne is a classic.
VISIT: THE VERB CREATES .
VISIT: THE VERB CREATES .
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