By Willie Weir. Special to
The Seattle Times. Sunday,
December 24, 2000, 12:00 a.m. Pacific
REMEDIOS, Cuba - Rockets exploded all around me. The entire square was
ablaze with lights and flames, while music that sounded like the "Spanish
Chipmunks" blasted from enormous speakers.
Thousands of people raced for cover from the fireworks. A sense of
excitement mixed with panic welled inside me.
As I raised my camera to take a couple of shots, a spent rocket glanced off
my shoulder and another hit me in the head.
I ran for cover under the central square's gazebo.
I found my wife, Kat, who had her own "battle" stories to tell. We
agreed that this was not an ordinary Christmas.
Religious roots
We had joined in Las Parrandas, a several-day celebration culminating on the
last Saturday of December. The festival is said to have begun in this
north-central Cuban town several hundred years ago when a priest, disappointed
with the number of people attending Christmas Mass, began a contest involving
the boys of the town's nine barrios.
Teams of young boys would go out at 3 a.m. on Christmas morning in each
barrio to make as much noise as possible, rousing the locals to come to the 5
a.m. Mass. The team whose barrio had the most worshipers won the contest.
We wondered why the priest hadn't simply changed the time of the Mass to a
more civilized hour of, say, 11 a.m., instead of sending prepubescent boys into
the streets at that hour.
Over the years, the contest evolved into a competition between the town's
two major barrios, Carmen and San Salvador, and a festival, although today it
has little religious significance.
Surviving Castro
Las Parrandas is one of the few festivals that survived the sweeping social
changes that came in the late 1950s with the rise of Fidel Castro.
Locals say it provides a reason to celebrate, even in difficult times.
The festival's central focus is on two towers - the result of a year's worth
of labor - built on opposite sides of the main square of this town of about
18,000.
The towers are designed in secret in warehouses at the edge of town and
erected with large cranes the day before the big event.
The goals of the competing groups are simple: Erect the grandest tower, have
the finest pageantry, make the most noise.
Floats and banners
The efforts by the San Salvador contingent began just after sunset.
More than a hundred participants, ranging in age from 7 to 70, entered the
plaza area waving banners to the sounds of blaring trumpets and beating drums.
Moments later, fireworks were launched and electric lights on portions of
their tower were turned on.
The theme of the San Salvador float was Alice in Wonderland. The Queen of
Hearts' headdress was so huge it took three men to help her into place. She and
her court, along with Alice and the Mad Hatter, stood on enormous playing-card
stairs.
After 30 minutes of chaotic shouting and dancing, they formed a long conga
line around the plaza, indicating it was time for their rivals from Carmen to
enter the plaza.
Carmen residents answered with loud singing and dancing of their own. Chaser
lights danced across their tower that had been decorated with a brightly colored
mural in the style of Amelia Pelaez, a modern abstract Cuban artist. Fireworks
and smoke filled the sky.
The volleys continued throughout the night as San Salvador and Carmen folks
danced and cheered. Rum flowed freely. Food booths lined the streets and
revelers dined on pork sandwiches, pizzas and soft ice cream.
In preparing for the big event, not all had gone according to plan.
Due to a truck driver who didn't have the correct paperwork, most of San
Salvador's fireworks had been confiscated several weeks earlier, before they
arrived in Remedios.
But that didn't stop them. With connections that can only come from planning
an event every year for more than a century, they made thousands of homemade
bottle rockets. And what these lacked in spectacle, they made up for in noise.
Only a small number actually shot into the heavens. The rest labored at lift
off and then spun out of control, sometimes rocketing into the exhilarated,
inebriated and terrified crowd.
No one was injured, though we were told that a home had burned down several
years earlier because of a stray rocket.
The finale began about 3 a.m. when a tractor pulled Carmen's ornate float
into the plaza. Dedicated to the Spanish poet, Frederico Garcia Lorca, it was
covered with lights and colored foil and ordained with a dozen ornately costumed
individuals who stood like statues.
The normally boisterous crowd stood silently while one of Lorca's poems was
read over a loudspeaker and the float was pulled in front of Carmen's tower, now
fully ablaze with colored lights. The second the reading ended, the crowd
erupted in cheers and applause.
The two huge floats faced each other like dueling Trojan Horses.
The crowd roared and cheered with lots of heated - but good-natured -
arguing about whose barrio had won.
Since there are no judges, no winner is declared. But residents of Carmen
and San Salvador celebrate nonetheless. And on everyone's lips was the same
phrase: "Next year!"
Then a final conga line before the sunrise, filled with residents of both
barrios and showered with fireworks.
And as the yellow glow of morning spread across the square, exhausted
residents went home to sleep, many of them for the first time in days.
Willie Weir is a Seattle writer and radio commentator.
Copyright © 2000 The Seattle Times Company | 