La Fiesta Civica

It was the much-awaited day of the annual civic festival of our village. Celebrated the week after New Year’s, this event includes a soccer match (teams comprised of players, young and old, from several villages around), horseback contests, food, a raffle and a hired band from the city to provide la musica.

On almost any rural route, no matter how remote, there are signs for the fiestas civicas. Each village takes it turn hosting these community events shortly after the rainy season ends. Funds that are raised are used to put the roads back in shape.

We walk to town with little flashlights stuffed in our boots for the later walk home. We arrive at what we think would be just in time for the dinner – 5 p.m., considering that it gets dark within the hour – and learn that the food will be ready shortly (this turned out be two hours later) and that the music would begin at 8 p.m. (actually, almost 9 p.m., past our usual bedtime).

A dozen men on horseback were gathered in front of the pulperia and scattered residents sat at the edge of the road. A tight wire had been stretched diagonally across the road high over the horse’s heads and several foot-long pieces of bamboo were strung horizontally on it. Horses pranced in place and snorted. As each person’s turn came, he would canter his horse up the road and would then approach the bamboo at gallop while holding a stick tied with a long piece of string. The goal was to thread each of the bamboo pieces. Much excitement and laughter as no one succeeded in passing the string through each piece.

We also watched the last part of a soccer game, held at the well maintained field at the edge of the village. Boys sit in tree branches hanging over the goal posts and the rest of the spectators sit on the ground a respectful distance away. Everyone cheers loudly. Whenever the ball is inadvertently kicked over the mountain’s steep slope on the long side of the field, it sometimes takes minutes for one of the players to leap over the edge and climb down through the jungle to retrieve it.

When the game ended, players gathered at the community hall, or salon, hours early in order to avail themselves of the high stacks of Imperial beer and a homemade table crowded with bottles of rum and whiskey at a makeshift bar. An attractive mural inside the hall showed this tiny village next to the world with the Costa Rican slogan “Pura Vida!” – pure life – painted on it. The salon was built from concrete blocks with three full walls and a half wall that had iron grating to the metal roof.

We were quickly handed bottles of beer by two of our neighbors who served as bartenders. There was one other woman present, other than the two women at the far end of the salon who were busy cooking. Large pots simmered over a fire built in a raised, tiled stove.

The Kid showed up and assured me it was not a cultural infraction for me to be there, but as the time passed I kept wondering why no other women had come. Finally, just as the food was ready, by silent signal several Tica women arrived with children and grandchildren.

I ordered two tamales (equivalent of 50-cents each). They were handed to me on two large platters, wrapped banana leaves extending end to end. I couldn’t finish the second one of these delicious pork, salsa and corn-filled treats. Pecos ordered a tamale and also chicarrones to go with his beer, thinking for his $1.50 he’d get a few fried pork rinds. Again, two platters, with the chicarrones one bearing a heap of crispy pork, boiled yucca roots, black beans and a salad of picadillo mango.

The men spent much time, like Pecos, ordering several selections of both food and drink. They were ravenous. This was because after the strenuous soccer tournament a few of our male Tico friends danced while the food cooked. They twirled, spun, jostled and laughed to ear-splitting salsa music blasted over loud speakers. I was surprised to see these normally-reticent farmers cut loose like this.

The Kid was engaged in several conversations with friends who were happy to see him, and we held our own, too, in our usual responses of “Mucho gusto!” and “Bien, bien!” along with our ever-improving Central American charades. A few of the men spoke a little English and translated for others. Diego, a cheerful teenager from the next village who we’d once given a ride to, showed up with some friends and told everyone how I’d excitedly told him my little boy was coming to Costa Rica, the thirty-plus years of The Kid somehow not communicated. The Kid was teased for that.

Despite not playing for at least a few more hours, the band members showed up at 5:30 p.m., all seated up front in a rusty panel truck that pulled right up to the planked bar. The five men of the group quickly set up the equipment and then joined their friends at the bar. The young woman in the band sat in the truck’s front seat and painstakingly put on make-up just a few feet from us until just before the show. She wore a tiny mini skirt with halter top and very high heels and looked about twenty years old.

Finally the band started. The young woman was the lead singer. She stepped up to the microphone to whistles and catcalls. She fixed them all a steady look. The bar fell silent. She picked up a percussion instrument – a wide metal tube with a chain hooked on its side – nodded to her band, and broke into fast-paced song with a rich, melodious voice that filled the community hall and surely carried over the mountains. Electric bass and lead guitarists, electric piano player, snare drummer and double-congas drummer could barely keep up. She shook her instrument, shimmied her hips, strutted up and down the little stage, and gave a nonstop Tina Turner-style performance that lasted for hours. The other band members’ shirts were drenched with sweat but she showed no sign of fatigue or even slowing down. The crowd cheered as each song ended and led into another with hardly a break in between.

Most of the town women had arrived about 9 p.m. Several entered the community hall in a procession, all carefully made up, hair piled high, and wearing jewelry, tight strappy tops (some sequined) and skin-tight jeans or miniskirts like the women in the Costa Rican cities. The men jumped to their feet and politely escorted them to the tables, one hand placed gently in the small of the women’s backs or on elbow.

Such dancing! Part fiery cha-cha, part tempestuous tango, these coffee farmers and their wives and girlfriends spun back and forth at galloping speed from one end of the hall to the other – dipping and swirling and fast-stepping to the loud music at a dizzying pace and never missing a step. A few children danced alone on the sidelines – even toddlers seemed to have the right rhythm – and others slept across a few chairs. Drinks were set aside as the adults danced song after song.

The band was still in high swing and the dancers still twirling when we said our goodbyes. As we headed down our road, Pecos took out his flashlight and set it to shine on-off, on-off to the beat of the music. We watched for snakes as we blinked our way home. A six-foot stalk of sugar cane lay in the road at the bottom of our long, steep driveway. Pecos picked it up and talked nonstop from there to the house about raising cain and cane in Costa Rica. Bright stars shined down on us and on the hardworking villagers who partied much of the night away just down the road, this one night of the year. 