Religious Clothing

Since I talked about the Fiesta del Espíritu Santo I feel like I ought to mention the clothing more in depth. I don’t know the history of it, I wish I did but it’s really pretty cool. So for the procession before the festival and for the noche velas which are pretty much just mini versions of the big festival in someone’s house. They generally have a little shrine building and three blue crosses in the yard. They play palos and sometimes perico ripiao and some serve food as well, depending if it’s one that is going to last overnight or not. Anyway, back to the clothes. The clothes are amazing. They are usually cotton dresses for the women that are brightly colored in general, mainly red, yellow, green, and white. Sometimes they’ll have crosses sewn to the chest or sometimes on the sleeves. For the men, of which I don’t have a good picture unfortunately, they are cotton pants and button up shirts in the same colors as the women’s and with crosses sometimes as well. They make me think of Cuban men’s guayabera shirts (I think that’s the right name) although a lot more colorful.

May Fiesta del Espíritu Santo

So the Holy Spirit Festival rolled around once again at the end of May this year. It’s eight weeks after Good Friday. This festival is local to El Batey, think of it as El Batey’s Spring Fest, minus the rides and the dunking booth. I was excited to be here for it again because last year I had just arrived in site and didn’t really understand everything that was going on. I feel like I know a little more this year. Supposedly, the Holy Spirit doll (although you can’t call it a doll in front of the true believers) was left to the community by Taino Indians (the native population of Hispaniola) a long time ago. Although it was definitely not made by the Tainos. My guess is it was probably given to them by the Spanish, assuming the story is even partially true. Many people believe that it really does hold the spirit of the Holy Spirit and believe in its ability to grant wishes and perform miracles.

They start by having eight weeks of practices. The women go to the church in their religious clothes and clean the church and the men play the palos. Then the Saturday before the party, they carry the doll in a glass case through the community, stopping at various houses where they play the palos and do blessings on the house. At some of the houses they even make food for everyone in the procession, which means food for 50 or 60 people, maybe more, I’m bad at estimating numbers of people. They also have some people along who play perico ripiao, another traditional music that is played with a drum, a guira, and an accordion. A guira is a round metal thing that looks kind of like a cheese grater that you play by rubbing a stick on it.

Last but not least, the festival is on Monday. People come from all over the place by the carloads, truckloads, and busloads to see our little Holy Spirit doll. There are venders selling pictures of the Holy Spirit, candles to light when you pray for your miracles, plastic necklaces with crosses, jewelry, clothes, food from fried yucca to hamburgers to pizza to traditional sancocho (stew) and chen chen (grits), and alcohol mainly beer, whiskey, and rum (Brugal of course), and all the mixers to go with it. Some people will stay in the church all night praying (or sleeping on the benches). Meanwhile, palos are playing in various places outside and sometimes inside the church and people will dance. By the end of the night it’s generally the young people and the very religious who are still standing. The very religious stay at the church and the young people go over to one of the discotecas and dance reggaeton, bachata, and merengue until the wee hours of the morning.

Velorios, Novenas, y Rezos

I woke up this morning to hear that my neighbor across the way had died up in the loma. No one knows exactly what happened. They had been harvesting beans and he packed up his mule and started the long trek down yesterday afternoon. This morning a young man found him and came down to let his family know. As I’m writing this, a group of people has gone up into the mountain to bring his body back down. They have cleaned his yard, chopped the weeds around his house, and set up a tent for people to sit under in case it rains. And they have cleaned up his house so that they can lay out his body when the group that went to the mountain arrives with it.

Death is a common theme around here, particularly in a community made up largely of the older generation, as the young adults and people in their 20s and 30s have largely moved away from the campo to the cities. With death comes certain rituals that have been practiced for generations among the people of the Dominican
Republic.

The first part of these traditions is the velorio, which has already started for my neighbor although his body has not yet arrived, and will continue until tomorrow morning. Normally, it begins with the laying out of the body, and then all the close family members (spouses, parents, children, siblings) will sit in a room with the body and wail. People come in to pay their respects, which causes the family to wail even more loudly. After paying their respects people will gather outside in chairs and chit chat or play dominoes on the domino tables that have been brought in. In the normally separate kitchen building, someone is generally making coffee or hot chocolate, which they pass out on trays in little plastic cups usually accompanied by mints. Those who are close relatives of the family (cousins, aunts, uncles, etc.) will stay all night at the velorio, many until they take the body for burial in our little cemetery.

Following this is the novena, which lasts nine days. On these nine nights close family and friends gather and play dominoes, drink coffee, suck on mints, and talk. At the end of each evening they play the palos, which are big bongo like drums and sing.

After the novena comes the rezo. At the rezo, anyone and everyone who was friends with or family with the deceased comes to pay their respects to the family. This means that sometimes as many as four or five buses come from the capital bringing extended family and friends to the campo. The immediate family cooks food for everyone, and I mean everyone. People will come early in the day and leave in the evening to head back to wherever they have come from.

Depending on how religious the family is there are other traditions they will follow as well. Some will not play music or drink for a month or more afterwards. And many will have a cabo de año every year on the anniversary of the person’s death for seven years.

Brigada Verde Camp

April 2010

Brigada Verde groups were started by Peace Corps Volunteers several years ago to teach environmental responsibility to the youth of the Dominican Republic. This program has since been endorsed and supported by the national government and some NGOs, although Peace Corps and us volunteers are still at the heart of the movement. As such, we try to have several conferences throughout the year including at least three regional conferences and a national conference. We held a national conference in April which I got to attend with a couple of youth from my community. We went to the national aquarium where we watched a video and then were taken on a tour. The following day we spent most of the time in a national parked tucked away in Santo Domingo. We did a nature walk and in addition the kids got to ride bikes or go on a paddle boat ride in the lake in the middle of the park. We also had several charlas (lessons) during the conference led by not only Peace Corps volunteers but also by some of the youth who put together amazing presentations that they gave to their peers. We finished up by presenting certificates and t-shirts to the kids and then took a group picture.