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.