Semana Santa

Semana Santa is Holy Week; this is week leading up to Easter. It's a big deal here in Leon, and there are processions every day, along with other festivities. Here are some pictures of the week.

This first picture is an "action shot" of the festivities outside of la Iglesia San Francisco. People are selling Eskimo ice cream, hot dog caliente, and little toys and trinkets. All of the people out and about creates a very happy, warm atmosphere.
The second picture is of some folks getting some chicha, which here in Nicaragua is a hot pink colored drink with a corn base. On this particular day, you can get some chicha for free from various people on the street or houses if you go and ask for it en el nombre de San Benito (in the name of San Benito). Usually, you either bring your own cup, or they'll serve it to you Nicaraguan style in a sandwich bag.

The Last Float

This was the only video I took that turned out well all the way through. Most of the others have shoddy camera work and poor lighting, so I'm leaving those out for now.

La Chica CUUN

A while back, I posted about Mr. and Miss Law School. Well, now all of the departments have elected their Miss (and in some cases Mr.), and now they're electing "La Chica CUUN," which is the basically "Girl of the University." Turns out this is a huge deal and they have a parade through downtown Leon. Each department has a float for its candidate. And there is also two floats for the beer company that sponsors the event, one of which is the first picture. The second picture is the float from social sciences, if I remember correctly. For most of the others, I took video clips so I'll try to post a few of those. If anyone knows of a free, good, easy-to-use video editing program for avi files, let me know. I'd prefer to just string the highlights together and make one decent video rather than half 5-6 half good videos. By the way, I have little idea what exactly "CUUN" stands for, and most university students don't seem to know either, but the word "universidad" is probably in there somewhere.

Urban Cowboys

Some cowpokes at the procession for La Virgen de la Merced. This happened last month, but I'm still catching up. By the way, those are fake plastic horses, just in case you were wondering.

At last, the main man, Saint Jerónimo himself. The image of the saint is followed by a band, which is seemingly present in every religious procession I've seen in Latin America. This one included two tubas (not pictured). The folks accompanying Jerónimo take the event seriously, and include many members of the church. However, according to much of the rest of the groups in the parade, Jerónimo liked to drink a lot and so they use the occasion to break out the beer and be jolly.

Queens of the Festival

One aspect of the procession for Saint Jerónimo that I hadn't expect was the abundance of drag queens. There were quite a few marching along with the bulls, boys, and other people just tagging along with the parade. My friend Belkis said that people used to come to the festival to be cured of various health problems. Homosexuals were sometimes brought to "be cured" and it seems that since then, it's become a tradition to have drag queens at the event.

Da Bulls

Almost all of the groups of bull-beating groups had group t-shirts.

Raging Bulls

San Jeronimo is honored every 29th of September with this procession in the street. They leave the main cathedral and around town. This procession consists of groups of teenage and young adult boys trying to contain a raging bull. The bull costume is sort of like a turtle shell covered in colorful streamers with sharp horns on one end. The bull trashes around wildly as they move down the street and the rest of the guys try to not get stabbed and hit the bull with sticks. I estimate there were about 30 bulls at this procession.

Ring My Bell

Ringing the bell for Saint Jerónimo, high atop the cathedral.