Sargasso, a peer-reviewed journal of literature, language, and culture, edited at the University of Puerto Rico, dedicates its latest volume (Sargasso 2006-07, II, Re/visions of Santiago Apóstol: Art, History, and Cultural Criticism) to the examination of the Fiestas de Santiago Apóstol (St. James). The Santiago festivities have been held annually since the first half of the nineteenth century until today in Loiza, Puerto Rico. Like carnival, these are inclusive festivities where European, Afro-creole, and African– many free and many others enslaved (before 1873) — participate. In his introduction, founding and issue editor Lowell Fiet offers a concise description of the events:

“Loiza is located on the northern coast, various miles to the east of San Juan, and the core element of the festivities places the normal civic and domestic life of township on hold the afternoons and evenings of the 26^th, 27^th, and 28^th of July to “correr el santo” (march with the saint) approximately three miles from the town’s central plaza to the outer barrio or neighborhood of Las Carreras, where the first of the three images of Santiago was originally found. The first procession corresponds to Santiago of the Men. The second is reserved for Santiago of the Women. The third and final procession day belongs to Santiago of the Children, “santiaguito.” [. . .] As well as a Jeep decorated with a gigantic Vejigante or diablo-trickster mask, the processions are led by a devotee who carries a red and yellow/gold flag of Santiago, and each diminutive saint mounted on a white horse [ . . .] is carried on a wooden cadre shouldered by other devotees and surrounded by followers.”

“[. . .] The heightened theatricality of the event depends on the interventions of the four principal festive or “carnival” characters; (1) the Caballeros (knights or gentlemen) who imitate the image of the saint with their wire screen masks painted with blue eyes, curled thin-lined moustaches, pink cheeks, red lips, and their fancy-dress costumes,  (2) the Vejigantes (diablo-tricksters) with their brilliantly painted horned masks made with coconut husks, voluminous, multicolored costumes, and, on occasion still carrying the now simulated goat bladders  -the supposed vejigas of their name- tied to sticks to chastise or menace spectators who do not respond to their requests for drink, food, or money, (3) the Locas (cross-dressed crazy women) with blackened faces who traditionally carry brooms made of the vines of pencas of coconut bunches and dustpans made from large cracker tins and who use their exaggerated hips and breasts to flirt and harass spectators and participators alike (contemporary transvestites sometimes also participate), and (4) the Viejos  (old men, sometimes called locos) who are often ‘dirty old men’ dressed with old clothes and unpainted cardboard masks who are easily teased and tricked by the playfulness of the locas.”  

Fiet describes the music (the danzas, mazurzas, pasodobles, plenas, and the bomba drumming), the dancing, and the admixture of European and African, spiritual and secular, traditional and modern elements of the festivities. He also presents various divergent hypotheses regarding the Fiestas’ syncretism and origins, which are postulated in the individual contributions in this issue. The contributors to this volume are specialists who approach the celebration from varying standpoints and fields, such as anthropology, folklore, history, linguistics, musicology, and culture studies, providing the reader with ample frames of reference through which to explore the aesthetic manifestations and cultural significance of the Santiago Apóstol festivities.

In order of appeareance: the photograph of the vejigantes is from http://www.bombaboricua.com/, the caballeros photo is from humanidades.uprrp.edu/…/photogallery5.htm (courtesy of Lowell Fiet), and the loca photo is courtesy of Lowell Fiet.

For more information on Sargasso, see http://humanidades.uprrp.edu/ingles/pubs/sargasso.htm