Michael: Another Parade?

The silky black night
Covers us in a blanket
Of frosty silence.

Wednesday, December 28, 2016

A couple of Sundays ago when we were returning from a trail race in Costa Rica our bus was diverted from the main road because there was a horse parade. It seems starting in November there’s always a parade of either three types going on in Volcan; a marching band parade, a horse parade, or a funeral procession (maybe a death caused by being overly stimulated by so many parades).

One interesting observation we’ve made is that while these celebrations include a girls and women (though very few of either in the horse parades), they seem to exclude the two predominant minority groups; the indigenous and Chinese. I’ll state this with the proviso that I’m going to pay more attention to the marching parades, but the horse parades definitely lacked any ethnic diversity.

 We don’t know the culture well enough to discern why this is. I’m sure much of it stems from a long history of horses being part of the Hispanic culture. Yet, we do see many indigenous people using working horses. I’m not a horse person, so I wouldn’t know if there are distinguishable types of horses that are acceptable parade material, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that were the case. Just like if I showed up at a classic car show in my old Ford Maverick, I’d probably get the boot.

I’m guessing it’s pretty much like it is in the states. I’ll use surfing as an example. Throughout my many years of surfing at Old Man’s in San Clemente I can’t recall meeting any African American surfers. It is overwhelmingly a white culture past-time. And just like surfing, the predominance of whites surfing relative to African Americans was an economically enforced division. Whites had the time, money and inclination.

I’m guessing that’s pretty much how the parade scene works here. But I’m curious to find out more and will have to test out my Spanish to see if I can get some Indigenous people and people of Chinese descent to tell me their thoughts on why they don’t participate in these events.