One of my favorite qualities of Guatemalans is their unabashed appreciation for fireworks — fireworks at Easter, fireworks for the opening of the new road in town, fireworks used specially to shoot at more fireworks from the other side of the road. Coming from New Jersey, where fireworks are regrettably illegal, this is a cultural inclination I can definitely get behind.
So I found it no surprise, dismounting from my bus in Antigua today, that a group of ten or so boys were grouped around the flaming legs of a piñata, stuffed to the brim with rockets (their obsession with pyrotechnics also tends to yield ideas for using explosives really creatively!). But I was a little startled when I glanced down the main road and saw dozens of groups congregated around their own scorched, sparking mounds — especially when I noticed that the women had been taken in, too. This, I decided, was not just any laser show. This was something more.
Photo by Flickr user Miggslives (Creative Commons)
La Quema del Diablo, or ¨the Burning of the Devil,¨ takes place every December 6th at six o’clock sharp. Having arrived in Antigua at 6:08, I was privy to navigating the smoking, stinking piles with my full pack and was definitely cursing the devil by the time I found my hostel. La Quema del Diablo is an exercise not only in pyrotechnic mastery, but also in cleansing the home and self before the feast of Our Lady of the Conception (celebrated December 8th) as well as the oncoming Christmas holidays.
In addition to piñatas and firecrackers, trash and rubbish from inside the home is brought out onto the streets to be set ablaze. It’s a tradition whose Mayan roots stretch back centuries — though I cannot ascertain what they were using before Roman candles — and which, by burning the impurities of the home, gives spiritual cleansing and renewal for the new year.
The spirit behind La Quema del Diablo is actually a beautiful and universal tradition in bringing in a new year. But only Guatemala could pull it off with such a bang!
Kate Bennett is currently researching nonprofit effectiveness in Guatemala. For more about her experiences, check out her blog.
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