Mama Negra

On Saturday I went to a small town a hour and a half South of Quito called Latacunga. The reason I went was because on Saturday they have their biggest celebration called Mama Negra. Mama Negra is pretty much a mash up of everything they can possibly celebrate with Catholic and Indigenous elements. From what I gathered, the main point is celebrating a virgin, (I assume the Virgin Mary but I'm not completely sure) who protects the city from Cotopaxi's (the most famous volcano in Ecuador) wrath. They ignore all the times that it was destroyed and celebrate the times it wasn't. Anyway, somehow Mama Negra comes in who is a guy dressed up as a black woman. But my guide book assures me that this isn't racist at all.

Anyway I left Friday afternoon with a friend of mine, whose host family was going. He has a host brother who owns an apartment there so we could crash there. We spent Friday evening walking around Latacunga exploring a little. We then went to a restaurant where I finally had cuy. Cuy is guinea pig, which I had been looking forward to eating ever since I knew I was going to Ecuador. I actually went on a cuy eating binge this week. Thursday night was the first time I had it, but it was only a quarter of one, and the head was not there. On Friday though, we made sure to order the entire thing. It was amazing. We had the whole thing on a plate, teeth and all. We took the obligatory pictures (I didn't have my camera, but when I get his pictures, I'll be sure to post them). Then we had it cut in pieces and ate it. It's impossible to use a fork and knife so we had to use our hands and barbarically devoured it. The meat was very similar to duck, just a thousand times better because it was a guinea pig. After eating nearly everything, we only had the head left. Naturally we had to finish it off. I ended up eating the tongue and eyes as well, although Thomas, my friend didn't want to eat those in front of his host mother. The Ecuadorians at the restaurant watching us were amused with our enjoyment of the guinea pig.

We went to the Mama Negra festival the next day shortly before 11. It was a parade, but it was pretty much the best parade I've ever been to. People were dressed in different costumes, mostly indigenous and they would dance around the whole time. Thomas's host mom had friends who had a house right next to the street where the parade was taking place so we had a good view. The parading people would just give alcohol to everyone and it was pretty sketchy, but fun. Also the friends of the host mom would give us plenty to drink. The favorite drink there was watered down whiskey which was kind of disgusting. The paraders had several multicolored drinks which were bright green, purple, red, and blue. They tasted pretty nasty actually. Towards the beginning of the parade, I was looking in one direction, and all of a sudden got dragged into the middle of the parade. I was surrounded by "huacas". Huacas are witches who are all dressed in white. They proceeded to poke me with deer antlers, blow smoke onto me, shake leaves all over me, and chant. When I thought they were finished, I got aguardiente (really strong sugarcane alcohol) spit all over me. Then I had to drink from a bottle of some type of alcohol and gave them 50 cents. So now apparently I'm healed and will have good luck. It was pretty cool. Besides the huacas, another cool thing of the parade were the cuy wagons. Cuy wagons had some poor guy who was carrying a whole roasted pig on his back along with roasted guinea pigs, chickens, and rabbits. There were also bottles of alcohol attached to the roasted animals. Other cool paraders included people who painted their faces black and would go up to people in the crowds and yell what I think were Spanish jokes at them and then have them drink from their alcohol. Some paraders also gave us chicha, which was the best tasting thing they served us. Chicha is a traditional fermented drink in the Andes. By the end of the parade I had made a lot of friends with several different people there including a policeman named Martinez who was trying to keep order. He was doing pretty good with his duty, although another police officer was forced to drink some of the watered down whiskey by some persistent Ecuadorians. All in all it was a pretty cool experience.