Almost everyday I was on the coast, I made the trek to the villages, more or less to see if anything was happening. One of the the first villages I passed through was San Miguel Tlacamama and on a couple of days I saw a curious sight. A small crowd had gathered to watch dancers in traditional garb, but rather than dance, the leaders of the group were smacking people with a stick.
The stick, gaily painted, looked to be a meter long and about an inch in diameter. Some of the smacks were light and on padded areas, like the butt or the back, but every now and then, they were painful.
I saw one young guy catch one directly on the elbow and he let out a long howl and began dancing around, much to everyone's amusement. That's the thing, everyone was laughing. There was a whole dynamic at work with twenty young men surrounding the dancers while the villages elders sat in the shade watching.
There was a constant banter going on between the young guys and the dancers, but at the center of it all were the guys with the sticks. They worked the crowd, told jokes, passed judgments and periodically smacked someone. Then, one by one, the dancers knelt and got a lick from the whip.
The second day I watched this celebration, there are a young woman, Jaqueline, who was in there with the young guys giving it as good as she got. That's her getting the blessing of the whip and that's her mother standing smiling in the doorway.
She told me it was kind of like penance, that before they could dance they needed to suffer and atone. I am not sure if I got all that right. If someone knows what really is happening, by all means, write in.
And I thought about getting a whack, a blessing, myself, but that stick looked big and hard and I have learned from past mistakes, not to put myself in a spot of having someone take an open shot. It would be just my luck to get some guy who was politically aware of say, Sheriff Joe, and wanted to get a good lick or two in. I mean, these guys were not messing around. Some of the smacks were really hard.... and the hits just keep on coming.
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