🖐Hello Dear Hivers. It's been a moment since I last posed here. I have been a lot more active on Liketu, but I am happy to have the opportunity to share about my weekend, today, with all of you. I saw a post that invited you to share about your weekend and contribute to the "Weekend Experiences" community. So here is my entry post for this weekend engagement topics call.
Today I was invited by my sister to go with her and her family to watch the last Sunday of the Devils 👹 in the town she lives in. The "Devils" as we call them only come out this time of year, end of November and all through out December. No one know the origin of the tradition but it has been going on for about 100 years or so. What happens is local men, especially young ones, impersonate the devil character. Some of them choose to do it with very colorful and intricate clothing which we also use for other activities such as traditional and sacred dances at our town fairs along with the iconic red devil face mask. Others do it through body paint. Those are the 2 main styles but all of them wear the devil face mask. They parade around town, teasing and scaring people. They are allowed to use their whip people and they are also allowed to pinch you, sometimes very hard and others only playfully. Additionally the body paint ones focus on painting people. Both of them also chase whomever dares to call them by scream: "devil, devil" and then a race for your life begins or you get catched by them and then they whip, pinch and paint you all over.
I have always admired them and enjoyed going out to watch them. I am also fond of photographing them and with them! I especially love the clothed ones as their clothes are very elegant and attractive, to me. On the other hand the body painted ones always compete to have the best designs or designs that are related with classic symbols or pop culture imagery. As you can see on this second photo, the gold ones have a Bart Simpson painted on their chest. The "Devils" usually go out in groups and share a theme for their body paints. People but mostly men are the ones that participate and the age range is all the way from kids to grown man.
This year something that called my family's attention was a group of dressed Devils, that was a batallion of about 40 to 50 of them 😲. Yes, sometimes there are big groups of up to 20. But I had never seen such a big group. They were all wearing white attire and where very rowdy, playful and gave all the crowd a good time and some good scares!
Not even half of them appear on the pictures I was able to snatch of this large group! It was hard to get them all together as they were busy running and bugging people 😅.
This is my brother and law and niece, getting their picture with a different group of dressed Devils.
In closing, this was the highlight of my weekend. I had so many things that I like come together. First of all, the Devils, second being a photographer, third having my picture taken with them and last but the best was having the opportunity to make good memories with my family 💗.