San Juan Ara

June 24 in Paraguay is San Juan ára, or Saint John Day. There are many traditional festivities and games on this day ranging from sack races to the more peculiar. The chief components are fire and recklessness.

The eve of San Juan Ara I heard some loud music coming from across the street. After leaving my host family’s house I followed the music until I came upon a soccer field filled with people and lots of music. I chatted with the folks I knew at the festival until I spotted someone lighting a soccer ball on fire who proceeded to kick it around. Transfixed, I watched the deadly soccer game until out of the corner of my eye I noticed something coming my way. Turning to the left I saw two people running in my direction in large bull costume that sat on their shoulders the way a Chinese dragon costume does. This would normally be a cause for concern, but the fact that the front of the bull was engulfed in large flames made my eyes bug out like short stack from IHOP. Running in the opposite direction, I dodged two flaming soccer balls that nearly missed my chest. Needless to say, it was time to get out of the field of play.

The flaming bull is called the toro candil and is something of a parody of the running of the bulls in Spain. The flaming soccer balls are called pelota tata and is a special homage to a song by Jerry Lee Lewis.

Scarcely before the soccer game ended and the scent of burning polyurethane left the air a new and very different game began, albeit one involving a similar potential for bodily harm. A group of adolescent youths tried to climb a pole about 20 feet or so in height that was totally saturated in grease. Given the nature of the other games I half wondered if the grease was really lighter fluid. Regardless, the task of climbing the giant pole seemed totally impossible to me. With all the oil, the pole was impossible to climb so the boys used their clothes to wipe away the grease. While everyone looked on with anticipation, I cringed at the thought of someone falling and breaking their back. At the top were prizes, like some money and a bottle of cheap whiskey, but I would have happily bought the guys some whiskey just so nobody would get hurt. Climbing onto each other’s shoulders, the boys created a human tower almost but not quite high enough to reach the top. Luckily no kid came home with a broken back, though I’m sure some of those boys caught some trouble from their parents for totally destroying their clothes.