The Burning of Don Juan Carnabal in San Pedro Village

Juan Carnabal was supposedly the name of the man in whose honor el Gran Carnabal de San Pedro was celebrated annually. On Ash Wednesday, the day after el Carnabal, an effigy of Don Juan was made using a pair of pants and shirt stuffed with seaweed and a coconut for its head. Don Juan Carnabal was paraded around town on a wheelbarrow or at times on the shoulder of two young men who were in the team that built it and organized a function in his honor. In the night at Central park the Last Will and Testament of Don Juan Carnabal was read to the public. Next week we shall publish a sample of Don Juan’s Last Will and Testament.

Of course, before the reading of the will, there was Don Juan’s re-enactment of his wedding in which a lot of women whom he had let down were crying. And then after the will, Don Juan was taken to the football field and burned. It was the superstition that if he was not burnt properly and totally, San Pedro would go through some spells of misfortune, so the village boys very dutifully burned the effigy while the women continued their crying and their mourning. After this everybody went home and San Pedro was ready to enter into the period of Lent, the period of fasting in preparation for the passion and death of our Lord. San Pedro had celebrated ‘big time’ and was ready for as solemn period.