Two weeks ago as Farrah and I were returning to San Marcos, we came over the hill from San Pablo headed down into town and Farrah said to me, “I think I see a ferris wheel”. To which I promptly replied, “there is definitely not a ferris wheel in San Marcos, it’s a tiny village, how could there be a ferris wheel in town? Where would they even put it?” Several minutes later our driver pulled up to a road block outside of town and we could see quite clearly that, in fact, there was a ferris wheel in town. Not only that, but we found the main road lined with street vendors, and loads of people wandering around. It turns out that our return to San Marcos coincided with the annual town fair, or in Spanish la feria.
As you may know if you’ve been reading this blog, San Marcos is a village on the northern shore of Lake Atitlan in Guatemala. The population of the village is around 4000 people, so you can probably imagine why I found it hard to believe that the entire main street of town was blocked off and a ferris wheel and a carnival pirate ship ride had been set up on the grounds of the catholic church.
The feria, we soon learned, is an annual celebration to commemorate the founding of San Marcos. It continues for roughly two weeks, and it is a big deal in this sleepy little village. The normal rules about noise after the hour of ten at night seems to be completely lifted, or ignored, and people from many of the neighboring villages, as well as locals here come out in large numbers, to visit the street vendors, ride the rides, play carnival games, watch and listen to very loud musical performances in the towns amphitheater and the gymnasium of the school. In addition, we saw at least two parades, and prior to the parades we got the dubious pleasure of listening to a marching band practice several times a day leading up to the first of two large celebrations. The first celebration (we heard) was on the anniversary of the town’s founding, and the second was a week later at the end of the feria. There were also a ton of firework displays in the first week, and far more bombas than we have previously experienced around the lake. Bombas are homemade mortars, which you hear year round, and in theory are used to commemorate birthdays, anniversaries and other events of significance to some locals.
Overall, I can’t say that I’ve enjoyed the feria. Mainly, it was incredibly loud for much of the day, and late into the night, which definitely takes away from the normal tranquility of the village, not to mention making it hard to sleep. It also brought a steep increase in the number of drunks and/or drugged men to the village begging for money. More than once I had to step over people who were passed out in the walking paths around the village, and I was frequently asked for money by people who were clearly heavily inebriated. On one memorable occasion a very drunk , or drugged, man asked me for money to buy flowers from his mother who had passed away. I politely declined and walked into the town center to grocery shopping. On my way out of the grocery store I met the same man, considerably more drunk (it had only been 45 minutes), who proceeded to tell me a story about how he needed to buy flowers for his father who had passed away, and asked me for my Doritos when I declined to give him money again. While I certainly don’t begrudge anyone who wants to party the level of excess and the wild lies in an attempt to maintain a bender were fairly annoying. There are poor villagers who have legitimately lost loved ones and have little money to pay their respects. When encountered sincerely with this kind of situation I am generally happy to offer a bit of money to help. I know it’s not always clear who falls into which category, and a judgement call has to be made. Other times, the situation couldn’t be more clear.
On the plus side, I went with some friends to the feria one evening, and saw many families wandering and enjoying the carnival games, or buying delicious street foods, which aren’t always available around here. Our friend Dan played a shooting game, which he won big at after a couple of attempts, and let a local boy who had been hanging around watching us his choice of prize. The boy was clearly delighted by the opportunity to pick a prize. The street vendors also sold a lot of goods that are less common in San Marcos, from toys to kitchen wares, and I wonder if this time of year is an opportunity for some families to buy goods that they would otherwise need to travel to a larger village on the lake to acquire. The music events, and performances also seemed to draw large crowds. To my ears much of these performances sounded repetitive, and I never got a chance to get a good view of some of the more interesting performances in real time, but I did see photos of the spectacles posted on Facebook that looked pretty cool. The closest I got to a musical performance was during another grocery trip when I stopped to watch a set of daytime performers who were playing the town amphitheater. While the music wasn’t necessarily my cup of tea (which is fine, it would be a boring old world if we all liked the exact same things), it was definitely well attended and a lot of people were dancing (some quite drunk, and others entirely sober) and seeming quite delighted.
A mixed benefit of the feria were the fireworks. Generally, San Marcos just gets bombas, which are always loud, and sometimes a bit dangerous, but otherwise uninteresting. However, for the feria there were several evenings when we got to watch full on firework displays from our apartment on the hillside in barrio dos, and I quite enjoyed getting to see cool light displays instead of just being surprised by loud mortar rounds! They were still loud, but you can’t really avoid noise in a firework display, so all in all it was kind of fun.
May 2nd, we were told, was the final day for the feria, and it seems that the production, or at least some parts of it, are moving on to Tzununa the next town headed clockwise around the lake. I hope that people enjoyed the spectacle, and I’m looking forward to a return to the relative tranquility we have come to expect, and treasure, in San Marcos. There will always be noise anywhere you go, but turning the volume back down to a reasonable level will be a welcome change!