Meet The Cabezudos… San Sebastian Street Fiestas 2014

I shot this image on Jan­u­ary 20, 2006 with­out real­iz­ing that I was cap­tur­ing all the orig­i­nal “cabezu­dos” except one. From left to right: Don Choli­to, El Coquí, La Puer­ca, Juan Bobo, Max­im­i­na La Loca, Toribio, la Jíbara, Dip­lo, El Gen­er­al and Maso Rivera. Alfon­sa Vil­la­m­onte Vera “La Bil­letera” died in 2008 and her cabezu­do was made later.

The 2014 edi­tion of the San Sebas­t­ian Street Fies­tas is about to start. Next Thurs­day, Jan­u­ary 16, 2013, may­or Car­men Yulín Cruz will be cut­ting the tra­di­tion­al rib­bon and the 44th edi­tion of the world’s largest event, tak­ing place dur­ing the month of Jan­u­ary, will commence.

I could write for hours about the San Sebas­t­ian Street Fies­tas. I could tell you about the arti­san fairs, the music at most of the old city’s squares, the artists that line San Sebas­t­ian Street, the fact that it all start­ed with a reli­gious event, and even about the SanSe 2014 con­trac­tion, that has become so pop­u­lar among the cit­i­zen­ry, but is total­ly dis­fa­vored by the event orga­niz­ers. But all of that has been said before and it’s all over the Internet.

Instead I’m going to write about the faces of the San Sebas­t­ian Street Fies­tas. After all, every major event in the world has them. At the “San Fer­mines” it’s all about the bulls. At “la Tomati­na” it’s all… well, about throw­ing toma­toes. At Río it’s all about gor­geous women and cos­tumes. At Mar­di Gras it’s all about food and music. And at the San Sebas­t­ian Street Fies­tas the cen­ter­piece are the Cabezudos.

Car­men Julia Díaz with her favorite “cabezu­do” masks: “Max­im­i­na La Loca” and “La Billetera”.

Just go to the “pic­tures” sec­tion in Google and write “Fies­tas de la Calle San Sebas­t­ian” and you’ll see the Cabezu­dos in almost every pic­ture. They are —with­out a doubt— the face of the San Sebas­t­ian Street Fiestas.

This morn­ing I spent a cou­ple of hours talk­ing with Mrs. Car­men Julia Díaz, a mem­ber of the orga­niz­ing com­mit­tee who is in charge of los Cabezu­dos. And while I’ve been attend­ing the “fies­tas” for over 20 years, I have to admit that I learned a lot.

Car­men Julia is a retired math teacher born in the munic­i­pal­i­ty of Fajar­do, about 30 miles east of San Juan. She has been a part of the orga­niz­ing com­mit­tee for over 17 years and this year she is proud to be in charge of los Cabezudos.

The orig­i­nal San Sebas­t­ian Street Fies­tas start­ed in 1954 as a fund rais­ing event, cre­at­ed by father Juan Manuel Madra­zo. Even­tu­al­ly they went into a hia­tus until the mid 1970’s when Rafaela Bal­ladares de Brito, a for­mer teacher, res­cued them —once again as a fundrais­er— for the “Cole­gio de Párvu­los” (ele­men­tary school) locat­ed at the east­ern end of San Sebas­t­ian Street.

Car­men Julia met Bal­ladares at a “Dis­cov­ery of Puer­to Rico” cel­e­bra­tion. “She was the guest of hon­or and our prin­ci­pal chose me to be in charge of the event”, said Car­men Julia. The two women imme­di­ate­ly dis­cov­ered that they had mul­ti­ple inter­ests in com­mon. They were both teach­ers, they were both arti­sans and they were both pro­found­ly in love with Puer­to Rico. So they became friends for life.

“Bal­ladares was the cre­ative mind that gave birth to the Cabezu­dos”, said Car­men Julia. She was also a stern woman who led the fes­tiv­i­ties with a watch­ful eye almost ’til the time of her death in the month of Sep­tem­ber, 2011. She was 97.

When father Madra­zo start­ed the orig­i­nal fies­tas there were only two fig­ures in the entire parade. They rep­re­sent­ed the king and queen of Spain and they were the kind that you see in Spain; effi­gies at the end of a long pole.

But Bal­ladares want­ed some­thing tru­ly Puer­to Rican, so she came up with the idea of cre­at­ing large masks resem­bling pop­u­lar fig­ures from Old San Juan. Hence the word “cabezu­dos” (peo­ple with big heads).

The first cabezu­do was “el gen­er­al” (the gen­er­al). “El gen­er­al” was an actu­al “san­juanero” (Old San Juan res­i­dent) who used to dress up in mil­i­tary cloth­ing, medals and all, and direct­ed traf­fic at one of the city’s intersections.

Then came “Dip­lo” and “Toribio”. Diplo’s full name was Ramón Rivero. He was a come­di­an, actor, com­pos­er and a pio­neer in Puer­to Rico’s radio, tele­vi­sion and cin­e­ma industries.

My wife insist­ed and I posed.

Toribio’s full name was Patri­cio Rijos Morales. He was a hum­ble black man that nev­er learned to read or write. But he had one spe­cial tal­ent. He was called “el rey del güícharo”. A “güícharo” (pro­nounced gweecharo) is the Puer­to Rican name for a guiro, which is a Latin-Amer­i­can per­cus­sion instru­ment con­sist­ing of an open-end­ed, hol­low gourd with par­al­lel notch­es cut in one side. It is played by rub­bing a stick or tines along the notch­es to pro­duce a ratch­et-like sound. And Toribio was tru­ly the best play­er that Puer­to Rico has ever had.

Pret­ty soon Bal­ladares real­ized that she would run out of pop­u­lar San Juan res­i­dents so she widened her scope to include fig­ures from all walks of Puer­to Rican folklore.

The first cabezu­do in this sec­ond tier was “Max­im­i­na La Loca”, a lady from the neigh­bor­ing town of Loíza who loved to dance and wore dozens of small bowties in her hair. In case you’re won­der­ing, “Max­im­i­na La Loca” means Max­im­i­na the crazy one.

Then she looked at Puer­to Rican lit­er­a­ture and cre­at­ed the cabezu­dos for “Juan Bobo”, “La Puer­ca” and “La Jíbara”. “Juan Bobo” is the most beloved folk­loric char­ac­ter on the island of Puer­to Rico. (learn more on Wikipedia). “La Puer­ca” was actu­al­ly a char­ac­ter in one of the “Juan Bobo” books and “La Jíbara” rep­re­sents the rur­al woman of the 19th century.

After that Bal­ladares looked at Puer­to Rican nature. And what could be more Puer­to Rican than the “Eleuthero­dacty­lus Por­tor­ri­cense” or “coquí”, small lit­tle frog that is native to Puer­to Rico and pro­duces a pecu­liar sound that resem­bles its name. You can lis­ten to an actu­al “coquí” on the play­er below.

Coquí

The last three cabezu­dos were “Don Choli­to”, Maso Rivera” and “La Bil­letera”. “Don Choli­to’s” real name was José Miguel Agrelot and he was one of the great­est and most beloved come­di­ans in Puer­to Rican history.

Maso River­a’s full name was Tomás Rivera Morales. He was a Puer­to Rican musi­cian (cua­tro play­er) and a major expo­nent of Puer­to Rico’s Jibaro (folk­loric) music. Rivera com­posed over 1,000 instru­men­tal com­po­si­tions for the Cua­tro, Puer­to Rico’s nation­al instrument.

La Bil­letera

Final­ly, “la bil­letera” was Alfon­sa Vil­la­m­onte Vera, a res­i­dent of Old San Juan who sold lot­tery tick­ets at one of the city’s street cor­ners. After her death, her rel­a­tives approached the orga­niz­ing com­mit­tee to ask if they would cre­ate a cabezu­do in here memory.

So what are the cabezu­dos? They’re actu­al­ly chil­dren —for the most part— who lead a com­parsa, sev­er­al times a day, danc­ing down San Sebas­t­ian Street from one end to the oth­er. Behind them you’ll see thou­sands of par­ty-lov­ing Puer­to Ricans who sing and dance to the tunes of a group of “plen­eros”.

Ple­na is one of three music styles that orig­i­nat­ed in Puer­to Rico. The oth­er two are Bom­ba and Dan­za. Bom­ba and Ple­na are folk­loric in nature, where­as dan­za is of a for­mal nature.

Plen­eros

Ple­na is played on a series of hand drums called “plen­eras” and often includes trom­bones and trumpets.

The word “com­parsa” comes from Cuba and it refers to a group of per­cus­sion­ists —usu­al­ly play­ing con­gas— accom­pa­nied by brass instru­ments and singers that per­form at carnivals.

Actu­al­ly, the orga­niz­ing com­mit­tee in charge of the San Sebas­t­ian Street Fies­tas does­n’t refer to the com­parsa as “the com­parsa”. They call it a des­file (parade). But the peo­ple —with­out a doubt— refer to it as “la comparsa”.

Final­ly, the cabezu­dos are the lifeblood of the San Sebas­t­ian Street Fies­tas. With­out them we’d be left with a large group of arti­sans and thou­sands of peo­ple drink­ing beer. They are tru­ly the life of the party.

Enjoy Puer­to Rico,

©2014,Orlando Mer­gal, MA
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Bilin­gual Con­tent Cre­ator, Blog­ger, Pod­cast­er,
Author, Pho­tog­ra­ph­er and New Media Expert
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