Festival del Maiz

The master calendar makers who invented three-day weekends have my utmost gratitude. Here in Medellin they are called 'puentes,' or bridges, that extra day uniting the weekend and start of the week with a unanimous vote to completely skip over Monday by refashioning it into an extra day for sleeping in, strolling around a park, or, as in my case, recovering after a riotous trip to the countryside.

Saturday evening witnessed five of us cramming into a little car with sleeping bags, backpacks, and high expectations. 1. Me. 2. My dear friend Esteban. 3. Esteban's cousin Marcela who grew up in Culver City and just moved down here for the year after graduating from high school. 4. Daniel, a microfutbol friend of Esteban's who lived in Irvine for four years (although this isn't a defining feature of his), and 5. Ronald, aka Flaco, another microfutbol player with the best paisa banter I have yet encountered.

As it grew dark and excessively rainy we wound our way up La Avenida Las Palmas, out of the city and into the country. Around dinnertime we stopped for the best arepa de chocolo con queso I have ever savored and still leaves me salivating just thinking about the moist, wood-fired warmth and buttery crispness. Then it was another four hours of roadsicknening curves and fun chatter through eroding hillsides leaving huge potholes in our way and delaying our arrival to Sonson until 10:00.

Nobody in the group had previously visited the small town, but it was supposed to be very typical of the region with old colonial houses, cowboy culture, and gorgeous surrounding hills. We were somewhat surprised by the crowds mulling around a secondary plaza near our chosen parking spot, and became increasingly curious about the amount of people after realizing that three hotels were already completely booked up but had couches we could sleep on for 15.000 pesos. Perhaps there was something going on about which we were not aware?

After walking closer and closer toward the main plaza I noticed corn stalks tied to every lamp-post, window shutter, in bunches across the portals of bars, as well as strewn across the sidewalks. People were wearing ponchos and hand-made cowboy hats; most of them inebriated and some prancing around on horses trained in high-stepping. By the time we reached the center of the action we had figured out that our unplanned visit just so happened to coincide with the 75th Festival de Maiz, ie: the biggest party the town had ever known.

Realizing that this was too fun of an opportunity to be dampened by a steady downpour of cold rain, we started trying to catch up with the rest of the town in their celebrations and knocked on random doors in search of a cheap bed. Eventually we found a tiny hotel with enough room for us all to sleep at a reasonable price, and changed into more water-friendly clothes while discussing the craziness in which the entirety of Sonson was enveloped. Now, I know it might be somewhat unsavory to talk about the extreme party culture here, but I feel I have to explain the state of absurdity to which I have seen people drink themselves in order to incite your opinions on why old and young alike would do such a thing?

(Before you proceed, I would like to say as a disclaimer that my friends and I were out for a cultural experience rather than drinkfest, and that despite the absurdity I was completely safe the entire trip and never felt uncomfortable.)

Throughout the evening I saw various verbal street fights, people falling off of horses, and someone's grandparents making out (I personally found the latter more endearing than inappropriate). At one point I enlisted the help of my friends to pull an older man out of the street who had fallen over a road block and passed out, lucky enough to be lying after a speed bump which made cars slow down enough to see and swerve around his body. After we placed him on the sidewalk he violently jerked back into the street, this time rolling down the road which was very steep and slick with rain. His 'woman' was trying to coax him home, but when "Carlos" responded with garbled burps she gave up and left him to the sniffing dogs wandering around.

My mind is analytically trained to ponder the causes behind what I experience, and so the question still pursuing me after witnessing this is: what are these people trying to escape by drowning their minds in alcohol? I know that the town isn't extremely economically prosperous; are these men (and women) just tired farmers who have overwhelming financial and family responsibilities? That area of the country also suffered under the presence of guerrilla forces, and maybe they had seen enough violence or experienced enough tragedy to need the escape of aguardiente in order to stay sane the rest of the time?

Either way, I was overwhelmed by the pompousness of the children roaming the streets and staggering couples, happy to crawl into my sleeping bag and listen to the salsa songs blasting into the night from the bar across the street the entire night. The next morning everything was much more tranquil; the men from the night before passed out in bars with chairs overturned on top of them and the proprietors picking up their limp arms to clean the bar beneath them. Even if their livers were complaining I got a great picture.

Now daylight and somewhat sunny, we wandered through the cobblestone streets admiring the bright colors and greeting the untended horses eating leftover oranges and arepas. Although I think I appreciate corn more than most people given my dietary restrictions and obsession with food histories, I didn't think that the entire population of a town could be so obsessed with one grain. The town seal of Sonson shows a lovely mountain framed by two ears of corn; imprinted on the plaza's sitting stools, painted on the sides of buildings, and forged into the storm drains. In honor of the festival, people were wearing necklaces strung with kernels of...corn, with a small dried arepa serving as a medallion. There was even a parade honoring the different cycles of corn cultivation, ending with a young and beautiful corn queen riding in the back of a pickup truck and waving at the hungover crowds with the grace of a fairytale princess. If I subscribed to a gluten-free pagan religion I might just choose this corn goddess as my deity.

Eventually we had explored the entirety of the small town and piled into the car for the anticipated ride home--this time able to appreciate the absolute gorgeousness of our surroundings. I know some of you are probably tired of hearing me rave about the natural beauty of Colombia, but seriously people, what beats a semi-tropical terrain dotted with waterfalls cascading down the hillsides, old ranches boasting orange and blue porches with terracotta pots overflowing with fuchsias and supertunias hanging from their eaves, and kids running through flower fields with horses? Every curve provoked a communal gasp--even the native Paisas were impressed.

I was really surprised at how well-patrolled the roads were; with police stops every 20 miles or so and young men in military garb posted every 5 miles. Most of them were wearing red bands around their arms, something that used to be an indication of the ELN (one of the prominent paramilitary groups in the ocuntry). But my friends assured me that this zone was safe now and that it must be the sign for some special police force. Either way they were friendly and made the unpopulated road feel much safer...you know just in case we had car troubles or something.

By the time I stumbled, exhausted, into my apartment at 7 that night completely overwhelmed with the immense diversity of Colombian culture and geography, I was already starting to plan a trip for the next puente.