Vejigante

Island carnivals with people wearing colorful affectations adorned with horns and dancing around on stilts, the scene recurs annually in Ponce and a few other island towns. Some spectators know of the origins...re-enactments of a medieval battle during the age of the Reconquista. The masks are uncomfortable reminders of an artful demonization of the Other.  Today, these veils are a more common presence in markets and stalls, disembodied and displayed in kiosks...awaiting the eager tourist to claim them as a trophy.

Such guises and their folkloric baggage are mostly distant memories or so I thought, until I looked up one morning and saw it dancing along the leaves of our Black Walnut tree.