I arrived in Santa Rosa a few weeks before their Fiesta Patronal (patron saint festival). As you may have guessed, their patron saint is Santa Rosa. She is the first Catholic saint from the Americas.
She was born in Lima, Peru in 1586 and was evidently very pious (to a seemingly ridiculous degree). I sort of dig her though, as it appears she was a vegetarian (I’m going to have to use that next time someone here asks me why I’m a vegetarian). I’m kinda vague on her miracles and what not, but she was beatified in 1668. The actual Fiesta Patronal is August 30th of every year, but they celebrate for 9 days leading up to that day.
It was a pretty crazy week, and I only attended half of the events they had going on. The city is certainly setting me up to be bored by comparison in the coming weeks.
The festivities kicked off a week ago with the rosary and mass in the evening, followed by a “cultural moment” after mass. They then host this evening rosary/mass/moment event every night until the Fiesta Patronal. The cultural moments range from dance performances to little historical notes. The church was packed with people each night.
There were a bunch of random events all week. The Cultural Center hosted a book talk with local author Camilo Cantero, who wrote a book about influential people from Misiones, our department, including a number of Rosenos (people from Santa Rosa). There were also sports tournaments and a question and answer competition between students (kind of like a spelling or geography bee, but with science and health questions).
A little mini-carnival came to town for the week.
I didn’t have a death wish, so I avoided trying out any of the shady-looking carnival rides.
They also hosted two rodeo events, a horse race and an asado (grilled meat meal), which I avoided due to crowds/general lack of interest (the former two) and meat-centeredness (the latter).
One night they hosted a artistic festival with dance groups and musical performers from Santa Rosa and surrounding cities. This was particularly cool, as it meant I got to see all the different traditional dances of Paraguay. Though scheduled start time was 8 pm, it didn’t start until well after 9 and didn’t end until midnight. I don’t know that I’ll ever get used to “Hora Paraguaya.”
Another day they had a big San Fermín festival, which included a big parade of horses down our main street.
I’m evidently enough of a novelty that one of the guys on horse back stopped to let me get a photo with his horse (taken by his friend, on another horse).
Another night the local youth orchestra played in the church after mass, which despite an awful sound system, was rather nice.
On the weekend local organizations put booths together for a little mini-fair in the plaza. It was really fun to wander around and talk to people at this event. I met a lot of curious students, including one who is from New York and inexplicably living in Paraguay.
Everything culminated on the 30th with a procession of Santa Rosa (the statue) around Santa Rosa (the city).
Basically the whole town gets together in the plaza and follows the statue around the main part of town in a big procession, while a band plays and someone says the rosary over a loudspeaker. Curious.
The procession ends back in the plaza, where they host a big mass outdoors (the church isn’t big enough to hold everyone). Then they host an asado and at night they have a big dinner show with musical performances (again opted out due to meat-centeredness).
All in all a really great week to experience Paraguayan culture and traditions and to meet random new people.