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"Many Honduran children's songs are about chickens.
This is not surprising since many Honduran children have chickens as pets."
By WENDY GRIFFIN
This holiday season, many families will sit down to a nice chicken or turkey dinner. Both of these animals have a long history in Honduras, but the turkey came first.
In pre-Columbian times, Lencan and Mayan Indians raised turkeys. Honduran turkeys have retained their original Nahuatl language name -- jolote or guajolote. When the Spanish came, they required the Indians to raise chickens, too. By the 1540s, Honduran Indians were paying half of their annual tribute in chickens and the other half in turkeys.
The Spanish missionaries were very distressed by certain Honduran Indian groups, like the Pech of Olancho and the Tolupanes of Yoro, who moved every week to go fishing or hunting. They thought such inconsistency was incompatible with learning Christian doctrine. So they gave the Indians chickens, hoping to make them settle down to take care of them.
Father Licendo y Goicoechea, who worked in Olancho, was disgusted with the results of this policy. He noted in 1808 that the Indians would stop in front of the fathers, saying. "Hui, hui, throw water on me!" After the Indian was baptized and given a shirt and a chicken, he would run away again to the mountains.
Noting that cocks only crow if they have room to spread their wings, the Pech kept their roosters in small boxes so that their crowing would not reveal Indian mountain hiding places.
FOOD AND SPORT
From this inauspicious beginning, chickens have come to have an impact on almost all aspects of Honduran culture. In sports in many regions such as the Ladino town of Cedros, cock fights are considered an essential part of the annual patron saint festival. In the last century, people would walk from Olancho to the festival in the Salvadoran village of San Miguel just to show of their roosters in cock fights and sell them.
Many Honduran children's songs are about chickens. This is not surprising since many Honduran children have chickens as pets. The song "El Gallo Pinto" tells about the day the red rooster overslept. No one, not even the sun, got up that day because no one heard the rooster's "kikiriki." In the song "Salio la Gallina", a hen and her chickens go out for a walk and are warned to beware of the cat and the hawk.
This struggle to protect chickens from hawks is also celebrated in stories and dances. "El Gavilan" is a ladino dance. Most of its dancers are dressed in charming fat hen costumes. Honduran dance specialist David Flores says the dance is about hens running away from a hawk.
FOLKTALES
Among the Garifuna Indians, men fish and women take care of the fields and the animals. According to a Garifuna folktale, a Garifuna mother once complained to her son that he should help her because a hawk was stealing the family's chickens one by one. But the boy didn't want to watch over the chickens; he preferred to go fishing. He tied all of the chickens together before he left, thinking it would keep the hawk from stealing them, but instead, the hawk was able to steal all of the chickens at once, rather than one by one.
PECKING ORDER
Like their English-speaking counterparts, Hondurans also use the term "hen pecked." This is a term that often comes up in political jokes like this one about former Honduran president Tiburcio Carias Andino (1932-1946). The "continuismo" policy of this National Party leader was a controversial one.
According to the joke, a member of the National Party once heard a parrot cry out, "Viva Carias! Que se muere en poder!" ("Long live Carias! May he die in power!"). The man thought Carias would be pleased with this parrot, so he bought it. After hearing the parrot, the President was enchanted and accepted the gift. But then the parrot changed its tune and began saying, "Viva el Partido Liberal! Que se muera Carias! ("Long live the Liberal Party! Death to Carias!").
Carias was not amused and he put the parrot in a hen house. The hens began to peck at the parrot, but it flew up in the rafters. When they let the parrot out the following morning, it muttered, "I might be bald and green, but I'm certainly not blue". Blue is the color of the Nationalist Party.
Chickens still figure into politics today. One of President Reina's campaign slogans was "este es mi gallo" ("this is my rooster"), something a Honduran would say when betting on the wining rooster in a cockfight. Honduran cartoonists often use the image of a rooster in their caricatures of President Reina.
TRADITION
On the serious side, chickens and turkeys are sacrificed at Lenca Compostura ceremonies for a good harvest, but only chickens (and previously ducks) are sacrificed during the Lenca's Guancasco ceremony. Garifunas sacrifice chickens as well as other animals during their Dugu ceremony in honor of their ancestors. These animals are later eaten by participants.
Chickens have traditionally been important in Honduras as a food as well. Nacatamales made with chicken are a traditional Christmas treat among Ladinos and, more recently, among Garifunas. If you are able to enjoy warm chicken nacatamales this year, give a special thanks, because at Lps. 38.00 a chicken (they were previously Lps. 5.00), most families will have to go without. At Lps. 2.00 a pound for corn, up from 25 centavos, most families can no longer afford to feed their chickens. Chickens thieves with two feet instead of two wings have become a sad sign of the difficult times rural people are facing these days.
Saturday, November 23, 1996 Online Edition 30
Bay Islanders are famous for travelling by sea. But many Bay Island stories begin with someone travelling by horse. Horses used to be so common that Independence Day was celebrated with a horse race from Sandy Bay to Coxen Hole.
When the Spanish first conquered the Americas, horses were so important that Indians were sold for two pesos a piece, manioc was sold at six pesos for 25 pounds and horses were worth up to 600 pesos. It took the sale of 300 Indian slaves to buy a single horse.
Horses gallop through Honduran folk tales and legends
By WENDY GRIFFIN
When the Spanish first conquered the Americas, horses were so important that Indians were sold for two pesos a piece, manioc was sold at six pesos for 25 pounds and horses were worth up to 600 pesos. It took the sale of 300 Indian slaves to buy a single horse.
Since horses were so valuable, it is not surprising that they have generated a number of crafts. Most Honduran towns have talabarteria leather shops where you can get beautiful leather saddles. Cowboy gear has never gone out of style, so spurs, boots, and cowboy hats, both Western and Mexican style, are also available. If you need a simpler saddle for hauling loads of firewood, milk cans or empty Coca Cola bottles, rustic cowhide saddles on wooden frames are available in local markets. On the North Coast, horse carts, once used for hauling bananas, are still common.
Horses not only generate the handicraft, they also provide some of the raw materials needed to create it. Horsehide belts were once common in the Bay Islands and horse hair is used to make bows for the traditional string instruments played in Honduran villages.
Many Honduran mulattos and ladinos worked as cowboys, mule and horse breeders and mule train drivers to the North Coast and Mexico. Living so close to horses, they came to know their movements. These movements were incorporated into their dances.
The Paisanazco dance of Lepaterique in Francisco Morazan department depicts a battle between the Christians and the Moors. During a break in the fighting, one of the horses escapes. A horse dance follows, performed by a dancer wearing a horse mask made of horse leather and mane. The horse runs this way and that until one of the Moorish soldiers captures it. This leads to resumed fighting and the eventual death of the Moor Captain, according to Honduran folklorist Mario Ardon.
In Garifuna villages and some banana camps where horses were available, the beginning of the dance of the Moors and the Christians is performed on horseback until the generals get off their horses to fight.
Horses were less common among the Lencas. This was due in part to their poverty, but also to the poor condition of Lenca mountain roads, which made ox carts more practical. In the Lenca dance Los Negritos in Santa Elena, La Paz department, horses are only suggested by dancers holding tails behind them and a whip for the horse in their other hand. In this dance, the Negritos, or Moors, had horses, while the Christians, or Indians, had none -- a reflection of the colonial era. In spite of this, the on foot Indians win with the help of God. Since Blacks were used to force Indians to work in mines, this dance allowed the Indians at least symbolic victory over the Black militia men.
The Ladinos perform a dance called Los Caballitos in which couples hold hands and dance in a circle in imitation of the carousel horses that used to be present at every village fair, reports Honduran dance specialist David Flores.
Bay Islanders are famous for travelling by sea. But many Bay Island stories begin with someone travelling by horse. Horses used to be so common that Independence Day was celebrated with a horse race from Sandy Bay to Coxen Hole.
According to one Bay Islands legend, there was once a young boy named Neff who lived near Sandy Bay. One day, his mother asked him to take some plantains on horseback to the Harvest festival in Flowers Bay. On his way, he was seen by two horse thieves, who decided to take advantage of the young boy.
Back in Neff's days, most Bay Islanders spoke only English. There were very few Spanish speakers on the islands and the English speakers generally avoided them. As the two thieves discussed the best way to steal Neff's horse, one said, "I have an idea. We will call to him in Spanish and he will be so scared that he will give us his plantains."
"There's only one problem," said the other thief. "We don't know how to speak Spanish."
"No problem," said the first thief. "I worked on a banana plantation on the mainland for awhile and I know a few words."
When the thief called "Alto! Parese!" Neff was so scared that he jumped off his horse and ran away, forgetting that he could move faster if he stayed on his horse. The thieves got the plantains as well as Neff's horse.
In his first report on the situation of the Indians in Honduras, the man named by the King of Spain as the Protector of the Indians said in 1540 that the horses and cattle brought by the conquistadors were getting into the Indians' crops. This has not changed. When asked why Garifunas seldom make cassaba bread, vagrant animals who eat the crops was the first answer. Thus, it is no surprising that horses appear in dances and stories of racial conflict.
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