kill the snake
The Mataculebra in Puerto de la Cruz
The Mataculebra arrives at Puerto de la Cruz by the hand of D. Manuel Díaz, known as Manuel Catalina, who brought it from Cuba at the end of the 19th century and represented it better than anyone else on the streets of the city and other towns on the island until his death in 1948. Their descendants, the Catalinas, continued to represent it at carnivals in the city, maintaining the tradition until the mid-eighties of the last century.
…The negritos de la culebra also suffered marginalization and indifference: they are not mentioned in official documents, nor in festive programs, professional photographers rarely captured them…The few photographs that we have been able to collect on the subject were kept, very jealously , some of the people who were part of the comparsa.” To kill the snake: a Canarian tradition of Afro-Cuban origin. Manuel J. Lorenzo Perera.
The recovery of this tradition comes from the study and publication in 1997 of the book: Matar la Culebra: una Canarian tradition of Afro-Cuban origin, by Professor Manuel Lorenzo Perera, which also inaugurates a photographic-ethnographic exhibition in Puerto de la Cruz and Together with the Folkloric Group of the Higher Education Center of the University of de La Laguna parade again and represent the ritual through the main streets of the city.
The rite. The staging
It begins with the parade in a or two rows depending on the number of participants, with the black man leading the flag and behind the foreman and the black matador carrying the snake. A continued the row of blacks dressed in white with rattles and swords led by the members who play the drum marking the rhythm of the march and singing “Here we go the negritos, torichicos chacandela, we come prepared to kill the snake.” After parading, the blacks make a circle, within which the foreman (the only white character, with a beard and whip in hand) and the black matador are located. The representation runs between these two main characters: the foreman who, using lashes , threatens and asks the black matador to kill the animal and he with the animal in his hands he is fearful of both the whipping and the bite of the snake, accompanied by the choirs of all the blacks of the "Calabazón, son, son".
In the end, the black matador, in the midst of the foreman's shouts, decides to finish off the animal by sticking his sword into its head, while the choir begins to sing the last part of the ritual where they greet those present and, with hat in hand, ask them for the little money They form up again and continue to kill her elsewhere.