New Years

New Years, or: Burning Juan Chuchita

In advance of New Years Eve, I was informed to wear pants. And that a man named Juan would be set on fire at midnight. But most importantly, I should put on pants.

While kids may receive one or two toys (soccer balls, dolls, bicycles, etc) for Christmas, the main gifts are new clothes. New Years is all about the party and you gotta look good for the party, so Christmas is all about getting the clothes for the event on the 31^st. A nice designer t-shirt, some swanky jeans and fancy new sneakers are perfect. Since some of my neighbors were talking about it back in October, I picked up a nice new shirt and sneakers back home in the US over Thanksgiving. So I was good to go and my host mom looked relieved that I wasn’t going to be wearing all old clothes and that I had something new “to show off.”

As had done several other families in the neighborhood, the folks across the street had assembled their very own Juan Chuchita. A life-sized doll made of stuffed old clothing, each Juan Chuchita had a painted face and was placed on a chair or against a wooden pole so that it was sitting up. Besides those standard characteristics, most were made out of old uniforms (I imagine because it’s easier to stuff and zip a full-body uniform than it is pants and a shirt) and many had bottles of beer or rum tucked into their front pockets or in the crook of their arms. Oh, and most had very large phalluses. At least one had a very attentive creator who included some sort of pubic hair. Naturally, these were all going to be doused in gasoline and then lit on fire at midnight, I was told. Not one to disagree on such matters, my response was an emphatic “sounds good to me.”

Here are a handful of photos of the Juan Chuchitas I saw in town:

Starting off the night, we had a small, family dinner with natilla making an appearance again. (This time it was coconut natilla which I enjoyed more than the caramel-like arequipe flavored natilla we had at Christmas.) We also ate buñuelos, small balls of fried dough that reminded me, to some degree of old-fashioned donut holes. They were tasty.

After dinner and a few drinks, we gathered again at a family member’s house down the street, had some more beverages and waited for midnight. With a few minutes to go before midnight, the crowd broke out in a traditional song about it being a few minutes until midnight (“faltan cinco para las doce” I believe they sing) and small bottles of gasoline came from their hiding places. As the clocks hit twelve, matches were lit, sending the Juan Chuchitas up in flames – plastic chairs, Styrofoam phalluses, uniforms and all. Everyone exchanged hugs, yelling “Feliz Año” (“Happy Year”) and the fiesta continued for a few more hours.

Tired and ready for bed, I made my way home passing circles of ash every few hundred feet of the dirt road, remnants of the Juan Chuchitas that were sitting there hours earlier. In with the new, up in flames with the old. Happy New Year.