The Eastern Stars - Mark Kurlansky [59]
The clearest expression of a unique San Pedro culture is the cocolos, who are sometimes heard singing their Afro-Caribbean music in the Parque Central. The cocolos also maintained a dance troupe, which was what was being honored by the statue of the man with the feather headdress on the crab-infested platform at the entrance to town.
The troupe was led by Donald Warner Henderson, nicknamed Linda, a mischievous little seventy-six-year-old man with glasses, a West Indian lilt to his English, and a wry sense of humor. His father was from Antigua and his mother Saint Kitts. Both came to San Pedro for work in the cane fields at age twenty-four. Linda’s father cut cane on various estates, but Linda himself was a tinsmith by trade and noticeably proud that he had never worked in the cane fields.
The cocolo dances of San Pedro came from Antigua, Nevis, and Tortola and were passed down through families. Linda’s father had danced traditional dances in Antigua. In the British West Indies they would dance on Christmas Day. “Christmas belongs to us and Christmas eve belongs to Dominicans,” he explained. “On Christmas eve we serenade and Dominicans eat and drink.”
The cocolos also perform their dances on February 27, the national holiday—which, interestingly, celebrates independence not from Spain but from Haiti, which withdrew its occupation forces on February 27, 1844.
The most colorful and famous dance costume, the Guloya, featured in the sculpture at the entrance to town, is misunderstood by the non-cocolos of San Pedro. Guloyas are Goliaths who combat Davids in a different cocolo dance. The dancers with feather headdresses are Indians for a dance called Los Indios Salvajes in which cocolos dress like Indians and dance around waving tomahawks—just one of many aspects of Caribbean culture that Americans would find politically incorrect. But the Spanish didn’t leave any Indians to protest. The wild Indians seem to wear as many colors as they can find, with their beaded masks with long black pigtails, beaded costumes with capes, tall peacock feather headdresses, and painted tomahawks.
Many other dances are in their repertoire, including one, believed to be of English origin, in which a man goes out to gather wood for a fire, then comes home to find his wife with another man, whom he chases with a stick. Traditionally, none of the dancers are supposed to be identified until evening, when the masks are taken off. But in reality many of the cocolo dancers sit around in their beads without masks, getting so drunk before the dance begins—traditionally on guavaberry, but shots of rum work well, too—that they are well exposed before they ever get their masks on.
Cocolo music is African and is performed using a snare drum, a larger drum, a wooden flute, and triangles. The dances are clearly African as well. Cocolos, who have such a distinctive presence in San Pedro culture, are always the stars of these fiestas; but the other Dominicans also celebrate, often wearing bull masks and chasing people in the crowds. Women do wild things with toothpicks spiking out of their hair, and some men wear fetching gowns. In fact, if you look closely in the bars, which spill out onto the streets, many of the women could use closer shaves. Macorisanos of Haitian origin crowd close together in the street for African slow dancing. No one gets more out of a small, slow movement than a Haitian dancer. There is always a Fidel Castro or two and a few Zorros on horseback. Young people come in from the bateys on horseback. It’s surprising that the fast and loud, buzzing motorbikes and merengue blasting from trucks don’t panic the horses, but Dominican horses, like Dominican people, are used to noise.
Cocolo food is Eastern Caribbean, which is also a bit African and has had a huge influence on San Pedro. They eat salted fish—not the imported salt cod of their English islands but cured local fish—as well as pigeon peas, which come from Africa; calaloo, the broad leaves of a tuber, which are cooked like