Maximilian C. Forte, 1999, 2002, 2006

The following section is part of a transcript of an interview with Ricardo Bharath Hernandez, President of the Santa Rosa Carib Community, explaining the recent history of the Santa Rosa Festival:

"Sadly, by the 1960s, this festival went into decline: poorer preparations, less coordination, fewer numbers. When I returned from living in the United States in the early 1970s I was personally distressed to see this dismal state of affairs. I grew determined to revive and renovate the Santa Rosa Festival. To do so, I needed the assistance of elders; I needed a meeting place; I needed to coordinate efforts; and, I needed a permanent organizational structure. Thus was born the Santa Rosa Carib Community -- a new organization, yes; a new community, no. With succeeding years, we came to learn of the Amerindian history behind this festival, the elders acting as a key source of this information. We began to learn how many of the traditions we had previously taken for granted were in fact Amerindian traditions: the tapia houses; palm thatched roofs; making cassava bread, cassava farine, and cassareep; the Amerindian input in Parang; our knowledge of the forest, of the medicinal uses of plants and herbs, and a number of others.

"Hence, here we are, a community registered as a limited liability company (supposedly, we were advised, in order to receive lands that we never got). Our main purposes are preserving and maintaining our traditions, as listed above, and the month of the Santa Rosa Festival represents the annual zenith of such efforts. Another purpose of ours has been to re-develop and recover older Amerindian traditions, which is done, in part, via cultural interchange with neighbouring Indigenous communities in the Caribbean. The product of this effort is also seen in the month of the Santa Rosa Festival."

There is a particular timing in the organization and distribution of events and duties during this important ritual month for the Carib Community. The Santa Rosa Festival is, in effect, a month-long series of events orchestrated by the Carib Community for both the parish and the wider Arima community.

This period begins with a key event held on August 1st each year: the blasting of the ceremonial cannon on Calvary Hill at 6:00am, with guests ranging from the Mayor and Borough officials, to residents of the area, to special guests and other invited cultural groups. After the Regiment has completed the blasting of the cannon, the Carib Community engages in the Smoke Ceremony. This is a ritual designed to praise the earth, the ancestors, family and friends, and St. Rose, the patron Saint of Arima and its Caribs.

Leading up to the Santa Rosa Festival, between approximately August 10th and August 22nd, there is a whole series of Carib preparations and different work teams are set up. They begin by refurbishing the Carib Centre, a major locus for the events of the Festival, and do so by making trips to the forest to gather timite palms, terite, and bamboo in great quantities. They also prepare flags for St. Rose, to be attached to bamboo poles and wood rods in order to decorate the park in front of the Church of Santa Rosa de Arima, formally known as Lord Harris Square, and to decorate the streets leading from the Church to the Carib Centre. Flowers to decorate the throne of St. Rose are also hand made. Bamboo "cups," cut to hold long-stalk flowers are also made as decorations to be hung on the columns inside the Church. All these preparations, and a number of related activities, lead up to the Friday before the Feast Day held on August 23rd each year. On that Friday, they march in procession to the Church, and formally begin the tasks of decorating inside and around the Church, the park, and they clean the statue of St. Rose, place her in her throne and decorate the throne. They have two processions that day, involving members of the Carib Community: the first, to bring the throne and decorations by truck; the second, to deliver their statue of the Infant Jesus which is then placed in the arms of St. Rose.

The Feast Day is the 23rd of August. This day involves a Low Mass and a procession by parishioners, led by the Caribs, around the park in front of the Church. Festivities are held afterwards. The Grand Festival, however, is held on the next Sunday following the 23rd of August. On that day there is a High Mass, a major procession through the streets of Arima, returning to the Church for Benediction and then followed by the sharing of libations with the Parish Priest in the Parish Hall. The Carib Community then makes its third procession for the day (the first from the Centre to the Church, at 8:30am, the second through the streets of Arima, escorting St. Rose's statue, and the third being the return, with banner flying, to the Carib Centre). Full festivities are held at the Carib Centre, including the typical Harvest Day offerings along with hot lunches, drinks, Parang and other music, and dancing, usually lasting from noon, officially, until as late as 2:00 the following morning.

Eight days after the 23rd of August, the Caribs march in procession to the Church, to undress the Church, the park, and to reinstall the statue of St. Rose in its regular place in the Church. Prayers are held. Roughly four hours after, when all restoration is complete, they have their final procession back to the Carib Centre. There are thus a total of nine processions, two of which are parish processions led by the Caribs through Arima. When the 23rd of August is on a Sunday, as was the case in 1998, the Feast Day and Grand Festival are combined on the same day, with a single procession through the streets of Arima.

When there has been a whole week of activities held in the park, in the week leading up to the Grand Festival, there can be as many as 3,000 to 10,000 people attending at any given event. Depending on the extent of activities, promotional efforts, and the nature of the program, the Santa Rosa Festival can attract any number of people. The keys here are the resources they have at their disposal in time for the Festival, and the space they have for hosting these events.

There is a definite symbolism to the Santa Rosa Festival that has been maintained by the Carib Community. First, this is a funerary event, marking the death of the saint and not her birth, and the procession is basically a funeral procession where her "casket" is brought to the final resting ground and decked out with wreaths of flowers. The members of the Carib Community also wear somber clothing for the occasion: men, black pants and white shirts, ties, and preferably a red sash; the ladies, dressed in formal pink dresses. The predominant colours of the festival are those that symbolize St. Rose of Lima, thus red, white, pink, and yellow. These are also the colours of roses, and the rose, as a flower, becomes a recurring motif which is symbolically associated with the Saint, whose real name was not Rose (this was a nickname). Rose of Lima was so nicknamed by her family, common Church accounts relate, because she was seen as being as "beautiful as a rose." Moreover, Rose of Lima is also said, in such accounts, to have sold roses in the streets of Lima in order to help support her family. She also maintained, according to some Church stories, a beautiful rose garden in her home where she received poor Amerindian and African children. The more important symbolic impact I believe stems from the fact that the rose is a key Marian symbol: rosaries were once made of roses; during some apparitions of the Virgin Mary, the sky is said to rain rose petals.

Also, I do not think that the choice of colours symbolizing Saint Rose can be said to be merely those that are colours of roses. Notice that black, also a colour of roses, is excluded. Indeed, some members of the Carib Community suggest a more "nativist" interpretation of the colour symbolism of the Saint. Red is said to stand for "the blood of the people," yellow stands for "the god of the sun" or "the rays bursting forth from St. Rose," white stands for "water" and "purity," while pink alone is said to stand for the Saint herself. I know that this is an issue to some given that in decorating the streets between the Carib Centre and the Church, a disagreement emerged over what colour of flag should be installed at the Santa Rosa Cemetery on King Street in Arima. Some felt any colour would be fine, others stressed yellow.

Some will want to ask: why should a Catholic ritual and a Catholic saint be so important to Amerindians stressing an indigenous identity? There are several reasons. One is that Santa Rosa is in fact the Patron Saint of the New World and the Philippines and was said to have a special bond with Amerindians and Africans in Peru. Her close friend was also the Afro-Peruvian Saint Martin De Porres. Hence, Santa Rosa is seen as very much rooted in an Amerindian milieu and may be seen as a relieving alternative to the cut and thrust of Iberian colonial history in the Americas, with all its atrocities.

There are also mundane reasons. The performance of this ritual over the centuries is one of those things that have helped to keep a geographically specific group of Amerindian descendants together. It helped to keep indigenous relatives in close contact, regardless of how non-Amerindian the festival itself may have been. Indeed, this festival was never as syncretic as one may think or expect: the ornamentation was indeed of an indigenous character (perhaps by default), but it is not that the saint stood for an Amerindian god, nor was Santa Rosa the sole or predominant saint that Carib descendants prayed to, nor did they just pray to Santa Rosa and not to Christ. The Santa Rosa Festival, like the residential basis on Calvary Hill in Arima, and like Parang music are all things that helped to keep common ties and threads between Carib descendants.

The Carib President himself repeatedly emphasizes that the Santa Rosa Festival is what "brings people together in the Community." As for identifying some of its auxiliary traditions, he admits this has been an uphill struggle amongst his own people. Cassava bread is an Amerindian tradition, but few make it anymore, and even fewer would accept its designation as a tradition auxiliary to the Santa Rosa Festival, the former taking place all year, the latter being only at the end of August. The same could be said for weaving. It continues to be a struggle for the Carib President to get his own people or others to understand the Carib basis of the Festival, that is how it emerged literally on the backs of Amerindian descendants, possibly because those same descendants would prefer to see themselves more as Catholics or even as Spanish than as Amerindian.