The yearly festivity of San Juan Baptist came to Aruba from Mexico, Central America and Venezuela. This festival has been a part of Aruba’s cultural heritage since 1862. The celebration of the San Juan Day kicked off as a harvest festival observed by native islanders to thank their many gods for the plentiful harvest they had reaped and pray for a similarly good one the following year.
Spanish missionaries, bent on turning Indian natives into Christian worshipers, allowed them to carry on their heathen tradition of the rooster burial during the San Juan Baptist festivities observed annually every June 24.
Regardless of the fact that the festival is held in other countries around the world, Aruba is the only nation under the sun where this celebration is observed with dancing and singing. As a troubadour croons a popular song, other musicians play a drum, a fiddle and a wiri or raspa.
Another changing element is the ceremony of burying a live rooster up to its neck in the ground since nowadays the fowl is replaced by a pumpkin. After the “rooster burial” was done, the fowl’s head used to be hooded with a hollow pumpkin as the root vegetable itself was then covered with sand. The hooded person that used to happen on the buried rooster had the right to claim the cock.
Colors pay a key role in the festival. Fire is represented in the yellow-and-red garments worn by both men and women. The harvest surplus and other wastes are buried to depict the cleansing of the human soul.
