Danza de los Diablitos (The Dance of the Little Devils) is a three-day annual festival, held December 31 through January 2 by the Boruca people, an indigenous people in Costa Rica.
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Danza de los Diablitos (The Dance of the Little Devils) is a three-day annual festival, held December 31 through January 2 by the Boruca people, an indigenous people in Costa Rica.
01 · What it is
Dance
Live movement, rhythm, costume, or staged dramatic performance passed between generations.
02 · Where & name
Costa Rica
Written in its own script on record as Juego de los diablitos de Boruca.
03 · How it is doing
□□□□ (Not yet assessed)
Documented in open cultural records, but no cited field assessment of its current vitality has been added here yet.
04 · Proof & reuse
1 cited source
Every claim links to a public record below. Free to quote, teach, and share under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Common Questions Answered on Record
What is Danza de los Diablitos in plain words?
Danza de los Diablitos (The Dance of the Little Devils) is a three-day annual festival, held December 31 through January 2 by the Boruca people, an indigenous people in Costa Rica. In local script on record, it is written Juego de los diablitos de Boruca.
Where is Danza de los Diablitos practised or documented?
Sources on this page place Danza de los Diablitos in Costa Rica.
What is the current condition of Danza de los Diablitos today?
□□□□ (Not yet assessed): Documented in open cultural records, but no cited field assessment of its current vitality has been added here yet.
How do I cite or share this Danza de los Diablitos entry?
Cite as: "Danza de los Diablitos." folkroom, https://folkroom.org/art-forms/danza-de-los-diablitos, text CC BY-SA, with attribution.
Danza de los Diablitos (The Dance of the Little Devils) is a three-day annual festival, held December 31 through January 2 by the Boruca people, an indigenous people in Costa Rica. The male participants of the tribe perform a ritual dance re-enacting the Spanish conquest wearing elaborate costumes. The most important part of the costumes are the masks. With the mask, each member is empowered to fight and dispel the evil of the Spanish invaders who are represented by a mock bull. The festival masks use demon features, which the indigenous people adopted symbolically from the Spanish Catholics.
This re-enactment finds the Borucans triumphant over the Spanish. The victory celebrates the identity and existence of the Borucan people against past enemies, as well as current threats to their community and way of life. As the modern world encroaches, indigenous people have struggled to find a balance that retains their spirituality and harmony with nature. Their past and their art demonstrate acknowledgment that they are part of the natural world. Remembering who they are and where they come from serves to reinforce their identity. It will hopefully bring them into the future.
This dance originated almost 500 years ago, when the Indigenous people were trying to scare away conquistadors.
The Borucas sell the hand painted masks for profit, along with many other indigenous crafts.
The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Danza de los Diablitos”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence.
Danza de los Diablitos is annual festival, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition. 1
The source record links this tradition to 2 external registers, which can be verified through the citation. 1