Chickens and turkeys: not just for dinner anymore Saturday, November 30, 1996 Online Edition 31 Honduras This Week-Online By WENDY GRIFFIN "Many Honduran children's songs are about chickens. This is not surprising since many Honduran children have chickens as pets." This holiday season, many families will sit down to a nice chicken or turkey dinner. Both of these animals have a long history in Honduras, but the turkey came first. In pre-Columbian times, Lencan and Mayan Indians raised turkeys. Honduran turkeys have retained their original Nahuatl language name -- jolote or guajolote. When the Spanish came, they required the Indians to raise chickens, too. By the 1540s, Honduran Indians were paying half of their annual tribute in chickens and the other half in turkeys. The Spanish missionaries were very distressed by certain Honduran Indian groups, like the Pech of Olancho and the Tolupanes of Yoro, who moved every week to go fishing or hunting. They thought such inconsistency was incompatible with learning Christian doctrine. So they gave the Indians chickens, hoping to make them settle down to take care of them. Father Licendo y Goicoechea, who worked in Olancho, was disgusted with the results of this policy. He noted in 1808 that the Indians would stop in front of the fathers, saying. "Hui, hui, throw water on me!" After the Indian was baptized and given a shirt and a chicken, he would run away again to the mountains. Noting that cocks only crow if they have room to spread their wings, the Pech kept their roosters in small boxes so that their crowing would not reveal Indian mountain hiding places. FOOD AND SPORT From this inauspicious beginning, chickens have come to have an impact on almost all aspects of Honduran culture. In sports in many regions such as the Ladino town of Cedros, cock fights are considered an essential part of the annual patron saint festival. In the last century, people would walk from Olancho to the festival in the Salvadoran village of San Miguel just to show of their roosters in cock fights and sell them. Many Honduran children's songs are about chickens. This is not surprising since many Honduran children have chickens as pets. The song "El Gallo Pinto" tells about the day the red rooster overslept. No one, not even the sun, got up that day because no one heard the rooster's "kikiriki." In the song "Salio la Gallina", a hen and her chickens go out for a walk and are warned to beware of the cat and the hawk. This struggle to protect chickens from hawks is also celebrated in stories and dances. "El Gavilan" is a ladino dance. Most of its dancers are dressed in charming fat hen costumes. Honduran dance specialist David Flores says the dance is about hens running away from a hawk. FOLKTALES Among the Garifuna Indians, men fish and women take care of the fields and the animals. According to a Garifuna folktale, a Garifuna mother once complained to her son that he should help her because a hawk was stealing the family's chickens one by one. But the boy didn't want to watch over the chickens; he preferred to go fishing. He tied all of the chickens together before he left, thinking it would keep the hawk from stealing them, but instead, the hawk was able to steal all of the chickens at once, rather than one by one. PECKING ORDER Like their English-speaking counterparts, Hondurans also use the term "hen pecked." This is a term that often comes up in political jokes like this one about former Honduran president Tiburcio Carias Andino (1932-1946). The "continuismo" policy of this National Party leader was a controversial one. According to the joke, a member of the National Party once heard a parrot cry out, "Viva Carias! Que se muere en poder!" ("Long live Carias! May he die in power!"). The man thought Carias would be pleased with this parrot, so he bought it. After hearing the parrot, the President was enchanted and accepted the gift. But then the parrot changed its tune and began saying, "Viva el Partido Liberal! Que se muera Carias! ("Long live the Liberal Party! Death to Carias!"). Carias was not amused and he put the parrot in a hen house. The hens began to peck at the parrot, but it flew up in the rafters. When they let the parrot out the following morning, it muttered, "I might be bald and green, but I'm certainly not blue". Blue is the color of the Nationalist Party. Chickens still figure into politics today. One of President Reina's campaign slogans was "este es mi gallo" ("this is my rooster"), something a Honduran would say when betting on the wining rooster in a cockfight. Honduran cartoonists often use the image of a rooster in their caricatures of President Reina. TRADITION On the serious side, chickens and turkeys are sacrificed at Lenca Compostura ceremonies for a good harvest, but only chickens (and previously ducks) are sacrificed during the Lenca's Guancasco ceremony. Garifunas sacrifice chickens as well as other animals during their Dugu ceremony in honor of their ancestors. These animals are later eaten by participants. Chickens have traditionally been important in Honduras as a food as well. Nacatamales made with chicken are a traditional Christmas treat among Ladinos and, more recently, among Garifunas. If you are able to enjoy warm chicken nacatamales this year, give a special thanks, because at Lps. 38.00 a chicken (they were previously Lps. 5.00), most families will have to go without. At Lps. 2.00 a pound for corn, up from 25 centavos, most families can no longer afford to feed their chickens. Chickens thieves with two feet instead of two wings have become a sad sign of the difficult times rural people are facing these days << BACK |