Together with the "November music" we normally begin to feel the breezes of december and welcomed by them, the people of Cartagena sing, dance, jump, shout and mess around. Not all, because it is not about promoting stereotypes to pigeonhole people, however, even the most apathetic to these customs at some point in his life as a Cartagena must have participated in "We are Angels."

From the 1st of the penultimate month of the year, the festivities begin in La Heroica, the adults wake up to the refrain, more shouted than sung, and the sound of the banging on the pots produced by the boys and girls together with the adults who accompany.

"Angels we are, from heaven we come, asking for alms for ourselves"

“Tintililillo, tintililillo, five pesos for my pocket”

"It doesn't beat you, it doesn't beat you, take the bun out of the window"

"Don't laugh, don't laugh, the backpack is empty"

"Don't hide, don't hide, I'll hit you with the pot"

Some people, especially those interested in the preservation of their own culture, do not stock up on sweets for Halloween parties, but they do set aside plantains, potatoes, cassava, corn, auyama, celery, coriander, onions, garlic; what they can help with according to their own economic conditions, in the best cases it is even possible for a family to deliver chicken or beef.

But a lot or a little, cheap or expensive, whenever you share something the group will sing in front of your house “this house is made of rice, where the Child God lives”. Otherwise if you close doors and windows, if you ignore those who sing to you, or if you deliver, without excuse, spoiled products; nothing can save you from shouting out loud

“This house is made of chili peppers, where the cujís live” or “This house is made of needles, where all the witches live”.

This, in addition to Christmas and the festivities of María Inmaculada Concepción, is perhaps the only morning in which a large part of Cartagena's children get up very early in the morning with pleasure. It's a day when parents let them miss school and teachers don't call absences.

As this party is ours, native, not foreign, and it accounts for our socio-cultural processes and our identity; numerous entities are now interested in recovering it, since eclipsed by Halloween where sweets are received, the preparation of a sancocho as a final product is not interesting to many children and the groups are getting smaller. It is for this reason in part that Nueva Lengua Cartagena we are interested in sharing this custom with our students so that it is one of those typical of a territory that are sometimes unknown by other cultures but that are highly significant for those who practice them.

So we explain to the students what this custom consists of and we show them the process. They were even able to see the way in which the children of the La Milagrosa Educational Institution participated in this activity in the park, since sancocho is normally carried out in open spaces.

So, the students of Nueva Lengua, regardless of their nationalities, sang the traditional refrains just like the people from Cartagena. Embraced by the burning sun of that day, they imitated the natives and received, just like us, the November festivities as normal after two very different years.

As far as the independence festivities are concerned, Nueva Lengua Cartagena and its students put on the city flag that from the yoke the chains, like a lioness, fierce, destroyed, as our anthem says. We put on our costumes and embraced the carnivalesque to bring it to our students with enthusiasm.

Students and teachers dressed with enthusiasm and popular cultural identity imitating the reign of independence, representing real popular neighborhoods of the city.

And, although it was not the first of November, the students of Nueva Lengua They had the opportunity to try the authentic sancocho, that dish that is so ours, which, as some say, is the taste test of the racial and cultural diversity of the Caribbean and Latin America, and specifically Colombia; and by the way, they got to know a little about the rural area of ​​Bolívar during an excursion to the outskirts of the municipality of Turbaco.

Written by Professor María Angélica Castro Nueva Lengua Cartagena

All the articles in this blog have been written by the teachers of our school and by students from different countries who traveled to Colombia to learn Spanish.
“You travel too and study Spanish in NUEVA LENGUA"

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