Festival del Jibaro Comerieño
If you want to experience Puerto Rico to its fullest, full of authentic culture, local food, and folklore music, this is the festival you should visit. The Festival del Jíbaro Comerieño is a festival that all the family can enjoy. This activity includes beautiful craft displays, delicious regional food booths,and cultural activities like rooster fights and trova singing contests.
The festival was held between the 2nd and the 4th of June, right at the center of Puerto Rico, in the Plaza de Trova in Comerio. Even though this town has only 20,778 people, it is known as the Cuna de Trovadores (or home of the trova singers) and even has the Casa de Cultura, which is a trova school for children between 6 and 16 years of age.
This festival started thirty seven (37) years ago, when the Cirilo W. Mejers Cultural Center organized a festival to gather funds to buy a decimario, which is some sort of folklore poetry book. The festival had so much success, they decided to repeat it again the next year and that developed into a yearly tradition. The mayor of Comerio, José Antonio “Josian” Santiago Rivera, mentioned in the activity that this festival helps the town economically by encouraging tourists to visit and consume in the town.
We visited the festival on Saturday at around 9AM. We have to admit that the parking was limited at that time of the morning but we were lucky enough to find one. We got off the car and walked towards the facility and found a booth selling books for a dollar and Isaac bought 2, probably because he’s a compulsive shopper, but I think some books were kind of cool. Maybe I would’ve bought one or two if I had cash on me that day.
The weather was pretty hot too but the food smelled amazing and the crafts were beautiful. We tried local coffee from coffee beans that were grind on the spot and, in my opinion, it was great but for, luckily for me, it was too strong for Isaac so he gave it to me. The other craft booths were pretty fun. Some had handmade soaps, another had purses made from leather, and one in particular had funny “key-holders” made from clay.
After viewing all of the crafts, we went to the middle of the Plaza to see the children’s trova contest and I must say most of the participants were talented and took their trova game very seriously. While enjoying the music, we view from the distance the roosters and their owners getting registered for the fights. Again, these people take their thing super seriously. I felt fear every time I walked among the roosters and sensed the tension between those men.
After that, we got hungry so we tried to get some food and went to one of the food booths to get an arañita rellena which is a dish based on shredded plantain shaped as a little bowl and meat on the inside. It looked and smelled delicious but they cost $10 each and, since we were on a budget, we decided to turn it down and go to another booth. For $4 we had the worst alcapurria we could every try ($2 each) but we probably deserved it for turning down those glorious arañitas.
Finally, the roosters’ fights began. This activity is not for everyone. I don’t think an animal lover would enjoy it since its literally boxing for chickens. Still, the rooster fights weren’t as tense as the gentlemen outside the arena. The owners of the loosing rooster would yell at them as if they could understand. Maybe the roosters did understand and didn’t care. We will never know.
If you want to see the full gallery of this event click here.
