“Quién causa tanta alegría?”

Cerro Negro, outside of the city of Leon, is one of the newest and most active volcanoes in the hemisphere. There was a particularly violent eruption in August of 1947 that covered Leon in ash for weeks. On August 14, the bishop called the city to pray for the mollification of the volcano in the name of the Virgin Mary. It must have worked because it began the tradition of the “Griteria Chiquita.” As near as I can figure out, this translates as the “little crying out”. There is also a nation wide Griteria on the 7^th of December. This little one is only celebrated in Leon and cities around Leon, including Chinandega.

When it gets dark on August 14, people set up elaborate alters to the Virgin Mary at their front doors and the streets fill with families and groups of older children going from alter to alter. They cry out “Quién causa tanta alegría?” (Who causes such joy?) The household responds, “La asunción de María!” (The assumption of Mary!) Then the people in the street sing songs to The Virgin and the household rewards them with treats and small practical gifts. It feels like Halloween with the spooky element replaced with a kind of playful devotion.

There is a group of little girls in the neighborhood who adore Doña Deborah and they invited us to go with them and their mother. We wandered around for about two hours, trying to keep the girls from dashing across the streets without looking. This got harder as they got more and more sugar in their systems. Adults are given gifts, too. Deb and I got lots of candy, several boxes of matches, a scrubby, and two rolls of toilet paper. When we got home Deb set up an alter inside our front door and she and her posy of little girls gave out candy for another hour.

All day, while anticipating this event, the words to the only religious song I can actually sing were going through my head:

I don't care if it rains or freezes
Long as I've got my plastic Jesus
Sitting on the dashboard of my car
Comes in colors pink and pleasant
Glows in the dark cause it's iridescent
Take it with you ... when you travel far.

Get yourself a sweet Madonna
Dressed in rhinestones sitting on a
Pedestal of abalone shell
Going ninety it ain't scary
Cause I've got the Virgin Mary
Assuring me that I won't go to hell.

(Plastic Jesus, written by Ed Rush and George Cromarty in 1957.)

           

You’ll have to trust me on this, but this song is totally appropriate for La Griteria Chiquita.