We thought there's just the Rose Parade in Pasadena, California, USA every January 1st, and the annual Panagbenga Festival held the whole month of February in Baguio City, Philippines that celebrates flower power.
Thanks to the US Newseum webpage for providing us access to almost all the newspapers around the world. Now we get a daily dose of interesting front page items about people, places and events in the global village.
Three papers of Colombia in their August 9th issues gave us a view of the Silleteros Parade, the highlight of their annual ten-day Feria de las Flores (Festival Flowers) in the city of Medillin, which this year was held 30 July to 08 August. Silleta is the small silla (chair). About 500 peasants--men, women and children--from different parts of Santa Elena, the flower growing area of Colombia, go on parade carrying silletas decorated with flowers on their back, and they are called silleteros.
The Wiki says, the first feria took place on May 1, 1957, and for five days, flowers were displayed in the Metropolitan Cathedral in honor of the Virgin Mary. About 40 men from Santa Elena comprised the first Silleteros Parade when they carried flower arrangements to the cathedral. It commemorated the end of slavery when the peasants carried men and women on their back up the hills. The next year, the feria was moved to August to celebrate the Independence of Antioquia.
The silleteros make the Colombian festival different from the American Rose Parade and the Philippines Panagbenga.
The Rose Parade (formally, Tournament of Roses Parade), which began 121 years ago, and the Panagbenga (originally the Baguio Flower Festival when it started in 1995) both feature flower-covered floats on parade.
The founders of the American festival who were not original Californians wanted to show to the rest of America and the world that flowers bloom even in winter. On the other hand, the Baguio festival is set as a touristic come-on to the mountain city between Christmas and the Holy Week.
We still need to witness a Panagbenga. To a camera bug like us, the Rose Parade is certainly a well of colorful subjects but our allergy to cold weather dampens our interest.
It's a dream then to find our way to the Medellin feria. We had Spanish in high school and in the university, so we'd like to think we will not get lost among silleteros and other ciudadanos in Colombia, if ever ...
Links.
2. El Colombiano at http://www.elcolombiano.com/portada.asp?NM=inicio
3. El Mundo at http://www.elmundo.com/sitio/primera_pagina.php
4. El Observador. URL not available.
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