At dusk in Tonacatepeque, torchlit carts roll downhill. Teenagers in handmade masks move with the firelight.
The heavy cart wheels, handmade drums, shrieks, and voices calling together create a thrilling soundtrack of this November night. Every 1st of November, this Salvadoran town celebrates La Calabiuza, a procession in which pre-hispanic legends are celebrated in costumes and dances. Young people pull decorated carts through the streets, bringing the creatures of local folklore along for the ride.
There is color in the painted carts and bodies: ashen red, skeletal faces, flames against the night. The effect is theatrical, somewhere between a haunting and a neighborhood block party. By the end of the evening, costumes become contenders for prizes. Even monsters deserve recognition for their presentation.
Among them is La Siguanaba, a shape-shifting woman In one Salvadoran telling, she is a mother punished by Tlaloc for abandoning her son and having an affair; she is condemned to appear lovely from a distance and horrifying up close. It is said that she preys on unfaithful husbands, drunkards and wandering womanizers. When men see her beautiful long, black hair, and approach her to touch her, she turns around and reveals a skeletal horse head instead of a woman’s. That son of hers, El Cipitío, is recognizable by his enormous pointed hat, round belly, and backwards feet. Their stories vary between tellers, as oral traditions tend to do.
They share the festivities with El Cadejo, the supernatural dog of nighttime encounters, La Llorona, the weeping woman, and even El Diablo. These figures belong to a wider Central American storytelling world, with local versions giving them different histories and habits. In Tonacatepeque, they gather for the same party.
But the creatures have competition for the evening’s attention.
In the central plaza, enormous cooking pots hold ayote en miel.
The squash is cooked with panela, the unrefined cane sugar that becomes its rich syrup. Preparing it takes work: selecting, cleaning, cutting, and cooking the ayotes, with relatives and neighbors helping carry the task. One local cook profiled in 2025 had spent eighteen years preparing the dish for the celebration. Behind the spectacle is another kind of cultural knowledge, measured through experience at the cooking pot.
The vats are stars in their own right. Ayote is prepared in the town center and shared with residents and visitors, giving the evening a generous, edible center. Before the modern procession, according to an account published in Revista Culturel, children visited homes carrying candles and morro gourds, singing a request for ayote. Families supplied the sweetness; children supplied the performance.
The Civil War interrupted that tradition from 1980-1992. Young people brought the celebration back after El Salvador’s civil war and added folkloric characters to its renewed form. As more people participate, the festival continues to grow. Recent reporting still identifies it as a postwar celebration sustained by young people from surrounding communities.
In 2013, fifteen-year-old participant Francisco Siliezar told reporters that taking part was a way to keep local tradition alive and reject U.S. Halloween customs. His costume that evening was El Cipitío.
That choice gives La Calabiuza its rebellious pulse. Cultural reclamation happens through the hands making a mask, the people pulling a cart, and the cooks feeding a crowd. A younger generation takes inherited stories and decides they still deserve a place in public life.
The legends survive because the people of this town choose to become them for the night. The food survives because somebody prepares enough to share. And the streets become a place to declare, with dancing, fun and excellent dessert: these stories still belong to us.
Featured Image Photographed By: Lisette Lemus
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