“Can someone help me to make a kite in the shape of a house …”
This request was made on Facebook on October 25 at 3:00 in the afternoon. Finding it causes strangeness, a sweet-sour amazement when you almost feel that longing waving and rising multicolored above the rarefied skies of this world.
But there was the claim, rising through the clouds of the Internet, amid so much murky message; confirming that purity, innocence and a certain simple joie de vivre are still possible.
Also these days, in the area of Oaxaca, Mexico, the sky has been filled with kites. A very old belief, born on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, indicates that kites guide the souls of the deceased on their return to Earth to celebrate the Day of the Dead, one of the most important Mexican traditions that takes place between the 1st. and November 2.
It could also be said that the sky has been filled with butterflies, because in Nahuatl the word papalotl means butterfly, look how far poetry goes and is saved.
They are still called kites or kites. In Venezuela they are parrots; in Chile, kites; in the Dominican Republic and Santo Domingo, chichiguas; and in Puerto Rico, chiringas. Although here in Cuba, a kite is very different from a chiringa, and it would be interesting to know how many of those who are children on this Island today know about these things, or have experienced the magnificent enjoyment of seeing how the kite made by their hands flies and it flies until it is lost in the blues and not in the gigabytes.
Butterfly story
In addition to entertainment, kites can be handicrafts, light beauty, and have fulfilled missions not only playful, but also for science, sports and the military.
They were born precisely for that last purpose, according to what is said. It was back in ancient China, by General Han Xin. Then, around 1200 BC they were also used as a military signaling device. Their colors and movements communicated certain messages to distant military detachments.
However, others affirm that it was the Greek mathematician, philosopher and politician Archytas of Tarentum (430 BC-360 BC) who gave the world the invention of the kite by creating a certain articulated mechanism with wings, similar to a bird, which he managed to make fly about 300 meters thanks to the momentum of a compressed vapor core.
Initially, in the Far East, they were made from rice paper and bamboo stalks, but they were so fragile that they could only withstand a single flight. The western world learned about kites mainly thanks to Marco Polo’s trips to China.
Today, it would have been amazing to see Benjamin Franklin, in his waistcoat, suit and tie, concentrating on raising a kite on top of who knows which hill. But the truth is that this American politician and inventor did so to study the electrical potential of the atmosphere and finally give us the valuable lightning rod.
Leonardo da Vinci was inspired by kites to conceive his amazing flying machines, and Alexander Graham Bell experimented with his unique tetrahedral comets inquiring about the possibility of powered flight.
Kites have also been used for other atmospheric measurements such as wind speed, and there are those who claim that these were the most remote ancestors of the invention of parachutes, gliders and paragliders. From towing boats to the coast, transporting loads, to allowing the first aerial photos, these are benefits attributed to kites, in this case the large ones.
Cuban Luis Pérez Espinós, doctor of pedagogy, claimed that the kite was introduced in Cuba during the colonial period, more exactly in the time of General Tacón, by Chinese emigrants.
Tradition in the “sleeping air”
Martí spoke of “… the fight of comets in the sky, which go through the sleeping air engulfing worlds”, as an image of the great or the transcendental that matters little to the vain villager who believes that the whole world is his village.
And in this global village – according to McLuhan – strewn with new technologies that the world has become, it is reason to be happy to know that Guatemala requested UNESCO, just a few days ago, That the technique of the Giant Kites of Santiago and Sumpango Sacatepéquez be included in the List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
“Because our culture must be appreciated in the world!”, Pointed out the twitter issued by the ministry of culture and sports of that country, citing what was said by the president.
The nomination ceremony took place in the Patio de la Paz of the National Palace of Culture, adorned for the occasion with dozens of wonderful kites, as the kite is called there.
In the request to the Unesco evaluation committee, they make it known that it is an ancient technique in that country, where the production and exhibition of giant kites has become a historical tradition.
And every 1st. November, All Saints Day, or Day of the Dead -as it is known and celebrated in other nations of the continent-, thousands of visitors come to Guatemala, and especially to Santiago Sacatepéquez and Sumpango, to be witnesses first-hand from the Giant Kite Festival: a collective and moving work of art.
There they make these huge kites to raise them in honor of the deceased during the year. The size of these artifacts ranges between 20 and 22 meters and can fly between one and seven meters high.
“We have seen kites in which messages of peace and memory are embodied and we consider it an honor to receive the proposal, a recognition to those who make these works,” said during the ceremony Lucía Verdugo, representative in Guatemala of the United Nations Organization for the Education, Science and Culture.
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Six months of work takes the making of such kites, composed of tissue paper and bamboo, which, according to the Mayan worldview, that day guide the souls of the deceased to their homes in the world of the living.
Hence, since dawn, families not only focus on raising the giant kites whose mission will be to serve as colorful compasses to the souls of the deceased, but also spread flower petals and bouquets to help on the way back.
This Monday 1st. In November, there will be many giant kites flying in the Guatemalan sky, as few have been the inhabitants of that country that took the pandemic.
If this were a tradition spread throughout the planet, surely the skies of the world would be this first day of November, an immense garden of kites.
Although this type of celebration does not have roots in this Island, perhaps some Cuban child, without knowing it, decides this Monday to put aside the touch screen, or because he has never had it, and from a rooftop or hill he will give it to the tomorrow the flight of his kite.
That it will not be like the huge Guatemalan kites, but it will still mean joy for the soul, greeting for a month that begins, moving us further and further away from the dire statistics of Covid-19 and finalizing preparations for the restart of the school year.
