Residents of Masaya in southern Nicaragua donned their most gruesome masks Friday night to celebrate the carnival of “Los Agüizotes,” held annually since the mid-twentieth century to commemorate San Jeronimo, the town’s patron saint.
The Festival of Myths and Legends gathers most of the characters from Nicaragua’s most popular tales of ancestral terror on the last Friday of October at midnight.
Festival participants scream and shout to scare the hundreds of local and foreign onlookers accompanying the pilgrimage.
The word Agüizote comes from the Nahuatl language where Agüi stands for water and zote means fear, therefore, agüizotes means fear near water.
The celebration of “Los Agüizotes” has been part of the patron saint celebrations in Masaya since 1976.
