Human Flower Project
Plowerful—San Isidro
With monster carrots, cannas and calla lilies, the patron saint of farmers receives his due.
Parading on the Festival of San Isidro
Photo: Beatriz Inglessis
From Merida, Venezuela, Beatriz Inglessis has bountifully sent along some glorious photos of last weekend’s festival of San Isidro, in nearby Timotes.
Saint Isadore is the patron of farmers, and honored on the hoof: a parade of oxen festooned with leeks, cabbages, and giant flowers. Beatriz writes, “Everybody was drunk (even the bullocks, it seems to me).” And indeed this looks like vegetable revelry. If you’ve got a field of huge white callas, why not flaunt it? especially if they thank the saint who makes it rain.
After some study, I admit the legends of Saint Isadore (San Isidro in Latin America) perplex me.
One version says “Isadore refused to stop working his farm on the Sabbath, despite Gods threats of locust plagues and flooding. He eventually conceded and God rewarded him by sending an angel to farm his land.”
But another story goes that Isidro angered the other farmworkers because every day he’d drop what he was doing to attend Mass. They complained to the boss, who came to reprimand Isidro in the field, and instead found two angels with white oxen, working alongside him there. Triple the plowing.
So did Isidro work too little or too much? Who can say when hagiographers disagree.
The point is that his work was blessed, and produced the kind of luscious harvest we can see from Timotes.
Quite a crop of images, Beatriz! Thank you.
Timotes, Venezuela, May 15, 2005
Feast Day of San Isidro
Photo: Beatriz Inglessis