TITLE: Lenca Guancasco Mask
TYPE: face mask
GENERAL REGION: Latin America
COUNTRY: Honduras
SUBREGION: Southwest
ETHNICITY: Lenca
DESCRIPTION: Guancasco Mask
CATALOG ID: N/A
MAKER: N/A
CEREMONY: Guancasco
FUNCTION: Agriculture; Celebration
AGE: N/A
MAIN MATERIAL: N/A
OTHER MATERIALS: N/A
The Lenca people are an indigenous group inhabiting southwestern Honduras and eastern El Salvador. Each year, they celebrate the Guancasco ceremony in which neighboring communities congregate to establish or cement friendly relations. The celebration tpically includes traditional dances, including masked dances. At least twenty-nine different dances have been observed by anthropologists. Lenca masks may be made of wood; leather; gourds; or other materials, such as armadillo hide, and represent various characters, such as the gracejo, or clown.
Lenca women often sell “clay root” masks with nontraditional designs to tourists. Genuine Lenca Guancasco masks are very rare. The Museum’s collection currently includes no representative example of a Lenca mask.
