Drinking and the Serenata - Article 12

A lot of people told me not to write this article. Too controversial, they said. Write about the volcanoes, the beaches, that time the police almost pulled you off the bus near the Nicaraguan border because you didn’t have a passport with you – anything but that. But it just didn’t feel right, skipping the most Costa Rican experience I’ve had and pretending it never happened. Because for a high-schooler in Costa Rica, this is the highlight of senior year, a tradition that runs further back through the country’s history than anyone can remember. It’s a mixture of Prom, partying, and breaking the law. It’s called the Serenata.
I first heard about the Serenata about four months ago. Frankly, I thought I was being messed with, like the time my Costa Rican friend’s mom told me that in order to be polite the guest had to eat the avocado pit. The description they gave of the Serenata was vague, with words like “overnight” and “salsa dancing” being thrown around. But one thing was made strikingly clear – there would be alcohol, and lots of it.
Let me back up – alcohol plays a different role for the teens in Costa Rica. The drinking age is 18, but it may as well be 12, considering the ease with which an adolescent can walk into a corner store and walk out with a six-pack. It’s not uncommon for a family to order their 10th grader a beer while out to dinner at a restaurant, or to see underage kids drinking as they walk down the street. Because one can’t drive until 18, society seems to downplay the whole issue. The police take no notice for the most part, mainly due to the fact that the law limits them to only confiscating alcohol from minors, and sending them on their way.
Growing up in Hopkinton, the Costa Rican notion of “overlooking” underage drinking is completely foreign to me. The pressure on a Hopkinton high-schooler with respect to drinking is incredible, from police breaking up parties every other weekend to numberless middle school health classes, each hammering in the message that drinking is bad - the consequences inevitably resulting in vomit, brain damage, and immediate execution. I remember freshman year, watching life-long friendships get torn apart as it seemed everyone made it quite obvious what side of the drinking debate they were on.
With those thoughts playing through my head, I arrived the night of the Serenata to the nearby house of a friend, all of the guys in our grade gradually showing up. The Serenata is really a double event – one is organized by the boys and the other by the girls, each about a month apart. This night it was the girls’ turn, and I waited in confusion; my only clue to what was coming was that “Serenata” means “Serenade.” Suddenly, we heard singing outside the house, and opened the garage to the entire grade of girls, wearing tie-dyed homemade dresses and singing along in Spanish with a seven-part Mariachi band.
I lost myself for a moment trying to understand the old-fashioned lyrics, and then without warning found myself being pushed along the sidewalk. (Every time I forget that personal space doesn’t exist in Costa Rica, a public outing reminds me very quickly.) The rush of bodies swept me up with them onto a large bus that had been parked outside, the lack of empty seats leaving me and about twenty others standing in the aisle. The doors barely closed before the bus roared away, throwing me into the girl behind me. I apologized and backed away from her, trying in vain to brush off the beer she had just spilled on my shoulder.
Unexpected things don’t surprise me that much anymore, considering they happen to me so often in Costa Rica. But as I struggled to look around the bus, I must have had that “deer in the headlights” look on my face. It was as if my classmates were trying to set the world record for the most bus safety violations. (As of now such a competition doesn’t exist, but if it did, I’m sure it would be very popular in Costa Rica.) For starters, all the windows were open, and people hung half their bodies out, waving to the cars that honked at us as we went by. Camera flashes illuminated the enormous amount of people standing up, with anyone unfortunate enough to be sitting down getting crushed as kids crawled over the tops of seats. It was debatable if anyone was even driving.
But after twenty minutes of attempting to avoid open windows and flying beer cans, the bus suddenly rolled to a stop. We had arrived at some type of outdoor ranch, really more of a glorified deck with a balcony. A DJ was already set up, blasting a mixture of techno and salsa, a combination that while borderline ridiculous, actually works quite nicely, kind of like the popular Costa Rican dish of ketchup and salad.) Everyone ran for the dance floor, leaving the people towards the back (myself) to walk over the slip-and-slide that had just been created.
I’ll admit it – I don’t really know how to dance. The experience I have consists of watching MTV and being told by chaperones at school functions, “Don’t dance so close.” In the states I find I can blend in with the crowd by subtly wiggling, but here I don’t even bother to pretend I know what I’m doing - Costa Ricans can dance. Any time music plays here people seem to become possessed by Ricky Martin, and they begin to move in perfect time, with spins and twists that look choreographed with their partner beforehand. This dance was no different, leaving me baffled as I tried to find a balance between shuffling and knocking people over.
To some of my friends in the States, this party seems like a dream come true. Their eyes light up when they hear the details – overnight, no supervision, a professional DJ and attractive Costa Ricans. What could be better? The problem that brought the party crashing down, ironically, was alcohol. By midnight, anyone who had been heavily drinking (over half of the kids there) was either throwing up or passed out on the floor, leaving the rest of us wondering where everyone had gone. The DJ stopped playing salsa music and anyone still sober enough to dance had gone to help a friend stumbling around in the grass. I myself was at a loss for what to do, wondering if we’d make it through the night without needing an ambulance. But the sun finally came up, and with it, everyone from the night before, most hung-over and wanting nothing more than to go home.
It seems that in every town and country throughout the world, the customs are different than our own. However strange or wrong they may appear, I don’t think it’s our place to change them – it’s those same differences that make the world so beautiful. Some things will be adopted into our own culture; American life has been shaped by traditions of other nations since its beginning. The Serenata was a night I’ll never forget (unlike many of my Costa Rican friends, for whom it will be a night they’ll never remember). But I think I’ll leave it where I found it.