Masaya, Masaya

Masaya is a municipality in the Masaya department of Nicaragua. The capital city of the department, Masaya, is located within the municipality.

Masaya (city), town located in the Southwest of Nicaragua, capital of the department of Masaya, near to the capital of the country: Managua. The city is near the eastern slope of the active Masaya Volcano and east of Laguna de Masaya. The town is communication nucleus and rail knot, for what is industrial and commercial center of the surrounding agricultural area. The railroad no longer functions.

Their industry is based on the prosecution of fibers, the production of pure, indigenous crafts, shoes, skin products, soap and starch. Masaya, call The city of the flowers, is famous for the annual Roman Catholic patron saint festival dedicated to San Jerónimo.

Masaya is the cradle of the Nicaraguan folklore. Here poets and such musicians were born, as Alejandro Vega Matus among others.

On Sundays of October and November, during the San Jerónimo patron saint festival, dancers dance to the sones (songs) of the marimba, starting in the street in front of the San Jerónimo Church. They also have street processions such as "los diablos" (the devils) and the traditional Torovenado, which is a "carnivalesque" procession in which people in dress in costume, some are political satire of either local or national leaders. There is also the dance of the agüisotes, a kind of a Nicaraguan Halloween that dates from the time of the colony. Read Katherine Borland's work on folklore dance in Monimbó (the indigenous neighborhood) and the town center of Masaya. E.g., see Borland's 2002 article, "Marimba: Dance of the Revolutionaries, Dance of the Folk," in Radical History Review (84:Fall 2002):77-107.