[Celebration of the feast of St. Benedict; man with jaguar skin]

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Here a man wears a jaguar skin, a costume that sets this scene apart from the crowd-and-procession views common to festival prints. Saint Benedict the Moor, or San Benito de Palermo, was a 16th-century Sicilian friar of African descent whose feast became especially important to Afro-descended communities in parts of Latin America, where dancers and masqueraders often joined the celebrations. Jaguar and tiger costumes appear in several of these traditions, and the figure's dress suggests a ritual role rather than everyday attire. The card records no date, so the print's exact year is uncertain, but its subject points to a community festival and the people who kept it alive.

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