Máscaras de diablito
The hand-carving and hand-painting of balsa or cedar wood masks by the Boruca (Brunca) people of Costa Rica's Talamanca mountains, worn each New Year during the Danza de los Diablitos, a three-day ritual re-enactment of the Boruca's successful resistance against 16th-century Spanish invasion — a tradition rooted in the Boruca's own deliberate reclamation of an insult, since Spanish conquistadors first called the community "devils" for the fearsome ceremonial masks they wore, a label the Boruca embraced as a permanent source of cultural pride rather than rejected.
Risk level: Endangered · Not currently inscribed on a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage list under this specific technique; Costa Rica ratified the UNESCO 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2007 and could nominate this technique in the future.
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