Máscaras de Torovenado y Agüiezotes
The hand-carving and papier-mâché construction of festival masks in Masaya's Indigenous Monimbó district, made from paper or from jícaro (calabash gourd) and worn during two annual processions honoring the city's patron saint, San Jerónimo: Los Agüiezotes, populated by grotesque figures drawn from Nicaraguan legend, and the Gran Torovenado del Pueblo, a satirical street-theater procession in which masked performers openly caricature powerful national and local figures — a tradition writers have specifically described as rooted in anarchic, ritualized mockery of authority, and one observers noted taking on renewed significance during Masaya's 2018 civic unrest.
Risk level: Vulnerable · Not currently inscribed on a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage list under this specific technique; Nicaragua ratified the UNESCO 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2004 and could nominate this technique in the future.
A family-workshop hammock-weaving tradition centered in the Barrio de San Juan and Monimbó neighborhoods of Masaya, Nicaragua's "Cradle of Culture," refined in the 1960s when a group of independent weavers replaced the coarse, waterproof…
A kick-wheel-thrown, mineral-oxide-painted, sgraffito-carved pottery tradition of San Juan de Oriente — originally Villa Namotiva, "old town" in Chorotega, later San Juan de los Platos for the ceremonial plates once made there — whose…
The hand-crafting of leather saddles (monturas), pack saddles (albardas), reins (riendas), belts (fajas), chest straps (pecheras), and machete and knife sheaths from tanned cowhide, centered on Estelí's long-established talabartería…
The cultivation, curing, fermentation, and hand-rolling of premium cigars centered on Estelí and the surrounding Estelí, Condega, and Jalapa valleys of northwestern Nicaragua.
The hand-crafting of Nicaragua's iconic rocking chair — a wooden frame, traditionally in hardwoods such as mahogany, cedar, or teak, joined and shaped by hand, then fitted with a hand-woven cord or rope seat and back — centered on the town…
A diatonic, single-row xylophone of the mestizo peoples of Nicaragua's Pacific region, distinguished from every other marimba tradition documented in this archive by its performance posture: a curved wooden bow (arco), traditionally made…
The ritual mask-making tradition behind Venezuela's Diablos Danzantes de Corpus Christi, a colonial-era Catholic festival (roots traced to mid-17th-century haciendas of Aragua and La Guaira) inherited and shaped by Afro-descendant and…
Wayang Kulit are the intricately pierced and painted leather shadow puppets of Java and Bali, used in the wayang kulit shadow theater tradition inscribed by UNESCO in 2003 (Masterpiece of Oral and Intangible Heritage).
The Norwegian bunad embroidery tradition — the making of the embroidery decoration specific to each of Norway's 450+ county and community bunad costume variants, whose specific embroidery vocabulary (pattern, color, stitch type) identifies…
Carved buckeye-wood masks (also made from gourds or hollowed hornet and wasp nests) representing exaggerated, often satirical caricatures of outsiders, worn during the nighttime winter Booger Dance to comedically and protectively confront…
The carving of ritual wooden masks by the Dogon people of central Mali, who have identified nearly eighty distinct mask types, most worn by initiated members of the male Awa society during dama, a collective funerary rite ensuring the safe…
The carving of entertainment masks by the Baule people, roughly 400,000 strong in central Côte d'Ivoire, whose rich carving tradition produces two recognized categories: Goli, a sequential four-mask dance series adopted from the…