Escazú's Witch Is Older Than Its Shield: A Local's Guide to Masquerade Week in the City of Witches

"There are many versions of where the name 'of the Witches' comes from, and none of them, to date, is definitive." That is the Municipalidad de Escazú, in its own official history of the canton, talking about the nickname printed on its shield, its bumper stickers and half the storefronts between San Rafael and San Antonio.

The town that calls itself La Ciudad de las Brujas has never settled why. What it has done, many times over about two centuries, is decide to keep the witch. The canton's coat of arms carries a witch drawn by a schoolchild and adopted by a council decades later, and her legend lasted because a storyteller repeated it until a newspaper printed it. This Saturday a municipal runway brings her back to Parque de Escazú. Each of those was a choice, and they explain the figure on the broom better than any origin story does.

The official record leaves the door open

The municipal history ties the nickname, "in the popular imagination," to colonial legends, especially the Bruja Zárate. It lists the other legends told locally as well: the Carreta sin bueyes, the Segua, the Cadejos, the Tulevieja and the Llorona. Plenty of Costa Rican towns tell those stories. Only Escazú put a witch on its coat of arms.

The same chapter notes that the municipality is building a broad inventory of intangible heritage, meant to protect and revive Escazú's traditions as part of local identity. So the witch is an asset the town looks after on purpose.

A schoolchild's drawing waited 34 years

The witch you see on municipal trucks and signs started as homework. According to the municipality's account of its shield and anthem, here is how she became official:

1. 1940. Educator Benjamín Herrera Angulo held a contest for students from third to sixth grade. Víctor Manuel Sandí Trejos won.
2. 1974. IFAM, the national municipal development institute, urged local governments to make their emblems official. Some council members wanted a new canton-wide contest.
3. The motion that won. The council backed the 1940 design because it "took into account the witch, the mountains, the church and the agricultural products." It went forward as the only proposal.
4. December 4, 1974. The shield became official in session minutes no. 37, under council president Enrique Segura Seco.
5. 1975. The shield was unveiled for the first time, under council president Marcos Aguilar Arias.

That leaves 34 years between a child's drawing and a legal emblem. In 1974 the council could have started over. It chose to keep the version with the witch, and the reason on record is that she was representative of the town.

Herrera Angulo shows up twice in Escazú's civic identity. He also wrote the words and music of "Oh Escazú," a march sung in music classes at the Escuela de Escazú between 1920 and 1926, which became the canton's anthem. The same teacher gave Escazú both its song and the contest that produced its witch.

Zárate keeps two addresses, depending on who tells it

The witch most often tied to the nickname is the Bruja Zárate. In the municipality's version, she lived in two rock formations: the Piedra de Aserrí for half the year, in the dry season, and the Piedra Blanca in Escazú during the rainy season. A 2012 Tico Times feature places Zárate in caves on Pico Blanco and puts the Tulevieja there too. Both versions put her in the ridgeline above town, the one visible from most of the canton.

The fullest telling is "El misterio de la Piedra Blanca," which the Ministry of Public Education hosts as an Escazú story credited to Juan Antonio Céspedes Guzmán. In it, Zárate is queen of the witches and has put her enchantment inside the Piedra Blanca. She enchants the Tule Vieja, who is named as María del Rosario. A local figure called Tuto Yoyo then subdues her with a bejuco de yazú, a forest vine.

The story's attribution shows how it survived. It was printed in the Diario de Costa Rica in 1959 and collected orally from Tuto Yoyo sometime in the 1960s. A man appears inside the legend and is also one of the people who passed it on. Escazú kept the legend the same way it kept the emblem, through people who decided it was worth repeating.

Before they were witches, they were healers

There is also a more down-to-earth account. A 2023 Tico Times history of Escazú's witches describes the town's early brujas as curanderas. Most were single women, widows or abandoned wives who made a living selling cures. They worked as the era's nurses and midwives and knew herbs, roots and natural remedies. The same account says Escazú became known for its cures, and people traveled a long way to visit its healers.

In the Tico Times telling, the label changed before the people did. Anti-witch sentiment grew in the early 1800s, the word bruja replaced curandero, and the new medical profession looked down on the competition. In 1821, the year of independence, the local government banned healers who "defraud and cheat the public." Public reaction was strong enough that the rule was revised so they could keep practicing as long as they did not use crosses or religious symbols. The same account names healers who came later. Around 1900 there was Norlico Ratón, sought out for his cures and known for powders meant to be sprinkled in a path or slipped into someone's coffee. Ña Matea was known for curing the evil eye and also for casting it.

The Tico Times presents this as historical background, and the municipality still calls the question open. Even so, the 1821 episode matches the rest of the story. When authorities tried to get rid of the brujas, the townspeople pushed back and kept them.

This week, the witch walks a runway

The newest chapter happens this Saturday. For the Día Nacional de la Mascarada, the Municipalidad de Escazú is holding "Disfrázate de Bruja o Brujo," a Pasarela de Brujas, or witches' runway, at Parque de Escazú. Registration to walk closed on Friday, October 23, so most people will be watching from the park. It is the only October 31 event on the municipal cultural calendar.

If you want the national version as well, the Ministerio de Cultura y Juventud's program, as published by Delfino, puts the big masquerade gathering in downtown San José the day before.

The two days pair well. Friday shows the national tradition, with the Diablo, the Muerte, the Segua, the Llorona and the Giganta among its familiar characters. Saturday morning in Parque de Escazú shows the local take, where the national masquerade day becomes a celebration of the town's own character.

The masks behind the broom

October 31 has been the Día de la Mascarada Tradicional Costarricense since 1997, set by Executive Decree 25724. In 2022, Law 10.239 recognized the mascarada as a national symbol. Escazú connects the date to its witch, but it also has its own claim to the masks.

When the municipality marked the day in 2024, Diario Extra quoted Mayor Orlando Umaña Umaña:

"Estamos muy orgullosos de decir que Escazú es cuna de los mejores mascareros y es una tradición que queremos preservar."

In English, he said the town is proud to call Escazú the cradle of the best mask-makers and wants to preserve the tradition. That year's program, which is history now and not this year's schedule, included a mask-making workshop and a mascarada parade with cimarrona music in the central park. A "Casa de las Leyendas" exhibit showed the work of mascareros Pedro Arias, Raúl Fuentes and Marvin Chamorro, and an October 31 pasacalles left Parque de San Antonio de Escazú and ended with a tribute to Chamorro.

Escazú's mask-makers and its legends share the same subjects. The Segua and the Llorona that turn up in national mascarada parades are also on the municipality's list of legends told in Escazú. In a town whose emblem is a witch on a broom, carving those characters keeps the same tradition going.

Saturday's runway in Parque de Escazú is a small event, and an hour long. It still sits squarely in that history: the town is once again choosing a figure no record fully explains and that no council has replaced since a student drew her in 1940.

When we redesign a home here, we look for the same local character the 1940 drawing captured with its witch, mountains, church and crops. Anyone thinking about how a space in this town can reflect where it is will find a willing collaborator at Bryana Conway. Let's Connect.