Resources and background informations about the Boruca tribe
and their unique craft traditions
The following little booklet was started September 2001 right after our first meeting with mask carvers in Boruca. In the early days of our contact we bought many masks from Bernardo Gonzalez before we met Francisco Rojas and then subsequently his brothers Mario, Neftalí, Domingo, Rafael, Luis Miguel and finally Marcos who became our main crafter until the present day. This is the story.
In 2007 Francisco Rojas sent me a copy of the booklet "Boruca, Yesterday and Today: The Men and the Meaning behind the masks", written by E. Francesca "Fran" Galicki (member of the Anthropology Class 2007 at Grinnell College, Grinnell, Iowa, USA), who lived a couple of months with the Boruca during her field studies. We never met her, so we hope to have her permission to reproduce her work on this page.
