In honor of Saint Matthew, parishioners express their devotion to the saint and gratitude for the giant lizard through a dance.
The delicious meat of the giant lizard
In northern Honduras, on the Caribbean coast, one of the exquisite dishes is made from the meat of the giant lizard, also known as Black Jamo.
It is a reptile similar to an iguana, but smaller and without a large scale on one side of the head. It is characterized by its green color and its long tail.
There are myths and legends surrounding the giant lizard. It is said that one day, in an area that previously had a lagoon without any houses around, a hunter arrived with his dogs, and one of them found and killed a giant lizard. The hunter, feeling repulsed by the lizard, buried it in a hole in the trunk of a ceiba tree.
A bit of tradition
After a short time, the hunter returned to look for the lizard, but to his surprise, it had disappeared and only the image of Saint Matthew remained.
He took this image and brought it to a nearby village called Teocautzin, but the image kept returning to the tree where the hunter had buried the giant lizard.
The villagers, upon seeing the image, found the statue of Saint Matthew and decided to build a temple at that spot. The popular belief is that thanks to the giant lizard, the saint was found.
The fact that the image of the saint kept returning to the place where it was found inspired the local population to create the famous Lizard Dance, which commemorates the discovery of Saint Matthew. The dancer wears pants, a shirt, and a black hat, covers his face with a wooden mask, and dances carrying a stick with a preserved giant lizard embedded on it.
