Mascaradas de Aserri

Aserri anchors one of the principal local styles within Costa Rica's mascarada tradition, descended from Rafael Lito Valerin's nineteenth-century Cartago technique and sustained locally by mask-maker Rafael Angel Corrales and pyrotechnician Jose Fabio Ortega. The town also holds a distinct national significance: its 1996 mascarada procession, organised specifically to counter Halloween's growing local popularity, directly led to the following year's executive decree establishing Costa Rica's National Day of the Traditional Mascarade.

Aserri's mascarada tradition descends from the style Rafael Lito Valerin developed in nineteenth-century Cartago, but the craft found one of its most enduring homes specifically in Aserri, a canton whose local dedication to the practice organisers describe as tied directly to the town's historically strong religious character.