The Footprint of the JaguarBoruca masks & paintings by Costa Rica artist Kamel González Rojas
Kamel González Rojas paints the spirits of the rainforest — jaguars, guardians and ancestral memory — in acrylics of intense color and depth, from canvases to monumental murals. He still carves the balsa masks his Boruca people have made for more than 500 years, and signs every piece KRUA^DENKA: the footprint of the jaguar.
Kamel’s paintings at the Boruca Artisan Traditions exhibition
The traveling exhibition Tradiciones Artesanales Borucas: Hilando el pasado y tallando el presente (“Weaving the past and carving the present”), facilitated by the Museos del Banco Central de Costa Rica, is open to the public at the Biblioteca Pública Municipal Humberto Gamboa Alvarado in Pérez Zeledón. Admission is free: Monday to Thursday, 7:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., and Friday, 7:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., as announced by the Municipalidad de Pérez Zeledón.
Beside the museum’s panels on Boruca history, the Diablitos festival and artisan traditions, three paintings by Kamel González Rojas are on display. They belong to Carol Vaughn, who spoke with the municipality and lent them for the exhibition. Our sincere thanks to Carol, to the Municipalidad de Pérez Zeledón and to the Museos del Banco Central de Costa Rica for bringing contemporary Boruca art into this space.
One of the panels honors don Ismael González, Kamel’s father and National Popular Culture Award winner (2002), who for years has taught mask carving to young people in his workshop, rescuing a traditional technique that was at risk of being lost. Kamel carries that legacy forward in his masks, paintings and murals.
Cenizas Vivientes · Living Ashes
Kamel’s December show at Galería 1084 in Uvita: a powerful series of Boruca masks and paintings about ancestral memory, survival, transformation, and a culture whose spirit continues to burn brightly. He will be the gallery’s Artist in Residence, with a grand opening on Saturday, November 28. Four of the paintings are already on view.
Boruca travels to Mexico
Kamel and other representatives of Boruca will bring the Dance of the Diablitos to the Máscaras Danzantes Festival in Orizaba, Veracruz, representing Costa Rica and the Boruca people. The festival, known as “La Gran Fiesta de México,” is expected to gather more than 1,500 dancers and 300 traditional musicians, along with master mask-makers and artisans.
The Juego de los Diablitos is one of Costa Rica’s oldest Indigenous ceremonies: each December and January, Boruca re-enacts the resistance against the Spanish conquest, with balsa-wood masks and burlap costumes. The masks Kamel carves and paints come from this living tradition. We will share photos and videos during and after the festival.
“Behind the Mask” with the Coffee with Carol community
On Saturday, September 26, the Coffee with Carol community, hosted by Carol Vaughn, welcomed Kamel as its guest of honor at Hotel Zima in Pérez Zeledón. The afternoon opened with a private meet-and-greet and continued with his talk, “Behind the Mask: Art, Culture and Tribe.”
Speaking in Spanish, with English interpretation by Ruben Chavarría, Kamel carried the room from the pre-Columbian era — when, in his words, “Boruca art was our writing” — to the 1980s, when only three elders were still carving masks and the tradition came close to vanishing. He explained why the Spanish called the masks “devils,” and how a single carving can join the jaguar, the eagle, the deer and the human face: not a demon, but a portrait of the forest’s protectors.
Our heartfelt thanks to Carol and the Coffee with Carol community, to Hotel Zima for opening its doors, and to everyone who came to listen.
Missed it? Watch the talk
An 11-minute excerpt of Kamel’s talk is now online, in his own voice, with English subtitles.
Kamel at the Flamingo Marina Whale & Dolphin Festival
Kamel was one of five Costa Rican artists invited to present at the 2026 Flamingo Marina Whale & Dolphin Festival in Guanacaste this past weekend. He gave a talk to a standing-room-only crowd on the Boruca worldview of the ocean, and the whales and dolphins who inhabit it — the spiritual, earth-connected role the sea holds for the Boruca people.
Later in the festival, Kamel led a mask-making workshop, sharing the history of mask-use and art in Boruca culture with participants of all ages. Introducing him, the festival’s organizers put it simply: “Kamel is using contemporary art to carry an Indigenous worldview from an ancestral community in rural Costa Rica, onto the international stage.”
Kamel’s artistic name, KRUA^DENKA, means Footprint of the Jaguar — and he left his at Flamingo Marina Festival 2026.
years painting the jaguar spirits in acrylic — on canvas and on walls across Costa Rica
the age Kamel began carving beside his father, Ismael González Lázaro, the recognized father of the Boruca mask
years of Boruca mask tradition, born as resistance during the Spanish Conquest
exhibited in venues from Costa Rica’s Art Museum and National Theater, to Exponatural, in Madrid, Spain
The jungle on canvas
Acrylic paintings of great depth and intense color — jaguars, guardians and the ancestral memory of the Boruca people. Click a piece to see it up close.
Walls that come alive
Kamel is one of Costa Rica’s most recognized indigenous muralists — the same jaguars and forest spirits of his canvases, painted at monumental scale on walls across the country.
“Through my paintings, I express my feelings, restoring dignity and trust to my people. I am proud to be from Boruca.”
These masks are made to dance
Every year, from December 30 to January 2, the Boruca community celebrates the Juego de los Diablitos — the Game of the Little Devils — where masked dancers re-enact the resistance of their ancestors against the Spanish conquest. Kamel carves for collectors, and he carves for this.
Meet the artist in Boruca
Kamel welcomes visitors to his workshop and gallery in the village of Boruca, in the southern mountains of Costa Rica. Watch a mask take shape, hear the stories behind the symbols, and take home a piece carved by the hands that made it.
Follow Kamel's work
New paintings, murals in progress and mask carving, straight from the workshop in Boruca.