The Boruca Story
Five hundred years of resistance, carved in balsa wood.
Masks born of resistance
When Spanish conquistadors arrived in these mountains more than 500 years ago, the Boruca people carved fierce “diablito” masks and wore them into battle — the invaders called them little devils, and the name became a badge of honor. The Boruca were never conquered.
The mask itself is older than that battle, Kamel says. Long before the Spanish came, Boruca ancestors were already carving and wearing masks in shamanic ceremony — and pre-Hispanic gold masks and earrings found in this region show the tradition reaches back further still. A mask’s purpose was as much practical as spiritual: it hides the face, and a hidden face unsettles whoever stands in front of it. When the conquistadors arrived, that same instinct to intimidate was turned on the invaders.
Every year, from December 30 to January 2, the community relives that victory in the Juego de los Diablitos: masked dancers battle a bull that represents the conquest — and win, again and again.
It begins at midnight with the “nacencia” — the devils’ symbolic birth — announced by firecrackers from a hillside above the village. From there the devils move house to house, chanting the traditional “saloma” and blowing conch shells and cow horns. Costa Rica declared the Juego de los Diablitos part of the nation’s Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2017.
“The mask is not a souvenir. It is a document — proof that we are still here.”
“Boruca art was our writing”
In this 11-minute excerpt from his talk “Behind the Mask: Art, Culture and Tribe” (Hotel Zima, Pérez Zeledón, September 2026), Kamel tells the story of the Boruca mask: why the Spanish called it a “devil,” how in the 1980s only three elders were still carving masks, and how his father taught a group of village children — Kamel among them — who, without knowing it, “were about to awaken a giant.” In Spanish, with English subtitles.
Turn on subtitles with the CC button · Watch on YouTube, with chapters
Long before the conquest, the stone spheres
Centuries before the Spanish ever reached these shores, chiefdom societies of the Diquís Delta in southern Costa Rica carved and polished nearly perfect stone spheres — some over two meters across — out of hard volcanic gabbro, roughly between 800 and 1500 CE. No one fully knows why. In 2014, UNESCO inscribed the sites as a World Heritage Trove: the “Precolumbian Chiefdom Settlements with Stone Spheres of the Diquís.”
The people who shaped them are not the Boruca’s direct ancestors, but the Boruca have long kept oral traditions tying the spheres to ancestral, spiritual power. Every year, nearby Palmar Sur hosts a Spheres Festival — the very festival where Kamel first began exhibiting his own work, alongside this much deeper past.
Kamel points to Palmar and Bolas de Buenos Aires as the documented quarry sites that supplied the stone — and to research by archaeologist Ifigenia Quintanilla showing this land has been continuously inhabited for some 10,000 years. To him, that unbroken thread is reason enough to call the sphere-makers kin, whatever the academic debate about direct lineage.
Who are the Boruca today
Today just over 2,600 Boruca live across two territories in Costa Rica’s southern Brunca region, which takes its name from the people themselves. They are one of eight Indigenous peoples officially recognized in the country — together just under 2% of the national population — and the only one never subdued by the Spanish crown.
By Kamel’s own account, that reach was once far greater — Boruca territory extended south into what is now Chiriquí, Panama, long before either country’s borders existed. Today’s two reservations are what remains of a much larger ancestral map.
~2,600 people belong to the Boruca people today
Two territories — Boruca and Rey Curré — both in Buenos Aires canton, Puntarenas
One of eight Indigenous peoples officially recognized in Costa Rica
Never subdued by the Spanish crown — the only Costa Rican Indigenous people who can say so
The knowledge someone has to carry
None of this survives on its own — it survives because someone keeps teaching it. Kamel’s own father, don Ismael, carved for decades and was honored with Costa Rica’s Premio Nacional de Cultura Popular Tradicional before passing the knife to his sons. In the territory’s schools today, children study carving and handicrafts as a subject alongside math and science — not an elective, a requirement, because a generation that never carved would be a generation that forgot.
The words that carry the jaguar
Kamel signs every piece KRUA^DENKA — “footprint of the jaguar” — two words from Brunca, the Boruca’s own language. Brunca belongs to the Chibchan language family, and today it counts among the world’s most endangered: some linguists list it as extinct as a first language, with only elders remembering it in full. But it hasn’t disappeared from Boruca life — it is taught as a subject in the territory’s elementary schools, kept alive word by word by teachers determined that the next generation will still recognize their own language.
Threads as old as the masks
Alongside the mask, the Boruca keep a textile tradition every bit as demanding: cotton grown on the reservation, hand-spun on drop spindles, then woven on a pre-Columbian backstrap loom — the same technique used here for centuries, no two pieces ever quite alike.
The color comes from the land itself: indigo, achiote and other local plants for reds, blues and golds — and, more rarely, a purple drawn by hand from a Pacific coast sea snail, a dye technique only a handful of communities on Earth still practice. In the 1970s, a group of Boruca women founded La Flor de Boruca to protect and pass on the weaving patterns, which are never written down — only remembered.
The land that provides
The Boruca territory covers roughly 12,470 hectares of the Talamanca foothills along the Térraba River, in Buenos Aires canton — part of it set aside as protected forest. Families still grow much of what they eat: corn, beans, rice and root vegetables close to home, coffee and cacao on the hillsides, alongside cattle, pigs and poultry.
That same forest supplies almost everything Kamel works with: the balsa that becomes a mask, the cotton that becomes a textile, the plants that become a dye. Elders hold generations of knowledge about which plants heal and which pigments hold their color — knowledge passed by hand and by voice, the same way the language is. Every piece Kamel makes starts, quite literally, with the land staying whole.
From tree to spirit
Each mask begins as a single block of balsa wood, light and strong, grown in these same forests. It is carved with knives and gouges — no molds, no machines — then sanded and painted over days of fine detail work.
Two great families of masks exist today: the diablitos, with horns and fangs, keepers of the origin story — and the ecólogicas, where jaguars, birds, butterflies and the forest itself bloom across the carved face. Kamel masters both.
Buying a mask directly from a Boruca carver sustains the families of the territory and keeps this knowledge moving to the next generation.
What the carving is saying
A Boruca mask is never just decoration. Carvers say there’s no fixed rulebook — every artist adds their own reading — but certain figures return again and again, each carrying its own weight.
Jaguar
Power and protection. Costa Rica’s largest cat, and the animal Kamel signs every piece after: KRUA^DENKA, the footprint of the jaguar.
Birds
Vision from above, and a line to the spirit world. Owls and other birds appear as watchers, keeping sight of what humans on the ground cannot.
Butterfly
Transformation. A creature that is unmistakably one thing, then unmistakably another — the same change the mask asks of whoever wears it.
Diablito
Resistance itself — the mask that stared down the conquest and never blinked.
Other figures carry their own meaning: the deer for respect and a hunter’s restraint, the monkey for mischief and joy — and, worn only during the Juego de los Diablitos, the bull: the one mask in the whole story that plays the invader, and loses.
Bring a Boruca mask home
Every mask Kamel carves in balsa wood and paints by hand carries this history. Buy directly from the artist in Costa Rica, with worldwide shipping.
The tradition, still being written
In 2025, Kamel designed the Boruca-inspired artwork on Costa Rican football club Municipal Pérez Zeledón’s away jersey. In 2024, he designed the Sarastro costume for a reimagined, Indigenous-lens staging of La Flauta Mágica — a costume now headed to an exhibition at the Wilson House Museum in Washington, D.C. Five hundred years after the first diablito mask, Boruca culture is still stepping onto new stages.
Frequently asked
Are the Boruca still around today?
Yes — just over 2,600 people belong to the Boruca today, living across two territories in Costa Rica’s southern Brunca region. They’re one of eight Indigenous peoples officially recognized in the country, and the only one never subdued by the Spanish crown.
What does “diablito” mean?
“Little devil” — the name Spanish conquistadors gave the masked warriors who fought them off. The Boruca kept the name and turned it into a badge of honor rather than an insult.
What does KRUA^DENKA mean?
“Footprint of the jaguar” in Brunca, the Boruca’s own language. It’s the name Kamel signs on every piece he makes.
Can I visit the Boruca territory?
Yes — see the Visit page for how to plan a trip and connect with Kamel directly.
Is every mask hand-carved?
Yes. Each one starts as a single block of balsa wood and is carved with knives and gouges — no molds, no machines — then sanded and painted by hand over several days.
What language do the Boruca speak today?
Mostly Spanish, day to day. Brunca, their own Chibchan language, is critically endangered — remembered in full mostly by elders, but still taught as a subject in the territory’s schools.