Dayma festival

The century plant festival, or dayma festival, is an annual festival held in Goal.

The festival originated among the agave-producing regions, and celebrates the time when agave plants (dayma, pl. daymada, in most of the Gulai languages) form a flower stalk for the first time. By scooping out the center of a flower, the flower can be prevented from fruiting for up to a year—after it fruits, the agave dies. The nectar from these flowers is used to produce an alcoholic beverage called efni, which is the main traditional alcoholic beverage of the country.

The century plant festival is associated with particular dances and songs. The main focus of the festival is the drinking of Datura inoxia laced efni, which causes visions and wild behavior. In addition to honoring and propitiating the agave spirits, the dances and songs associated with the festival are traditionally believed to invite good and helpful spirits into the datura drinkers, and ward away spirits that cause madness and destructive behavior.

Urban century plant festival

Before the 20th century, the festival was only practiced in the agave-producing interior region of Goal. Starting in the 1920s, with widespread migration from the interior to the coast the agave festival was brought to the coastal urban regions as well. As the festival gained popularity among the non-Gulai urban population, elements have been modified to make them more appealing to the urban practitioners. Traditional dances and songs have been modified to fit genres of music popular in the city. These have changed over time as well, as dances and music genres go in and out of style. By and large, urban festivals are not associated with datura drinking, except among people of Gulai origin or members of the counterculture. Beginning in the 2000s, countercultural forms of the dayma festival have replaced datura with psilocybin. This practice has begun to have some popularity among the young professional class of the coastal cities as well.