ABSTRACT
Long and short nights are as alien to tropical Latin America and the Caribbean as snow, which is to be found only in the high Andes and on Mexican volcanoes. And yet in the Latin American city, winter is imagined as a cold, white season. In the southernmost countries, where snow does fall in the months of June through August, Christmas is celebrated with artificial snow in the summer. In a region with predominantly two seasons, wet and dry, the phenomenon of four seasons is something imaginary, embedded in the collective memory of an inculcated civilization, and present in school textbooks, literature and the arts.
