Rage in the Andes: A Comparative Sensory Ethnography of Festivals in Chumbivilcas, Peru (forthcoming July 2023)

by Adela Goldbard

Indigenous communities in Latin America perform their identity through a diverse set of syncretic rituals and unique cultural traditions that pull from both precolonial and colonial times, and transform and adapt to their current circumstances and struggles. A convoluted mix of Indigenous epistemologies/cosmologies, colonial/Catholic impositions, and the influence of the modern/colonial world-system has generated, over 500 years, a complex array of festivals. But cultural practices of Indigenous origin are frequently subjected to stigmatization or exoticization, or on the verge of folklorization (“the re-stylization of traditional expressions so that they become less complex aesthetically and semantically” (Seitel 2001)) and commodification. Their recognition as cultural heritage, when focused on the demands of the tourist market and not on the dynamism of culture and the practices’ symbolic character, makes them lose their ability to become repositories of collective memory and tools to resist oppression. This and other forms of institutional conservatism and violence reveal a rooted internal colonialism (Gonzalez Casanova 1965, Quijano 2000)–many times internalized and also performed by participants–that jeopardize the performance of cultural resistance and epistemic disobedience (Mignolo 2000) of these complex rituals. Folklorization depletes cultural practices from their sensoriality and symbolism; when estranged from their Latin American baroque ethos (Echeverría 2008, de Sousa 2014), instead of an expression of a utopian liberatory political project (Santos 2014), these festivals become a static and futile spectacle for tourists.

In the Quechua region of Chumbivilcas, in the Peruvian Andes, there is a convoluted classist/racist division between the Spanish-speaking “urban” mistis [from the Spanish term mestizo: ‘mixed-race’], and the rural Quechua-speaking campesinos [peasants], racialized by the mistis as indios [Indigenous]. Mistis are usually hacendados [landowners] or ex-hacendados that have made their fortunes, amongst other things, raising Lidia breed cattle (bulls for bullfights), thus, identifying with the Spanish toreros, the Mexican charros or the Texan cowboys, proudly calling themselves qorilazos [1] (‘golden lassos’ in Quechua). While mistis live in more urban areas such as Santo Tomas and Colquemarca–both capitals of their municipalities–campesinos live in peasant communities in the peripheries and in the mountains. Although campesinos also identify with the qorilazo, their cowboy persona is connected to grazing cattle such as sheep, cows and llamas. Before the Agrarian Reform that took place in Peru in the late 1960s/early 1970s, campesinos lived under the rule and oppression of hacendados, and didn’t have a territory of their own to graze their scarce cattle. The Reform´s governmental mandates that supposedly eliminated the latifundios (Poole 1988) and distributed land amongst peasant communities, “liberated” the campesinos from the rule of the hacendados but not from poverty or marginalization. But in recent years, artisanal mining has allowed campesinos to make their own fortunes and ascend socially, something that mistis don’t see with good eyes. Hacendados have, of course, also dabbled in the profitable enterprise, so it’s not the ecological consequences of such activity that they have an issue with, but with the declassed “transgression” of the campesinos. This intricate scenario of racism and classism caused by capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchy (Santos 2014) also reflects on the perception of cultural practices and festivals of both mistis and campesinos.

According to their origin and location, syncretic rituals and cultural traditions from Chumbivilcas, are valued differently. Some of these traditions have a colonial/Spanish origin–bullfights, cockfights, horse taming–and have become a central component of the qorilazo cowboy identity that Chumbivilcans are so proud of. Other rituals have Indigenous/peasant origins–notably huaylias (traditional dances, music and complex costumes that allow the embodiment of different historical tropes) and takanakuy, a form of wrestling that originated when hacendados and gamonales (caciques) forced, first their slaves and then their peones [laborers], to fight each other for their entertainment, imitating cockfights. While the former, due to their Spanish origin, are presented as respectful and honorable, the later, with Indigenous roots, are perceived as violent and uncivilized, both in Chumbivilcas and in other parts of Peru. The complex layers of internal discrimination of these assessments show how the coloniality of power (Quijano 2000) operates in the postcolony through the zombification of subjects driven into the realms of fantasy (Mbembe 1992): in this case the classist, racist and misogynist fantasy of being a Spanish-Mexican [2] qorilazo.

But besides the politics and social implications of these antagonistic perceptions, misti/Spanish and campesino/Indigenous festivals also differ in their sensoriality. A sensory ethnography of these total social and sensory phenomena (Mauss 1967, Howes 2016), will help trace connections amongst the socio-political and the experiential. Moving away from participant observation as ethnographic method to participant sensation (Laplantine 2005, Howes 2022), I propose sharing in the sensible (Laplantine 2005) with the participants of both kinds of festivals and conducting interviews that will help compare different engagements of their sensorium. This sensory ethnography will focus on sound (music, singing, shouting, fake voices), smell (cooking, alcohol, blood), taste (different kinds of food and booze), the body (proprioception, movement, dancing), the effects of alcohol on affect (care, bravery), embodiment (of the oppressor, of the oppressed, of animals), and non-human relations (with bulls, roosters, birds, cows, horses, etc. and with the territory/Pachamama). It may include video and/or sound and will also attempt a performance of Decolonial Aesthesis: “a re-valuation of what has been made invisible or devalued by the modern-colonial order,” to make visible decolonial subjectivities and other forms of sensing and perceiving that have been disdained or rejected by the Western canon (Mignolo 2013). I will also investigate how violence, humor and peer pressure are integral to these festivals, and will place special interest on the gendered nature of the festivals’ spaces and roles, on how women subvert these conventions (wrestling, taming horses), and on how, as a female outsider, I am permitted to trespass such spatial barriers. Finally, I will investigate how socio-economic changes in Chumbivilcas due to mining have transformed these festivals: for example, with the incorporation of new characters to huaylias (langostas or miners) and with the notorious capitalization of the caguyoq, [3] who now have the financial ability to hire expensive music bands, sound and light services for the nocturnal part of the festivals and high-end documentation services for the events they are in charge of. I’m interested in how the sensoriality of the festivals has been transformed by (the economic effects of) artisanal mining.

The festivals I will attend include: takanakuy and huaylia festivals in the peasant communities of Ccoyo and Yavina (two different festivals in two different locations to be able to notice similarities and differences); the festival in honor of the Madonna (Mamacha) of Natividad, Patron Saint of Santo Tomas; Colquemarca’s anniversary (both of the later include corridas de toros, cockfights and horse races), and a commercial takanakuy in Arequipa, the urban center where most Chumbivilcan’s migrate to.

[1] Deborah Poole (1988) performs a critical and complex analysis of the historical connections amongst abigeato (cattle raiding), bravery, manliness and the construction of the qorilazo in Chumbivilcas.

[2] Cowboy films from the Golden Age of Mexican cinema became popular in Peru and Latin America since the 1940s. In Chumbivilcas, qorilazos identified with the charros portrayed in such films, and coined the nickname of Mexico chico (small Mexico) for the region.

[3] Religious festivals are organized through a complex cargo system of stewards called carguyoq, in which community members have cyclic financial and logistical responsibilities to make the celebration happen.

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