Yawar fiesta claim or imitation? (3 out of 6)

Background

The Yawar Fiesta (party of the blood) is a bullfighting that originated in the Viceroyalty of Peru after the introduction of the bull by the Spanish conquistadors. The ceremony, bloody as it says its name, is one of the most complex representations that represents the blending of the Peruvian Andes and the burden of violence is assumed to represent the coup two cultures, Andean and Hispanic cultures; the first conquered and humiliated. It is the expression of the community that keeps pain, religious significance and the ancestral fusion, born by the impotence of the commoner to abuse of gamonal or landowner (in the colonies, the trustees), so in a kind of symbolism of struggle, resistance and victory comes the party where the condor, representing the villagers suffered is the avenger of the suffering inflicted by the gamonal represented in the bull who dies at the end of the ceremony.

The Yawar Fiesta, Fiesta de la Sangre, is celebrated the last days of July during the Independence Day in the province of Cotabambas (eight hours of Abancay), in Apurimac region. Festival is a rite that is staged in indigenous regions. In the village of Collurqui, its inhabitants make their celebrations with bullfights that has some symbolic features that eventually become a ritual.

The origin of the bullfight is Hispanic, but today with the addition of the condor as the protagonist of the fight, is a purely indigenous celebration. It was practiced in most of the regions of Apurimac and Ayacucho, is currently quite limited, especially in the variant that used explosives (dynamite) to kill the bull.

José María Arguedas

José María Arguedas Altamirano was born in Andahuaylas, Apurimac Region, on January 18, 1911; he died in Lima on December 2, 1969, by suicide. His father was a lawyer and José María had to follow through villages where his father practiced his profession, so did his primary education in Lucanas, Puquio and Abancay.

On this stage of his life, Arguedas wrote: "I was fortunate to spend my childhood in villages and towns with a very dense population Quechua. I was almost pure Quechua through adolescence. I can not strip me if ever, and this is a limitation of the survival of my first conception of the universe. For the monolingual Quechua man, the world is alive; not much difference, as it is a living being, between a mountain, an insect, a huge stone and humans. There is, therefore, many boundaries between the marvelous and the real ". This influence was decisive in view of the situation in Peru, in the way tackled literary, ethnological and folkloric studies in which the Indian and its social and cultural context were the target of analysis.

Arguedas was a writer, poet, translator, anthropologist and ethnologist; as a writer he created novel and stories that place him as one of the three representatives of the indigenous narrative in Peru, next to Ciro Alegria and Manuel Scorza. Introduced in the indigenous literature a richer and incisive insight. The fundamental question raised in his works is a divided into two cultures (the Andean Quechua and West, brought by the Spaniards), to be integrated into a harmonious relationship of mixed character country. The great dilemmas, anxieties and hopes that this project poses are the core of his vision.

In Ica and Huancayo he attended primary school until the third grade. The fourth and fifth years, made with breaks and had to give revalidation examination of both grades in the Our Lady of Mercy College in Lima, where already lived, in 1930. In 1931 he joined the National University of San Marcos at the Faculty of Arts, where he graduated from high school on December 20, 1957.

His narrative reflects the experiences of her life collected from the reality of the Andean world. Some of his works are: Water (1935), Yawar fiesta (1941), Diamonds and flints ((1954), Deep Rivers (1958), the sixth (1961), All the blood (1964) Fox and above fox below (published posthumously in 1971). All his literary production was compiled in Works (1983). In addition, he realized translations and anthologies of poetry and Quechua stories. However, their work in anthropology and ethnology that make up most of intellectual written production, still have not been reassessed.

Yawar fiesta, the popular show

The stars of the festival are three: the condor, the bull and the commoners. The first two form a unique and sacred duplicity. This merger represents the Andean world and the Hispanic, in a mythical representation of the world above and the world below.

The condor, sacred and emblematic bird of the Incas, should be captured in a ceremony and dedication ritual which is part of the party. The capture of the condor, although it is an exercise in patience, is no less spectacular. In Cotabambas, the remains of a dead sheep are placed in the natural amphitheater formed by the edges of a crater and then the group of villagers in charge of this mission waits patiently. Sometimes several days, to capture it without harm.

The condor is ceremoniously led to village, it is a sacred animal; drink brandy and the day of the party, is placed ornate on the back of the bull, whose skin is sewn the shackles are used to secure the bird; the bull will try to draw a bird on its back and give jumps several times. The condor in its quest to loose it embed its claws and beak.

The bull is a wild animal, raised in the countryside, and whose capture, sometimes bloody, participates most men in the community. The greater the bravery of the bull is expected, better the show and as in the novel by José María Arguedas, attributed a divine origin to consider it as a creature that embodies the subterranean forces, a sort of modern Amaru, coming out of the deep waters of a lagoon. Amaru is a god in the Inca ichnography.

The two animals, now united by blood and suffering, leaving the ring, the condor precariously, the bull rearing to get rid of an opponent who rips strips of skin from the backs and head, threatening to get the eyes. For some. "Artistically, the winged bull made an extraordinary, beautiful and tragic image." You can not know if for indigenous participants this representation is valid.

Condor death is a sign or advertisement of an inevitable misfortune that befall the community. Therefore, when concluded Yawar Fiesta, the bull is dead and the condor is a survivor, are well treated the bird, it is fed, given to drink and wings adorned with colored ribbons, was granted freedom.

Yawar fiesta, the literary work

Yawar Fiesta (1941) poses a problem of land dispossession suffered by the inhabitants of a community. With this work the author changes some of the rules of the indigenous novel, emphasizing the dignity of the native that has preserved its traditions despite the scorn of those in power. This triumphant appearance is, in itself, unusual within the indigenous canon, and gives the possibility to understand the Andean world as a unitary body, governed by its own laws, he faced the westernized prevailing pattern on the coast of Peru.

Yawar fiesta ritual has variants, but José María Arguedas, tells a celebration that does not involve the condor. The villagers at the point of dynamite, should disembowel the bull, evident symbol of gamonal and, in general, Western culture.

The bull, however, is not a simple enemy, but an entity who is honored, even worshiped, but sacrifices himself in a kind of pagan mass. Indigenous issues treated in this novel, the works continued in “Los Ríos profundos” (Deep rivers) and “Todas las sangres” (All blood).

In general, the work of Arguedas reveals the writer's deep love for the Peruvian Andean culture, to which he owed his early training, and is undoubtedly the summit of the Peruvian indigenismo. Two circumstances help explain the close relationship of Arguedas with the rural world. First, by being born in an area of the Andes that had no greater friction with westernized strata; second, the abuses of his stepmother forced him to remain among the Indians after the death of his mother. That way he assimilated the Quechua language, and the same happened with the customs and ethical and cultural values of Andean people.

Corollary

Is it really Yawar Fiesta symbolically chance for revenge of the conquerors or the continuity of the run, a way to take their place ?. Gone are the oppressors of the colony, but in the organization of Yawar Fiesta, Indians seem to think they are equal and have recovered the domain to organize the run, prove they can do what they and their gods, symbols ( Condor) are imposed on those who brought them (the bull).

The festival is appreciated by the people, but critics bloody spectacle that appeal to the same arguments used to reject bullfighting there too. I personally would also have objected to attend such a spectacle.

The truth would come to light if the behavior and thinking of the participants were analyzed before, during and after Yawar Fiesta. Maybe it's just a popular show rooted in the communities where it takes place, without any connotation, which is mechanically represented and is determined by the force of habit, perhaps the spirit of vengeance and revenge of the originating events persists.

References

Yawar fiesta

http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y%C3%A1war_Fiesta