Aggro in the Andes
It starts with a shot of local moonshine and ends in a huge, alcohol-fuelled punch-up that is often deadly. This is the strange world of tinku, a highly ritualised, highly violent folk ceremony held in Bolivia’s rural Potosí region during the harsh Andean winter.
Tinku, meaning ‘encounter’ in the Quechua tongue, is Bolivia’s most dramatic fiesta and is essentially a harvest festival, celebrating the end of the agricultural year. What makes it so remarkable, however, is the colourful clash of pagan beliefs, which draw on the ancient rituals of Potosí’s indigenous communities, as well as the Catholic Church. Five major tinku are held around Potosí annually, with similar, smaller festivals taking place in remote highland communities.
As the tinku builds to its riotous crescendo, the spilling of human blood is heralded as an offering to Pachamama, the Inca earth goddess.
Traditionally, the villagers celebrating tinku have excluded tourists – the festival was a private affair in the isolated Andean communities and was little known outside of anthropological circles. But in recent years, following increased coverage in the press and in guide books, tour agencies in the city of Potosí have worked with local people to offer tinku tours, allowing foreigners to witness the rituals of Andean communities that have changed little over the centuries.
The best-known tinku is held each May in Macha, a 3,000-strong community of adobe houses and dirt-track sidestreets, all built around a central plaza overlooked by a stone church. Poor and remote, it sits astride the Andes at some 4,000 metres above sea level and is a six-hour bus ride north of Potosí.
Strong traditions
I joined a small group of curious backpackers and amateur anthropologists with Koala Tours, setting out from Potosí on a bright but chilly morning. During the Spanish conquest, Potosí was awash with silver and noblemen; today, it’s a windswept place with a vaguely elegiac feel. Cerro Rico, the mountain that looms over the city, is a shadow of its former self, plundered over the centuries for its now near-exhausted silver reserves.
Before we embark, our guide makes a cha’lla, a ritual offering to Pachamama for luck on the journey, accompanied by a shot of chicha, the local fermented-maize hooch. The drink is as rough as the road that lies ahead. We rumble over crater-strewn tracks, stopping at a ramshackle hut at the roadside for a plate of soup with rice and potatoes, and a last chance to stock up on biscuits and bottled water.
Arriving in Macha at dusk, we find the square bustling with a pre-tinku market. Stalls selling fruit sit next to men with ancient machines for sharpening knives and stitching shoes. Our guesthouse, meanwhile, is hardly five-star: bleak dormitories with stained mattresses, a toilet block without doors and a loose hose that gushes ice-cold water for a shower. By the time we’re served a simple dinner of soup, rice and coffee, some of the group look to be cursing their curiosity.
After dinner, we find Hernan Tarqui, the 33-year-old Catholic priest of Macha, sipping coca tea in a shabby house beside the church. ‘These are country people, still living by the Old Testament,’ he says. ‘About 90 per cent are Catholic, but the traditions of the ancient civilisations are still very strong in this region.’
The next morning, we’re back on the bus, trundling across vast, dusty plains. We’re dropped off where the road disappears, and it’s then a 20-minute, cross-country hike to the village of Cruz de Machacamarca, where the first official day of tinku is already in full effect. A tiny pueblo with llamas and dogs roaming free between the adobe huts, it’s surrounded by a thin, red soil that has been eroded from the surrounding hills.
Village elders from the scattering of nearby rural communities – many dressed in costumes modelled on those worn by Spanish conquistadors – carry large crosses carved with images of Christ to a stark, white church to be blessed by the local priest. The rest of the villagers, meanwhile, are dressed in brightly coloured ceremonial clothes and are whipping themselves into an early frenzy by swigging chicha, dancing and indulging in minor scuffles.
At the periphery, women and children huddle beside fires cooking bubbling vats of beans and corn. Some of the early victims, sporting black eyes and split lips, lay slumped by a stone wall. The carcass of a freshly sacrificed llama is being ransacked for the pot. We watch the dancing, keeping a judicious distance; already, the atmosphere feels tense.
‘This is a subsistence farming community with people living on 40 bolivianos (£2.50) a week,’ explains Hugo Mondocore Gabriel, the elder of the village of Uluchi. ‘We only decided to invite tourists to witness the tinku four years ago. We needed to bring money into the community, as we have 450 schoolchildren in these villages but only nine teachers, and we desperately need to buy school books and pens.’
Fight night
After the blessing of the crosses, rival villagers begin to come together on the second day in Macha to dance, drink and settle their differences – anything from livestock theft to love triangles – from the past year with bare fists. But this isn’t just some drunken brawl. It’s a sport, an outlet for aggression, a chance to settle scores – but most of all, it is symbolic. Tradition dictates that blood spilt on the final day brings fertility to the rocky soil; a dead villager ensures an especially abundant harvest for the following year. A death will go unreported, however, and is handled behind the closed doors of the community, who will fall silent if questions are asked.
In Macha’s sun-bleached town square, indigenous women, dressed in the traditional garb of long, flowing skirts and embroidered shawls, patrol the crowds with whips to administer a lash of community justice to anyone fighting dirty. The cowskin hats they wear to denote their authority are tough enough to withstand the sudden shower of stones and missiles, hurled by villagers at their rivals in provocation.
As the afternoon gives way to evening and the shadows loom larger on the stone cobbles, we watch from our position on a balcony of the town hall as the drinking and dancing grows increasingly fervent. Rival factions charge drunkenly into each other, some lashing out with fists. The women build the rhythm, performing a shuffling, feet-stamping dance routine to the eerie strains of cane flutes and mandolin-like Andean instruments called charangos. While it appears that the tinku is a free-for-all, it’s a choreographed ritual – at least, that’s how it begins on day two, but it tends to degenerate into a full-on drink-fuelled scrap by day three.
The chanting and goading intensifies as dancers engulf the main square. The market traders continue to man their kiosks, interrupting commerce only to throw water over dancers who stumble into their wares. Then, the dull thud of a CS gas canister hitting the ground heralds the arrival of the local police, who try to exert some influence over the crowd. However, the dancers simply retreat to side streets to lick their wounds before relaunching themselves into the brawl.
Darkness delivers the first serious casualties to Macha’s tiny hospital. Outside, women are looking for their injured husbands; the ground is thick with blood and urine. Our guides have warned that us that, as guests, we should depart on the third and final morning of tinku to leave the community to complete the ritual away from the prying eyes of foreigners.
But before heading off to bed, we go in search of Father Hernan. He will be staying up all night, and shakes his head wearily as we say our goodbyes. ‘Of course, the Church opposes tinku. We want to see a coming together of communities to share their blessings,’ he says, as an assistant arrives to tell him the church has been secured for the night. ‘We can’t afford to lose people in this
way,’ he adds, ‘but we can’t just change the culture overnight.’
January 2008
Tinku, meaning ‘encounter’ in the Quechua tongue, is Bolivia’s most dramatic fiesta and is essentially a harvest festival, celebrating the end of the agricultural year. What makes it so remarkable, however, is the colourful clash of pagan beliefs, which draw on the ancient rituals of Potosí’s indigenous communities, as well as the Catholic Church. Five major tinku are held around Potosí annually, with similar, smaller festivals taking place in remote highland communities.
As the tinku builds to its riotous crescendo, the spilling of human blood is heralded as an offering to Pachamama, the Inca earth goddess.
Traditionally, the villagers celebrating tinku have excluded tourists – the festival was a private affair in the isolated Andean communities and was little known outside of anthropological circles. But in recent years, following increased coverage in the press and in guide books, tour agencies in the city of Potosí have worked with local people to offer tinku tours, allowing foreigners to witness the rituals of Andean communities that have changed little over the centuries.
The best-known tinku is held each May in Macha, a 3,000-strong community of adobe houses and dirt-track sidestreets, all built around a central plaza overlooked by a stone church. Poor and remote, it sits astride the Andes at some 4,000 metres above sea level and is a six-hour bus ride north of Potosí.
Strong traditions
I joined a small group of curious backpackers and amateur anthropologists with Koala Tours, setting out from Potosí on a bright but chilly morning. During the Spanish conquest, Potosí was awash with silver and noblemen; today, it’s a windswept place with a vaguely elegiac feel. Cerro Rico, the mountain that looms over the city, is a shadow of its former self, plundered over the centuries for its now near-exhausted silver reserves.
Before we embark, our guide makes a cha’lla, a ritual offering to Pachamama for luck on the journey, accompanied by a shot of chicha, the local fermented-maize hooch. The drink is as rough as the road that lies ahead. We rumble over crater-strewn tracks, stopping at a ramshackle hut at the roadside for a plate of soup with rice and potatoes, and a last chance to stock up on biscuits and bottled water.
Arriving in Macha at dusk, we find the square bustling with a pre-tinku market. Stalls selling fruit sit next to men with ancient machines for sharpening knives and stitching shoes. Our guesthouse, meanwhile, is hardly five-star: bleak dormitories with stained mattresses, a toilet block without doors and a loose hose that gushes ice-cold water for a shower. By the time we’re served a simple dinner of soup, rice and coffee, some of the group look to be cursing their curiosity.
After dinner, we find Hernan Tarqui, the 33-year-old Catholic priest of Macha, sipping coca tea in a shabby house beside the church. ‘These are country people, still living by the Old Testament,’ he says. ‘About 90 per cent are Catholic, but the traditions of the ancient civilisations are still very strong in this region.’
The next morning, we’re back on the bus, trundling across vast, dusty plains. We’re dropped off where the road disappears, and it’s then a 20-minute, cross-country hike to the village of Cruz de Machacamarca, where the first official day of tinku is already in full effect. A tiny pueblo with llamas and dogs roaming free between the adobe huts, it’s surrounded by a thin, red soil that has been eroded from the surrounding hills.
Village elders from the scattering of nearby rural communities – many dressed in costumes modelled on those worn by Spanish conquistadors – carry large crosses carved with images of Christ to a stark, white church to be blessed by the local priest. The rest of the villagers, meanwhile, are dressed in brightly coloured ceremonial clothes and are whipping themselves into an early frenzy by swigging chicha, dancing and indulging in minor scuffles.
At the periphery, women and children huddle beside fires cooking bubbling vats of beans and corn. Some of the early victims, sporting black eyes and split lips, lay slumped by a stone wall. The carcass of a freshly sacrificed llama is being ransacked for the pot. We watch the dancing, keeping a judicious distance; already, the atmosphere feels tense.
‘This is a subsistence farming community with people living on 40 bolivianos (£2.50) a week,’ explains Hugo Mondocore Gabriel, the elder of the village of Uluchi. ‘We only decided to invite tourists to witness the tinku four years ago. We needed to bring money into the community, as we have 450 schoolchildren in these villages but only nine teachers, and we desperately need to buy school books and pens.’
Start the slideshow (4 pictures)
Fight night
After the blessing of the crosses, rival villagers begin to come together on the second day in Macha to dance, drink and settle their differences – anything from livestock theft to love triangles – from the past year with bare fists. But this isn’t just some drunken brawl. It’s a sport, an outlet for aggression, a chance to settle scores – but most of all, it is symbolic. Tradition dictates that blood spilt on the final day brings fertility to the rocky soil; a dead villager ensures an especially abundant harvest for the following year. A death will go unreported, however, and is handled behind the closed doors of the community, who will fall silent if questions are asked.
In Macha’s sun-bleached town square, indigenous women, dressed in the traditional garb of long, flowing skirts and embroidered shawls, patrol the crowds with whips to administer a lash of community justice to anyone fighting dirty. The cowskin hats they wear to denote their authority are tough enough to withstand the sudden shower of stones and missiles, hurled by villagers at their rivals in provocation.
As the afternoon gives way to evening and the shadows loom larger on the stone cobbles, we watch from our position on a balcony of the town hall as the drinking and dancing grows increasingly fervent. Rival factions charge drunkenly into each other, some lashing out with fists. The women build the rhythm, performing a shuffling, feet-stamping dance routine to the eerie strains of cane flutes and mandolin-like Andean instruments called charangos. While it appears that the tinku is a free-for-all, it’s a choreographed ritual – at least, that’s how it begins on day two, but it tends to degenerate into a full-on drink-fuelled scrap by day three.
The chanting and goading intensifies as dancers engulf the main square. The market traders continue to man their kiosks, interrupting commerce only to throw water over dancers who stumble into their wares. Then, the dull thud of a CS gas canister hitting the ground heralds the arrival of the local police, who try to exert some influence over the crowd. However, the dancers simply retreat to side streets to lick their wounds before relaunching themselves into the brawl.
Darkness delivers the first serious casualties to Macha’s tiny hospital. Outside, women are looking for their injured husbands; the ground is thick with blood and urine. Our guides have warned that us that, as guests, we should depart on the third and final morning of tinku to leave the community to complete the ritual away from the prying eyes of foreigners.
But before heading off to bed, we go in search of Father Hernan. He will be staying up all night, and shakes his head wearily as we say our goodbyes. ‘Of course, the Church opposes tinku. We want to see a coming together of communities to share their blessings,’ he says, as an assistant arrives to tell him the church has been secured for the night. ‘We can’t afford to lose people in this
way,’ he adds, ‘but we can’t just change the culture overnight.’
January 2008
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