(LIP-jl) -- For 362 days of the year nothing really happens in Paucartambo, a quiet colonial backwater set amidst imposing scenery at the confluence of the Mapacho and Qenqo Mayo rivers, some three hours by dusty, narrow road from Cuzco.
Then, for three days each year, from the 15th to the 17th of July, the town fills to overflowing with the thousands of visitors who come to watch it play host to one of South America’s most vibrant and fascinating fiestas.
The Spanish introduced the custom of paying homage to the Virgin of Carmen in all their colonies, and festivals were held in her honor throughout the Americas.
But in the Andes, where all religious celebrations reflect the centuries-old struggle between Christianity and pre-Columbian pantheism, the Virgin is no longer just the mother of God, she is also Mother Earth, or Pachamama, and the sixteen groups of beautifully costumed dancers who participate in the festivities at Paucartambo interpret a tangle of historical events, folktales and legends, each group contributing to what is essentially a three-day narrative.
The fiesta begins on the 15th July with the entrance of all the dance groups, or comparsas, all magnificently masked and costumed in accordance with their respective customs and traditions. They approach the church dancing, while the Capaq Qolla and Capaq Negro dancers enter the temple singing to briefly salute the Virgin.
Meanwhile, behind the comparsas, the entire population of the town gathers quietly, forming itself into a pious mass that processes along the main street bearing candles, flowers and other offerings.
Later that evening a riotous firework display is held in the main square, during which the Capaq Qolla, the Chunchos and the Saqras dance wildly, leaping through the flames of the many bonfires set around the plaza, their masks lit like some medieval vision of hell. At around midnight, in an emotional gathering, all the comparsas meet again – this time without their elaborate costumes – to solemnly serenade the Virgin in front of the closed doors of the church.
Very early on the morning of the 16th, the central day of the festivities, the townspeople return to the plaza after attending mass to receive the gifts of fruit, handicrafts and toys rained down upon them by the majordomos of each comparsa.
That afternoon, amid an air of excited expectation that runs through the waiting crowd in whispered conjecture, the Virgin, beautifully adorned and escorted by the Capaq Chuncho, is finally taken from her resting place beside the main altar of the church to be carried through the teeming streets and squares of Paucartambo at the head of all the dance groups in their multi-colored costumes, while each band plays the distinctive music exclusive to its comparsa, creating a riot of sound that reverberates against the surrounding mountains.
Meanwhile, high above the procession, the devilish Saqras seem to defy gravity as they harangue the Virgin by jumping from balcony to balcony, even scaling the rooftops in their efforts to seduce her and crying out all the while as if in pain as they try to avoid her impassive, glassy stare.
On the following day, in a ceremony evoking the ancestral Andean cult of the dead, each comparsa makes its way to the cemetery, along streets smelling of dust, roasting pork, beer and urine and lined with the stalls of the living, singing both to recall their ancestors and to remind themselves, and their listeners, of their own mortality.
That same afternoon the image of the Virgin is carried for the last time through the narrow streets of the village to the venerable colonial-era bridge named after Carlos III of Spain where, surrounded by all those who have attended the festival, standing or kneeling tightly-packed and respectfully silent, the Capaq Qolla and Capaq Negro address the Virgin in a moving song of farewell.
With the Virgin put safely to rest in her temple, the main square fills again for the fiesta’s grand finale. The irreverent Waca Waca dancers parody the Spanish bullfighters of the colonial period as a prelude to the entrance of the Qollas and the Chunchos, who do mock-battle in a hilarious slapstick encounter recalling the wars between Qollasuyo and Antisuyo in the time of the Incas.
In the thick of this Dantesque fray the Saqras take advantage of the Virgin’s absence to descend from the rooftops, tridents in hand, carrying away the fallen warrior-dancers one-by-one in flaming handcarts until, finally, the Qolla king is killed by the king of the Chunchos and his queen taken as a war trophy, an act that signals an end to hostilities and a switching of the warriors’ attentions to the dozens of crates of beer stacked in the middle of the plaza.
The next day, in a still-colorful yet relatively sober coda to the mayhem of the previous evening, the comparsas venture forth for the last time to dance the traditional cachapari, or farewell, closing for another year this most breathless and imaginative of fiestas, and returning Paucartambo to quiet obscurity again even as the dust raised by the last visitors’ vehicles dances still over the road to Cuzco.
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