Festivals > Articles > Punch Drunk

It starts with a llama sacrifice and ends with a drunken brawl. In between there are church services, freaky dancing and the consumption of copious amounts of moonshine. The Catholic Church denounces it, tourists seeking off-the-beaten-track destinations are starting to discover it and the country folk of Bolivia's remote pueblosflock to it each year. The festival in question is tinku, a series of highly ritualised folk ceremonies held in Bolivia’s rural Potosi region during the harsh Andean winter.

Bolivia’s tinku season, essentially a harvest festival celebrating the end of the agricultural year, is a colourful clash of Catholic and pagan beliefs, which draws on the rituals of Potosi's indigenous communities. Five major festivals are held around Potosi annually with smaller fiestas taking place in remote highland communities.

After two days of festivities in the villages, rival villagers come together on the third and final day to dance, drink and settle their differences from the past year with a good, old-fashioned, alcohol-fueled punch up. That is, until the local Police intervene to break up the brawl with a volley of tear gas and the judicious use of some really, really big sticks.

The mother of all tinkus is held in Macha, a community of 4,000 people, sitting astride the Andes at 3,500m and a six-hour drive north of Potosi by bus. Over coca tea in a shabby guesthouse just off the main square, Hernan Tarqui, the 33-year-old Catholic priest of Macha, tries to explain the context of events, which usually end with at least one fatality, plus numerous injuries.

“These are country people still living in the Old Testament,” he says. “About 90 per cent are Catholics, but the traditions of the ancient civilisations are still very strong in this region.”

The next day, we clamber cross country at high altitude to the village community of Cruz de Machacamarca, a string of adobe houses without electricity and running water, where village elders in brightly-coloured tunics and britches (modeled on the costumes of the Spanish conquistadors) arrive carrying larges crosses. The crosses are to be blessed at the stark, white church before returning to the respective communities to ensure good fortune for the next year’s harvest.

“This is a subsistence farming community with people living on 40Bolivianos (US$5) a week,” explains, Hugo Mondocore Gabriel, the village elder of Uluchi community, as we chat against a backdrop of late afternoon sunshine, the sounds of strange instruments scratching out folklore tunes and the frenzied dancing of the villagers, already plastered on chicha, a corn-fermented moonshine, traditional brewed with saliva.

“We decided to invite tourists to witness the tinku only three years ago to bring money into the community,” he adds. “We have 450 schoolchildren in these villages, but only nine teachers, plus we desperately need to buy schoolbooks and pens.” In an agreement with the local community leaders, selected Potosi-based tour operators can bring groups into the villages in return for a US$12 cut of every traveller’s payment.

Back in Macha’s central town square, the final day of the festival brings dancing, drinking and indigenous women in traditional garb patrolling the crowd with whips to administer a whiplash of community justice to anyone overtly fighting dirty. Dancing groups of villagers collide and end up brawling, while out in the fields villagers are sacrificing llamas in an offering to Pacahamama, the earth goddess.

As darkness falls, and the local hospital takes delivery of the first serious casualties of the year, Father Hernan shakes his head wearily. “The Church opposes tinku; we want to see a coming-together of communities to share their blessings,” he says, as the sound of dancing and brawling echoes around the square. 

“But,” he sighs, “we can’t change indigenous culture overnight.”

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