A Burning Ring of Fire

This past week has been full of fire and ritual. First, last Tuesday, June21, was the Aymara New Year celebration. Its also the winter solstice here but that celebration is pushed back until the 24th—more on that to come! The Aymara New Year is a day to toast Pachamama and ask for a lucky year to come. For the record, we just started year 5519, according to the Aymara calendar. Not really sure what they are counting from, except possibly the bones that I’m studying! Anyway, in order to properly ring in the new year, we got up pre-dawn and went up to the top of a local cerro with an offering and a shaman to prepare it. Not quite a mountaintop but a good 20-30 minute hike straight up! As Stasia pointed out, shamans here don’t need to use hallucinagens here, they just hyperventilate on their way up! :)
Once we found a good spot where we could see both the town of Copacabana and the sunrise, we started to prepare the offering. First we all selected the most perfect coca leaves from a huge pile and remembered those that we love, one person for each leaf. Then Angel, our shaman, (ironically named of course) took all the leaves we selected and buried them with a toast of grain alcohol to Pachamama. Then, we brought out the supplies for the larger offering, including tiles made of flour and sugar with words and images painted on them (like health and home), spices of some sort, coca leaves, little sugar figurines of llamas and andean crosses, and the fat of a wild cat. Angel organized them as he saw fit and let us add a few things here and there, again naming people important to us along the way. Interestingly, he also named all the local mountains, which are traditionally conceived of as ancestors, or apus, as they are known here. Finally, once a layer of wool, tinsel, and coca leaves had been sprinkled over top, we placed the whole bundle on a fire. We each in turn threw alcohol over the fire in the 4 cardinal directions, and then were able to pass special objects over the flames, effectively blessing them. Then we were instructed to ignore the fire to let Pachamama eat in peace. During this whole process, we were treated to a splendid sunrise! After some more coca chewing, we descended back to the car and went home for breakfast of coffee, hot chocolate, and cake! (The cake was for Sergio and Stasia{s anniversary, not exactly traditional but definitely delicious!) After a long nap, the entire afternoon and evening was devoted to lounging in the backyard and eating barbeque of the best sort—potatoes, oka, and, my favorite, chorizo!

If that wasn’t enough earth-honoring and fire-gazing, Friday the 24th was the festival of San Juan (John the Baptist). This holiday is conveniently placed on the 24th by the Spanish to take a native ritual—Inti Raymi—and make it ‘civilized’. Inti Raymi is actually from the Inka empire (although certainly has a longer history) and literally means ‘Sun Party’ (inti=sun/sun god, raymi=fiesta/party). The Inka would have had a huge celebration, espeically in Cusco, for one of their primiere dieties, Inti, and likely would have symbolically married and literally sacrificed a few perfectly beautiful children, just for good measure (this is likely the reason why they find the perfect ice mummies in the Andes. Look up Juanita the Ice Princess if you don’t know what I’m talking about, its incredible. Also, Clinton once said he’d ask her out on a date. True Story). Today, there is little child sacrifice but lots of flame and creation of miniature suns here on earth! The whole town basically sets anything and everything on fire—bonfires in the streets, on the hills, in backyards. Driving through town basically felt like driving through a post-apocalyptic videogame world. So cool. What fire has to do with John the Baptist beats me (unless he baptized with fire? But wasnt that good ole Jesus?) but I’m glad they do it!

Just as a final note—I do actually do work here too. Most days are not very fiery and instead filled with bone dust and india ink (for labelling bones). I’m getting a lot done, data-wise, (although I could do more if we weren’t so involved with the community. But where’s the fun/value/anthropology in that?) and have found some really interesting individuals-- lots of OA, cavities, periostitis and even some trauma! wheee (for me, not them)

Also, I glued a skull back together yesterday that was in 33 different pieces when I started. Boom!