LA CANCHA AND CARNIV

LA CANCHA AND CARNIVAL

A visit to La Cancha, the vast market, part of which is covered and part of which is open, is an interesting experience.  Apart from the fact that it is large (I spent 2 hours trying to find a place but could not), it sells everything from electronic goods to shoe laces.  There is a gallery which sells only cloth with little cubicles where tailors and dressmakers sew frantically on their Singer sewing machines. Another gallery is full of shoes, another electrical goods, another plastic ware and cleaning materials and so on.  Dotted at judicious intervals are places where food is cooked in enormous cauldrons and served at tables covered with plastic tablecloths where the market people can eat.

At least one section is devoted to food.  Indigenous women sit hunkered down surrounded by large baskets filled with fruit and vegetables.  "Compráme, caserita, comprá unos plátanos.  Papas, durazno, broccoli ....." - an incessant litany of all the things you can buy.  They don't call you María like they do in Andalucía, but casera (housewife) or mamita from the Quechua mama which is used in direct speech to refer to any female person no matter how young.  In between annoucements they eat stew - eternally tripe and pasta it seems to me - from plastic or enamel bowls.

The meat section follows.  No antiseptic packaging here divorcing the red objects on offer from the reality of where it came from. Men wheel wheelbarrows overflowing with bleeding meat through to the stalls where it is required, the ears still furrily in place and the eyes too.  To one side sits a woman patiently scraping the fur off the skins with a blade, much as people have done since the dawn of time.  The blade may be of metal now, but the process remains unchanged since the Stone Age.

Much crowing and squawking and cackling floats down from another passageway.  Here squat the women with their wooden crates and cardboard boxes out of which crane chickens and ducks and turkeys and rabbits.  Hamsters lie huddled up together in their boxes.  I suppose they are eaten here too: after all their name in Spanish is little rabbits from the Indies and, after the llama, they were the first animals to be domesticated by the Andean peoples.  The odd rooster runs around loose crowing all the while, from time to time jumping up on a shelf or some other vantage point to get a better view.

In the midst of it all tiny little ragged men stagger under the weight of the loads they carry on their backs.  The loads, which are secured by ropes tied around their chests and backs, (not like in Guatemala where they use a wide strip of woven cloth  and bear the weight on their foreheads) are almost as big as they are, and they bend double beneath them, their eyes fixed firmly on the ground.


Much in evidence at the beginning of February were all kinds of colourful masks, a must at Carnival time.  However, for the children the most important artefact is a water gun.  They run around squirting water at each other and at any unsuspecting passer-by who might happen along.  Also in great demand are bags of balloons.  This is because in Cochabamba at Carnival time children and young people blow up the balloons, fill them with water and then throw them at the young girls as they pass by.  However, there have been some incidents in the town because some smart characters have been blowing up 2 or even 3 balloons together and adding ice to the water, and this, when thrown, is a lethal weapon.  The police are to be out in force keeping an eye on the revellers to make sure that they do not surpass the limits of fun.

Merrymaking hots up - or should I say wets up? - from Friday until Shrove Tuesday when it reaches its peak.  On the Monday it is Trade Union revelry: pick-up trucks ride round the town full of workers armed with buckets of water and balloons which they throw, filled with water, at the pedestrians.  The children, for their part, stand at strategic points along the way with buckets of water and return the missiles.  They also ride around with huge water guns and target people as they go.  I have been keeping safely out of the way.

Shrove Tuesday is the BIG DAY.  On that day the Ch'alla (the apostrophe denotes a glottal stop) takes place.  Originally this is no doubt a fertility rite, because in the afternoon families prepare to eat their "puchero", the typical dish for this day, but, before they eat, half of the food along with drink is poured on the earth as an offering to the Pachamama, or Mother Earth, thanking her for her goodness during the previous year and asking her to be bountiful during the year to come.  The custom has been extended to include the tools of the modern world, so that office workers and shopkeepers etc. "wet the head" of the tools which help them earn their living.  Since all businesses are closed on Shrove Tuesday, they have this party on the previous Friday when not much work is done!  It is also the custom to make any investments at this time, so if you buy a house or a car or anything else, you have a "ch'alla" for it and decorate it with streamers and balloons.  People also buy new clothes now.  Since we had just bought our Mitsubishi in preparation for moving to the Chapare where some mode of transport is essential, a car, we had to "ch'alla" it too!  Then everyone has open house and neighbours visit one another.

There are lots of convents around the house where we stay in Cochabamba and they also paid courtesy calls on one another: young nuns were posted as lookouts at the corners to warn the others when someone was coming.  All great fun!

In the morning in the country the fields are blessed and seeds scattered and in the towns people bring along the tools of their trade (taxis, buses etc) to be blessed. Another custom is that on Shrove Tuesday men dress up as women and vice versa, another inequivocal clue that this is/was a fertility rite.

Then things die down until "Temptation Sunday" when there is a big parade through the town.  All this takes place to the inevitable accompaniment of fireworks at all hours of the day and night.  Fortunately after Shrove Tuesday we came down to the Chapare where it is altogether quieter in that respect.

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