Ritualized Games in the Andes

In many Andean, indigenous communities, territory is a binary and complementing unit, known in the regional mythology as hanan-urin (upper and lower), which probably dates to Pre-Inca times. This binary notion can also be interpreted as male-female, left-right, or the names of two neighborhoods, two sections of a town or a village. Although it suggests opposition, contrast, rivalry, or competition hanan-urin complement each other, or are parts of a whole where one cannot exist...
More Description

In many Andean, indigenous communities, territory is a binary and complementing unit, known in the regional mythology as hanan-urin (upper and lower), which probably dates to Pre-Inca times. This binary notion can also be interpreted as male-female, left-right, or the names of two neighborhoods, two sections of a town or a village. Although it suggests opposition, contrast, rivalry, or competition hanan-urin complement each other, or are parts of a whole where one cannot exist without the other. Men from the two complementing groups (hanan-urin) face off in ritualized games on set dates and locations and become one to bring about the fertility of the Andean cosmos by shedding blood. In some instances, actions and behaviors in these war-like games persist with no substantive changes. In others, they reveal syncretism as well as the pressures from within and without that the culture is experiencing.

Although the ritualized games documented below may seem to be primitive, antiquated, or anachronistic the rituals of fertility played throughout the Andes, however symbolic they may be, merit documenting. The photographs depict the rituals as they are today. As changes in the actors' behaviors affect every aspect of the traditional life, the overall fluidity of the culture, rituals of reproduction and fertility also change. That is to say, the underlying historical continuities are constantly reinvented or modified, or even performed out of their native mystical context, i.e. both theaters and actors may be geographically distant, or culturally removed from the meaning and the significance of the ritualized games. This ethnographic/photographic work on the Takanakuy and Pukllay or Tupay in Peru, Tinku in Bolivia, and Inti Raymi in Ecuador, not necessarily in that order, documents the ritualized games as they are today.

The reader or the casual viewer will probably criticize the use of black and white images in an age when color digital photography has become the predilection for amateur and professional photographers; and when even after production images can now be edited and manipulated in small, handheld devices. The use of black and white imagery is the appropriate choice for this project on two counts. First, the traditional practices of black and white films are vanishing altogether because of their technological obsolescence. There is little or no room for these superannuated commodities in the modern, competitive world. Second, aesthetically speaking black and white images neutralize the physical appearance of subjects who may be the focus of the activity or be part of the location or situation recorded. While color photographs are practically mirror images of the subject recorded, black and white images are less prone to make the viewer react with value-loaded comments or even provoke epithets.

Born and raised in the northeastern Andes of Peru, Edmundo Morales attended Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, Lima, Peru; New York University, and The Graduate Center of the City University of New York, where he received his Ph.D. in sociology in 1983. He was a member of the faculty of the department of anthropology and sociology at West Chester University of Pennsylvania for over two decades. He has done research on drug abuse in New York City as well as on the intricacies of coca/cocaine production in Peru. His previous books are Cocaine: White Gold Rush in Peru; The Guinea Pig: Healing, Food, and Rituals in the Andes; and Hats and Headdresses in the Andes: Identity, Tradition, and Symbolism. He lives in Pennsylvania, U.S. and Vilcabamba, Loja, Ecuador.