Kara deri beyaz maske: Sengo Pérez

Chiaraje, a violent rite (To understand the photos that follow)

Chiaraje, chiaraje! .. the word repeats itself and from mouth to mouth it becomes a cry, summons, provokes, multiplies as an echo and ignites the heights of Canas, there is no talk of anything else. January 20 arrives, Chiapas Pampa at 4500 meters high, naked of human life, populated by moss and ichu and occasionally visited by some lost llama or alpaca, will dress for a day of men who chose it as the setting for a violent confrontation between neighbors that will decide the fertility of the land for a year. And that is not little, rather it is much for those who live on it. For one day, peaceful comuneros from Checca, Langui and Layo become warriors.

"We are going to the battlefield of Chiaraje
Since the cock crows, mounted on our horses,
Linguis dogs.
We are not afraid, to the hail of stones,
we are brave warriors, although the river is stained with blood "

From eight o'clock on the eve of combat through radio Link warms the confrontation from the side of Checcas, sharp voices feminine accompanied by the ancestral pinkullo, call the fight. The list of participants with extremist messages such as "we are willing to die" is read. And it is that even this is reached, and although in recent years the cruelty of the battle has diminished, it is not uncommon to find fatal victims, and in reality for both sides this is necessary, the blood shed will make the earth more fertile.

On the side of Langui and Layo (Quehue community members should also be counted, perhaps the most fierce of this side) the issue seems to be more sporty and above all more commercial.
Is that from this side access to the "battlefield" is carried out comfortably on anything that is supported on wheels, mobilizing a huge number of merchants.
Cañazo, beer, chicha, anisette in the drink category, corn with cheese, fried chicken and trout,
lamb head broth and even ceviche! They complete the gastronomic offer of more than fifty merchants for something more than a market of a thousand consumers.
The changing climate, in minutes the scorching sun gives way to a fierce hail, causes the necessary acquisition of plastic ponchos to three suns (the same ones that cost one below).

But more, or less commercial, this pucllay or warrior game has little fun. And despite countless efforts to ban it, tradition imposes itself on the authorities.
About its origin much is said but nothing can be proven, the most repeated theory is that there, in that pampa Jose Gabriel Condorcanqui trained his army, Tupac Amaru II in his finally unsuccessful attempt to oppose the invading Spaniards.
These warrior practices would have continued to be associated with the fertility of the land for the winning side.
The battle consists of driving or pushing the adversaries back to their own terrain until they are forced to retreat.
They speak of infantry and cavalry themselves. The first ones, on foot, carry huaracas or slings with which they throw stones, and liwis, a kind of braided leather whips with heavy metal objects on their tips that transform them into deadly weapons and that are used in the confrontation body to body. This same weapon used the riders. But modernity has also reached this unique ancestral rite and the use of helmets to protect and put on soccer shoes is becoming more and more pronounced in a terrain muddied by the fall of rains very common at this time.
The combat is developed in two times, the first in the morning until noon when there is a parenthesis for the participants to recover their strength with a delicious lunch.
At about three in the afternoon everything is resumed and this time with more violence, the accelerated consumption of alcohol during the meal transforms the "warriors" into less aware of the risk and increases their ferocity.
Before the night falls, the duel ends, always with a territorial winner, who would bring the other to his land but in reality there are neither winners nor losers, wounded on both sides to clean their wounds, and the "cane" will make it more bearable the pain.
The next day, the rude combatants will return to be peaceful neighbors and take care of the land, only until next January 20.