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"El condor!" The young fellow's hoarse voice keeps cracking. He stands there among crenelated cliffs high above the crater, waving his arms wildly. The men get off their straw mats and stare into the sky. High above them the bird is making wide circles, wings outstretched, motionless. The men are completely overcome; tears well in their eyes. Nobody says a word, except for the lookout who once again shouts "El condor!"
Six days ago they climbed up to the crater at the peak. Twenty men from the village of Cotabambas, an impoverished hamlet deep in the Peruvian Andes. They came in order to catch one of the huge birds only found in the punas--the highlands where the air is so thin that no trees grow and nothing survives except the descendants of the Incas and their llamas.
This village has been sending its men into the mountains once a year for the past two centuries. Their mission is sacrilegious: to bring the Apu Inca, the sacred Inca bird and emissary of the Gods, down to earth. They will be celebrating the Yawar Fiesta with it, the blood festival on the Independence Day of the Republic of Peru. A condor, representing the Incas, will overpower a bull, the symbol of those Spanish conquistadors who brought a gruesome end to the mighty empire in the Andean clouds. The bureaucrats in the capital city of Lima have always considered this a barbaric custom. They tried to ban the bloody rituals in the 1930's. The bullfights had caused too many deaths because of the failure of the descendants of the Incas to use professional toreros and arenas. Rather, such events were held in the middle of populous village squares, with the most courageous men jumping out of the crowds and waving their ponchos to taunt the bulls. And now they go and pick on the condor, long threatened with extinction, torturing and abusing the bird. That's what the animal-rights activists are saying; this year, they submitted yet another petition to ban the custom. But what do they know about the message from the gods and the power of this bird that comes down into the valley once a year to bear witness to human misery? The condor overcomes the bull, and a week later flies back to heaven and appeases the mountains.
Catching the bird-god is not easy. After spending six days on the peak, the men seem to be in a trance. Even though the village they've been living in all their lives is 11,000 feet above sea level and they have more blood in their veins than regular people. However, at the puna's 17,000 feet, every breath becomes an effort, and the cold air feels like a knife your throat.
Ualberto brought them up here six days ago. He looks much older than his 32 years. His face is all red from the cold and all puffy from the booze. He is the village's altomisayoq, the Inca priest, the chosen one who knows how to talk to the gods. As soon as he arrived, he spread out his poncho to form an altar and emptied offerings out of a small bundle. Incense, corn kernels, gold foil, dried flowers, and coca leaves. He wrapped them in a corn-husk and pulverized a snail-shell over it, then set it afire. This ritual is called alcanzo, "sacrifice" in Quechua, the language of the Incas.
Then he helped the men lay the bait, a sickly white horse paid for by the governor who is organizing the blood festival. Ualberto and Señor Rafo, the innkeeper, brought the nag into the crater where they set the trap for the condor every year. The condor is at their mercy at the bottom of the crater, leeward of the crenelated rocks and sheer cliffs. It can't take flight without an updraft. Its muscles cannot handle its own seven-foot wingspan.
Señor Rafo placed a rope around the horse's neck. Ualberto spoke his incantations and wrapped his poncho around the nag's head. According to Inca beliefs, it is bad luck to look into the eyes of a dying animal. For the same reason, the bait must not be shot. Therefore the men shoved the animal to the ground and pulled at the noose with all their strength. It took a while. The white horse tried to struggle back to its feet, kicked a few steps, and flailed its head around. The men dragged it down with all their might, their faces distorted into strained grimaces. The horse spent ten minutes fighting for its life. Then its movements became weaker, it twitch copmvulsively and died. Ualberto said, it would take two days for the stench of decomposing to become airborne and attract the condor.
In the meantime, there was nothing to do but wait. The men cowered behind the walls of rounded rocks which have been serving as livestock-pens ever since Inca times. Once a day they threw some potatoes, meat, and semolina into a pot and boiled them to a slimy mush. Every few minutes they filled seashells from a canister of trago, a mixture of methyl alcohol and water. This smelly chemical hooch has cost many of them their eyesight and their lives.
Day three and still no bird. The men sat around apathetically. It was cold. At night it was 23 degrees Fahrenheit, and no more than 50 by day. But turning back was out of the question. If the village doesn't get a condor, it means bad luck for everybody. Poor harvests, avalanches, and sickness. So every hour Ualberto burned a bundle of offerings.
Reinforcements came from the village on the fifth day. Three young men on horses. They had shouldered guns and brought along some coca.
Señor Rafo distributed the leaves, which the men folded up, put into their mouths, and chewed into spittled balls. "Up here we're real close to the Apus, the mountain-gods," said the innkeeper. "We make contact with them by chewing the sacred leaves." This is important, because there's nothing worse than angering the Apus. Every one of them knows that. Especially Ualberto, who has to endure the wrath of the gods. The villagers believe that he would incur the curse of the condor. He is the priest, after all, and thus the closest to the gods. Which means that he must pay the price when they take the sacred beast prisoner. So very early every Sunday his mother, Cecilia, goes to the church in the main square, makes a sign of the cross before the altar, and kneels in one of the front rows. She prays for her son, who has no wife, no work, no money. Who spends his days drinking till he drops and his nights having nightmares that blast him out of his sleep. She prays for him to come to his senses and stop climbing the mountains in order to catch the condor. She is right to be terrified--if something were to happen to any of the birds, Ualberto would have to die, and no prayer could help him. He keeps saying, "Up there is the only place I'm ever happy. Up there is where my destiny is."
And so the lookout's call from the crenelated cliffs goes through Ualberto like a lightning-bolt. The men cringe and skulk along behind him to the crater's edge. They anxiously wait for the bird to land, ram its claws into the carcass flank, and start hacking at the carrion. Then Ualberto gives the sign. They chase down into the crater from all directions. The young horsemen shoot their muskets into the air so as to confuse their quarry. The condor stumbles sideways in a panic. Olintho, the bravest of the riders, charges his horse right at the bird in a flash. He desperately grabs hold of the condor's wing, while trying to keep his own head out of the reach of the Condor's beak. After all, this bird of prey could slice his face open with a single swipe. The others holler and hurry over, grabbing at the wings, the head, and the claws.
They lead the animal out of the crater in jubilation and stop in front of Ualberto's poncho. The priest gently wafts the incense-smoke in the bird's direction so as to befog it. Then they give the condor some trago to keep it quiet on the way to the valley, thread a string through its nostrils, and tie its beak shut.
The men stage a triumphal march back into the village. Ualberto has wrapped the condor in his poncho and hoisted it onto his back like a baby. He unwraps the bird in front of Governor Nestor Torres' house. Gently but firmly, they force its wingspan open for the whole village to admire. Then they adorn it with brightly colored ribbons and pennants.
The group is assembling inside around a long wooden table. The ritual can begin. Ualberto and the bird are all alone in a bare room at the other end of the courtyard. They will be together around the clock for the next few days. "Now the condor is my wife, my father, my son," Ualberto says while using a knife to mash a snail-shell into the incense in order to calm the bird-god down. The condor slinks into a corner in a state of shock and peers over his shoulder in fear.
Four more days until Independence Day. During this time, Ualberto and the governor's men will be parading the condor through the neighboring villages. By the time the holiday finally starts, their eyes have long been glazed over. Lots of trago and no sleep. Nobody else in Cotabambas intends to stay sober either. Even the cops lurch unsteadily through the village. That is why their commander locked away their guns for the week.
Independence Day starts with a parade of children, unions, and dignitaries, with el cĒndor in the lead. The priest blesses the animal in church. There is not even a conflict of beliefs for him. The Vatican has tolerated the ancient rituals of indigenous people in Latin America for centuries.
Noise is heard outside. After four days of festivities, the music of the Cotabambas bands has swollen into a never-ending din. Fifteen "Bandas" parading all at once. Wrinkled men banging on leather drums and squeezing pentatonal fanfare marches out of trumpets missing all their valves. At the same time, groups of women are stumbling through the streets in tipsy ring-around-a-rosies. Screeching and squealing folk-songs at the top of their lungs, they forcefully yank anyone they come across into the dance with them.
It's noon. The bull-fight is about to begin. Ualberto is with the condor, waiting in one of the courtyards that surround the ancient main square and can only be reached by climbing up steep alleys. Eucalyptus logs fence in the whole square. Hordes of people are crowding in, thousands of them have arrived. From all over the province.
There is a pen behind the gate at the northern end, and the fierce bulls are already stirring up clouds of dust with their hoofs. Then the first bull charges into the square. One after another, ten of them are driven into the arena, taunted by the poncho-waving men. Then come the first casualties--a kid falls under a bull, a man trips and gets gored in the side. But no fatalities. Not yet. Some guy drank himself to death yesterday, but that doesn't count. Too bad, the dignitaries say. "Deaths bring good luck." Señor Rafo is quite serious. "The gods are appeased by the dead people's blood, and then they send rain and fruitful harvests." That explains the name Yawar Fiesta - the blood festival.
Finally the governor gestures that the climax has come. The bands crescendo into a hysterical cacophony. The men have tied up a bull at the gate to the pen. Three men lash the condor onto his back with a rope. Infuriated, the condor hacks into the bull and tries to gouge out the eyes of its victim. The bull convulsively tries to throw its tormentor. Then the ropes come off. The bull bounds onto the plaza in three mighty leaps. Five men are already waiting there with their ponchos. They taunt, chase, and enrage him while the condor keeps hacking ever more insistently. The symbol of the Spanish conquest must be made to suffer.
Finally the bull is worn out. They drive him into a pen and take down the condor. Ualberto brings the bird right back to the courtyard. But the bull breaks free and charges into a crowd. People jump over fences, into doorways and windows. All except a drunk lying at the edge of an incline. The bull gores him in the belly. Over and over. The drunk smiles. He seems to feel no pain. Then the bull throws him into the air and down the steep incline. The man's body somersaults twice, thuds onto a rock, and lies motionless on the ground.
Late next morning the people gather near a sheer cliff. Ualberto, Señor Rafo, the governor, and Olintho lead the condor over by the wings. They seem nervous. "It's got to take flight. Otherwise it'll bring bad luck and death," says Ualberto.
He silences the crowd and the bands with a sharp gesture. They carefully place the bird at the edge of the cliff. The condor looks about in confusion, not sure of what to do with its freedom. Then it unfolds and flaps its mighty wings twice--and down it goes, tumbling down the ravine like one of those drunks, the men right behind him. Their faces worried, they carry the bird back up. The second try. The condor spreads its wings again, gives a short upward bound, flaps its wings once, twice, and becomes fully airborne. The crowds cheer.
Ualberto watches the bird glide through the valley and up toward the peaks in an elegant curve. He would like to say something, but his entire body is racked with convulsive sobs. For the past five days, he has been the bird-god's master, protector, and servant. For five days he has been the most important man in the village. For the next eleven and a half months, he will have to suffer the curse of the condor, being a useless loser and a drunk. He shakes his head so violently the tears splatter in all directions. Then he shoves his fist with the bottle into the air and yells, "Thank you!"
Story from "Dispatch from the Combat Zone", |
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