Originally, Inti-Raymi was an ancient religious ceremony of the Inca Empire in honor of the god Inti, which is the Sun God. It marked the beginning of a new year and celebrated the Winter Solstice and the Harvest. However, over the years Inti-Raymi has been combined with Baila de San Juan (Dance of San Juan), which celebrates John the Baptist's saint day, making it a strange combination of ancient Inca practices and old Spanish Catholic ritual.
Here in Cotacachi, the celebration is truly a unique and peculiar interpretation by the Quichua, the local indigenous people. The festival is a week long celebration, beginning with ritual bathing in Laguna de Cuicocha, a nearby high mountain lake, and followed by days of group dancing in the streets surrounding the town square. Although the women and the children have their respective days to dance, the men dominate the majority of the days. The costumes worn by the participants are a bizarre combination of mostly Spanish vaquero (cowboy), i.e., chaps, whips & homemade black cardboard hats (part witch part sombrero) and a few Inca symbols & masks. The Dance is more of a rhythmic march than anything else and is accompanied by shrill whistling and conch blowing. The men’s dancing tends to become very aggressive as a result of high adrenalin levels and excessive alcohol consumption and fights often breakout between the various village groups. Over the last few years there has been a formative police presence for riot control. The use of tear gas has been a regular occurrence to control the aggressive behavior.
The final day of the festival is a culmination of food and family, a peaceful counter point to the previous days of male macho strutting and aggression. The images that are shown here do not include any of the “men only” dancing, as we were not excited about getting close to residual tear gas. For those of you who would like to see and hear more about the men’s dancing, you can go here and check it out: http://blog.pro-ecuador.com/ecuador-culture/cotacachi-dance-of-san-juan-sunday/
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