Carnival and Other Christian Festivals: Folk Theology and Folk Performance

13. The Sins of the Carnival Virgin (Bolivia)

. The Sins of the Carnival Virgin () W ’  faces some of the same problems as that of Port of Spain but in a very different climate and with stronger religious roots.Oruro squats high in the Bolivian altiplano, striking many travelers as ‘‘a mean, forbidding town, hugging the bare hillside,’’ where ‘‘all is grey monotony even in the noon sunlight of a bright winter day.’’1 At , feet above sea level, Oruro can be bitterly cold at night even in the summer months. Lacking the encircling snowcapped mountain peaks of La Paz or the rich artistic heritage of colonial Potosí, it has little to offer the visitor by way of compensation. Since Inca times, Oruro has been a mining town. Unlike its wealthier sister , Potosí, it failed to transform its temporary prosperity into permanent architectural glories and so has the air of a boomtown that never quite made the grade. Depleted of its silver by the end of the Spanish colonial period, in the late nineteenth century Oruro became the hub of Bolivia’s tin-mining industry. By  the metal content of the ore had declined too far to support commercial interests and the government took over the mines. In  the nationalized mines were closed. Some have reopened under private management , but falling prices have limited profitability. Unemployment hovers over the town like a persistent cloud.2 Enclosing the entrance to an ancient mineshaft, in the side of the hill that steeply elevates the western edge of town, is the Santuario del Socavón (Sanctuary of the Mineshaft), a large, partially whitewashed stone church. On the wall behind the main altar is a gilt-framed fresco of the Virgen del Socavón. Once a year, on Carnival Saturday, the sanctuary is packed with tens of thousands of costumed devils, savages, and blacks, who throughout the day remove their ornate and terrifying masks and kneel to pay her homage. Oruro’s Carnival is the feast day of Oruro’s Virgin.Originally the Virgin of Candlemas, traditionally honored on  February, she is now known locally as the Virgin of the Mineshaft. Legend has it that on the Saturday of Car-  +  nival in  a bandit known as Nina-Nina or Chiru-Chiru was mortally wounded in a street fight, perhaps by the father of the girl with whom he was eloping. In his dying, the amorous bandit was comforted by the Virgen de la Candelaría. Some accounts say that a life-size image of the Virgin, painted on the wall of a deserted house, had been the object of his weekly devotion; others report that the painting miraculously appeared on the wall of the bandit ’s own abode after his death.3 The story adds that a troupe of masked devils first danced in honor of the Virgin in the next year’s Carnival.4 The present sanctuary, built to house her image, was completed in .5 Behind this legend of the Carnival bandit lurks another historical reality. During the Great Rebellion of Túpac Amaru II, which spread south along the Andean highlands from its starting point in Cusco, Oruro survived its own brief but bloody revolution. Exacerbated by fears of imminent Indian attack, tensions in Oruro between the majority Creole population and the minority ruling class of peninsular-born Spaniards (chapetones) erupted into a full-scale uprising.6 On the night of Saturday,  February , a mob of several thousand Creoles set fire to the house of a Spanish shopkeeper, killing eleven Spaniards and five black slaves. A hastily organized Sunday morning procession of the Holy Sacrament failed to calm the situation, which further deteriorated when some four thousand Indians, armed with conch trumpets, slingshots, and nooses, arrived ‘‘to defend the Creoles.’’ The Creoles welcomed their temporary allies but must have watched with mixed feelings as the Indians danced around the charred Spanish corpses, inflicting further wounds with stones and knives. A procession of the Holy Christ of Burgos was no more pacifying than its predecessor.7 For several days, the Indians roamed the town, firing their slings, sacking houses and churches, and killing any Spaniards they could find.One terrified Spanish man, disguised in women’s clothes, hid among a group of praying women but was betrayed by his shoes. He was stripped and killed. More Indians arrived, swelling the occupying army to as many as fifteen thousand.8 On  February, an order was given by the leading Creoles that everyone in the town had to...