Big Party! Or, a Tribal harvest festival deep in the Chaco

Paraguay’s Chaco is a vast semi-desert that takes up the northwestern half of the country. At first glance, it is  daunting, dry and dusty. But it is also home to the Arete Guazu – a local carnaval, and a rare chance to see some of Paraguay’s true indigenous culture. As soon as I heard about it I was sold. A few days later I spent eight cramped hours heading north-northwest with a couple of friends, bobbing over uneven asphalt, and sweating into overstuffed upholstery.

I arrived in Mariscal Estigarribia, “The heart of the Chaco” (translation – good luck getting home if you miss your bus.) Mariscal is the last major stop before Bolivia, though it’s still another 200k to the border. It’s a Paraguayan town, populated mostly by people who represent the typical ethnic stock of Paraguay – descendants of Guarani Indians and Europeans. They identify as Paraguayan, not as “indigenous.” A few kilometers south east, however, is the pueblo of Santa Teresita, the home to Guarani Indians, Nivacle, and other indigenous tribal groups.

Coke, available everywhere. Even the Chaco.

The festival is a three day long event, both party and cultural celebration. I woke early the first day and drank some mate. It was cool and just after sunrise. The torrential rains of the last month had turned normally dusty roads into a sticky goo.

My friends and I navigated our way to the first house of the carnaval. A priest made a short speech, followed by one of the tribal elders. Both pleaded with the revelers to have a safe and friendly festival. Don Cevero, the elder, spoke in pure Guaraní, with songlike, chirping tones. Though I speak some Paraguayan Guaraní (which is more of a creole), I could barely make out anything he said besides “Don’t get angry!”

Only then did the dancing start, a three step shuffle, as everyone held hands in a large circle. A group of eight or nine men stood off to the side, beating out a steady tattoo on their drums. At first there was just the one small circle of revelers who’d showed up early. But as I watched, dozens of people started trickling in and the circle became two, three, four. The older women carried flowers and wore floppy hats.

Without missing a beat, a nun walked over to me, and put a small blue Styrofoam heart necklace around my neck. It had the words “Guarani Occidental” written on one side, and ”Arete Guazu 2012” on the other, bordered with a liberal splay of glitter. The gesture surprised me a little, and I was even more so when some of the ladies pulled me into the circle to dance. As an outsider, I'd expected at best to be ignored. But at every stage of the festival, people invited me to participate, in the dancing, drinking, sharing terere, or in simple conversation.

Traditionally, dancers follow the drummers, who visit every house that prepares Chicha – a traditional, yogurt-y drink made of fermented corn. (It involves chewing the corn and then spitting it into a communal cauldron to ferment... and it takes some getting used to.) An elderly woman walked on the outskirts of the circle, smearing cheeks with white talcum powder.

“It represents good,” Anuncio Lopez, the pa’I, told me. “On the third day [during the cuchi-cuchi] they will smear black on our faces too.” “It has lots of symbolism,” he said, representing the fight between the forces of good and evil.

Though at its roots Arete Guazu is an Indian harvest festival, the Catholic Church (which came to the region decades ago) has left its mark. Before the church came to the region, the Arete Guazu lasted much longer than it does now. One señora told me that as long as there was chicha and food, there was drumming and dancing. Then the church came in and all but outlawed it. (After all, there's dancing, alcohol, a vague whiff of sex, and the sort of fun spontaneity that the Catholic Church back home seems to frown upon.) Now it starts with a church service, and ends before Ash Wednesday. The prohibitions seemed to have loosened though, and the church had even co-opted parts of the festival. For example, at one point dancers carried the Guarani cross in a long procession.

It looked like a Celtic cross made of leaves, a circle imposed over a cross. The Guarani belief, the pa’I told me, was that two sticks of wood supports the world. The church borrowed the icon and changed the symbolism so that the cross represented Jesus supporting the world.

“But it’s not very officialized,” Lopez told me. “It’s a new belief.”

The Guarani Cross and some dancers and abueros

While I danced, a small line of other dancers began circling in the other direction, among them a 14-year-old looking girl wearing a white sash with the words “Miss Carnaval,” emblazoned on it.

“Before, there wasn’t a queen…That’s not ours,” said a crinkly señora next to me. “But now the Carnaval has its own queen. It’s an incorporation. All of the carnavals have their queens.”

By 10am there were hundreds of revelers – Nivacle, Guarani, and townspeople from nearby Mariscal. Some sipped chicha, others munched on empanadas or drank terere, Paraguay’s version of iced tea. The rest of us cracked open the beer, cans of Ouro Fino, cheap watery stuff that leaves a hangover before the buzz even arrives.

Then I saw a mob of cone-headed teenagers walking my way. On second glance, it was a group of youth decked out in white clothes and sunglasses, bandannas and masks. These were the “abueros,” who represent the ancestors of the revelers. And every Arete Guazu, the legend goes, they emerge from the forest to find their descendants and pass some time with them. It serves as a chance to reconnect, and to celebrate the year’s fortune. (And some spectacular costumes.)

Wee Abueros

We spent the next few hours dancing and visiting different houses, before finally heading back to catch our breath.

…

Day two was more of the same. Dancing, heat, dust. I spent most of the day hiding from the heat and visiting local friends.       

On the third day (Fat Tuesday) I returned to the festival and I started talking to an old man named Julian. He was 67, from a long abandoned border town called Puerto Casado. He wore a cowboy hat and a blue shirt with thin stripes. We were soon deep into conversation, helped by the bottle of Paraguayan cane alcohol we passed back and forth.

As on other days, the dancing started slow. There was the shuffle, the swirling sand, and the dust settling in throats and pores and eyes. And as before, the steady beat of the drums.

“It’s different,” he said, as he watched. “Now the drummers just repeat the same rhythms. Before there were other melodies.”

Circle dancing

The music isn’t the only thing he said, point at the masked abueros. “[Now] They incorporate whatever they’ve got,” he said, looking at the skulls, monsters, and masks anyone could find in a costume supply store. “Before, it came from the forest.”

An abuero walked by. His mask appeared to be of paper mache, with thick lips and eyeholes that sit high and tight above the mask’s massive proboscis. The masks from earlier fiestas represented spirits of animals – there were dried mummified pig heads, or goat heads, crocodiles, even monkeys.

Some really snazzy looking abueros with traditional masks

Most of the masks didn’t look like that. But some of the old style remained. Walter, who I talked to at the end of the festival, told me about his mask: “Me and my friend killed two ostriches (yes, ostrich) in the woods four months ago,” he said. “We used the feathers to make their masks…I sat down with them and we designed them. They were all made here, not bought.”

While Julian and I talked, a new melody started, the “Koya koya,” a high-trilling flute and drums beating fast and hard.

“It’s time,” he muttered. The cuchi-cuchi was about to start.

This being Paraguay, we waited 20 more minutes. Then, abueros stormed into the courtyard, carrying a banner in front of them. Behind the horde of abueros, ten teenagers raced through the square, covered in muck and slime. The circle of dancers contracted inwards but the pigs (cuchi-cuchi) rushed about, smearing cheeks, faces, and anything else in front of them with mud the consistency of thick pudding.

This repeated twice more. By the end, I had a mud beard and stains up and down my torso and pants.

The younger demons also got into the act, but they used paint and motor oil instead of mud.

“This is a really dirty party, dude,” said Jorge Diaz de Bedoya, a 43-year-old documentary film-maker, after he watched one of the pint-sized abueros squirt motor oil on my glasses and sprint off before I could retaliate. He was one of the only strangers there. He had left Paraguay with his parents – his father is a cancer doctor – when he was three years old and had only returned to the country a few years ago.

I later learned that the mud flinging wasn’t supposed to have happened; (even though none of us minded) it was just a case over-exuberant party-goers.

Then came the most anticipated event of the festival, the toro-toro fight, a staged battle between the “bulls,” or village warriors, and some of the abueros, who changed into black to represent forest demons. The warriors have to win or the community would suffer bad luck for a year. The warriors emerged from behind the house where they had been preparing. They dressed in red shorts. Flautists and drummers led the way, and several women accompanied the group, waving flags to distract the evil spirits and protect their warriors.

The bulls snuck through the last gate, and then charged past the dancers into the ring where the abuero-demons danced away. They were on the hunt. Bodies collided and rolled, and the air became opaque with dust. It was a kaleidoscope of motion, and out of the corner of one eye, I saw a bull tackle a hapless abuero, then sit astride him ram his head into his victim’s chest.

The battle between the warriors and the spirits

While the other abueros and dancers watched, the battle raged on for a few more rounds before the warriors started to chip away at the abuero-demons. Then, almost without warning, the spectacle ended – as everyone realized dusk was approaching. The dancers hustled to the graveyard, where they would burn this year’s costumes, and put the spirits back to sleep for another year.

..............

A quick note: I got a lot of contradicting explanations behind some of the events that took place at the Arete Guazu. I won't pretend to be an expert on Paraguay's indigenous tribes or their customs, so apologies if I got something wrong.