Blood Festival

Written by hughpierre

The Yawar festival is a cross community event among the Dhani. Crowds of people in smaller villages gather in the larger towns to share blood as a bonding ritual that reaffirms family ties.

History

The festival has its origin during Munay Manqus in various locations and regions of the Fourth Quadrant. Before the Innoit Estate had arrived and built all its terrace farms for the locals, the residents ate a mostly meat-based diet.

Execution

Animal Fights

Cockfights and Bihorn duels take place in quartered off pits and stages around a town. But the main draw is a three-way match between a tethered condor, an imported cougar and a captured venomous snake.

The forced fight between all three of the animals sacred to the Innoit leaves a bad taste to some in the nobility.

— Piluta

However, the condor was always sacred to the Dhani. When the bird is captured, it is led in a ceremony towards the town where it is given aoctli or other alcoholic options to drink. The bird is fed before the fight, while the cat and snake are starved. In spite of this, the cougars win these fights the majority of the time (60%), with the condors following up (39%). While the snakes survive only a paltry amount of the time, they are typically responsible for more post-fight deaths because of the delay in their venom.

Components and tools

Blood Cakes

Every festival participant makes small loaves of bread mixed in with offerings of the baker's own blood to be given only to those close to them.

Stuffed Heart

A large llama heart hollowed and stuffed with beans, stripes of meat and grain enclosed in the heart wall and glazed in honey while roasted over an open fire.

Participants

Drum Players

During the festivities, participating towns will play their rock gongs that ring out across the vast tracks of the salt plains and sing with the dancing camay lights atop the silver lines.

Observance

This is an annual festival celebrated in the last days of Chacra Cona in many isolated towns of the Silver Mountains.

Alternate Name

Yawar

Feast of Blood

Related Organizations

• First Quadrant
• Fourth Quadrant

Related Ethnicities

• Dhani