Carnival in Bolivia: Devils dancing for the virgin

Western Folklore, Summer 1999 by Lecount, Cynthia

The Uru-Uru villagers of the legend lived a simple life of fishing and llama-herding on the high plateaux. They worshipped the sun, whom they called Inti. Every morning, Huari the giant was awakened by the beautiful first-born daughter of the sun, Inti-Huara (Dawn or Aurora), who displayed the splendor of the Andean countryside. Huari fell in love with her and pursued her with volcanic smoke and fire, but Inti, her father (the sun), intervened by burying the giant's powers inside high cliffs. Huari swore he would take revenge on Inti by corrupting the Uru-Uru people so they would no longer worship him.

Huari then became human-an apostle of a new religion, and preached against all that the Urus had held sacred. Huari claimed that the villagers would become wealthy by mining instead of farming. He showed the dubious highlanders gold and silver from the mountains and they finally abandoned their traditional labors. They stopped praying to Inti and began attending unlawful night meetings where alcohol flowed. On Sundays the Urus started to practice sorcery with frogs, snakes, lizards and ants to curse and impose sickness upon their neighbors, friends and relatives, so that they could take over their possessions. As a result of the turmoil, the people became depressed and belligerent, and began fighting among themselves.

The village would have been abandoned because of the problems, except that one day after a rainstorm, a beautiful Inca princess (Nusta) came out of a rainbow. She had dark hair, almond- shaped eyes, prominent cheekbones, and spoke not only her native language, Quechua, but also Uru [language of Uru-Chipaya family; spoken today only by Chipayas near Oruro]. The chieftains and holy men who had been exiled from the village returned with her. Under this new influence, the villagers slowly regained their old traditions and religion. Quechua became the new language, and the people would have prospered even on their high and lands if the evil Huari had not sent four successive plagues to destroy the people and their lands. He sent a succession of creatures-a monstrous snake, a colossal frog, a gargantuan lizard and hordes of voracious ants. Out of the south first came the snake, crawling over the mountains and devastating land and livestock. The Urus summoned Nusta who hacked the enormous body in half and petrified it. From out of the north bounded a huge frog whose breath burned the lands. The villagers thought with horror of all the frogs they had sacrificed during their witchcraft seances, and they predicted catastrophe. But Nusta threw a rock at the frog's mouth and turned him to stone.

Then Huari sent a gigantic lizard to destroy the village with blows of its tail. The Urus' protectress chopped off its head and spread its body over the mountains. Huari reasoned that if Nusta could defeat enormous monsters, perhaps she would be overcome by swarms of tiny insects. In his last effort to defeat the Urus, Huari conjured up masses of ants which crawled out of the lizard's skull. At the edge of the village Nusta turned the insects into sand dunes.