Inti Raymi

Inti Raymi is a pre-Colombian festival celebrating the sun and Mother Earth (Paccha Mama). People celebrate it in various ways throughout the Andes. Here, people come from the surrounding areas to eat, drink, and dance. Different communities will bring gifts of food (live chickens, castillos – triangles made from reeds with fruit and bread hanging from the cross pieces, and alcohol) as well as bands and dancers. The parties last all night and sometimes during the day for a two week period. Different communities celebrate on different days.

A contact recently told me about the history of Inti Raymi and I learned things that I had never heard before (despite coming to Ecuador for the first time in 2009 to study the festival’s economic impact). Apparently the festival signals that the sun is preparing for a long journey around the world, which is why they dance in circles. The celebration also helps prepare the Earth to grow new things and the dancing softens the Earth in preparation for growing new things. He told me that he did not know this information before but recently read it in a book.

I went to Peguche to make bread with some friends for the Inti Raymi festivities. Paola told me what to do so I could help her make the bread, before her sister Christina joined us. We made the bread in two giant circular plastic bins (I’ve seen the same style used for laundry in Peguche). 

We use both corn flour and wheat flour, although the smaller bin that I worked in, had higher concentration of the corn flour, and the larger bin had a higher concentration of wheat flour. It looked like they made their own corn flour, but purchased the wheat flour. 

Like the last time I made bread with the sisters, I was surprised by the volume/quantity required. In the smaller bin, I put 12 eggs, and in the larger bin, I put 18. I’ve made a lot of bread with my family, but I don’t think we’ve ever used a dozen eggs, even when we made mom’s infamous pumpkin bread that requires a stock pot because it yields so much! We also added (vegetable? Canola?) oil, lard, butter, water, salt (dissolved in water), and some kind of a mother/starter that had baking powder in it and had been already rising. We mixed the dough with our hands, constantly checking to see if it had the right consistency. Cristina had put in way too much water in the large bin, so they had to keep adding more flour to it. My bread was close to the right consistency, but still needed some more flour. We could tell by the way the bread stuck to our hands when mixing it, meaning it needed more flour. When the bread seemed like it was close to the right consistency, we would roll it in our hands in the shape of a small roll to see how it shaped and if it stuck to our hands at all. The process was very much based on experience and knowledge rather than an exact measurement. After the dough reached the right consistency, we covered it with cloths to keep bugs and pets out of it and left it to rise for what should've been an hour, but was much longer.

While the dough was rising, the sisters harvested, killed, and cleaned guinea pigs for Inti Raymi. I should note that guinea pigs (cuyes) are considered a delicacy in the Andes, and they are an important part of celebrations, along with chicha (a corn-based beer that is fermented from people’s spit). Yes, I’ve tried both. No, I’ll never eat them again. I’ll spare you the details of the process. Suffice it to say, I would not make a good pioneer or farmer, but I did get to play with their dog, a four month old black lab. When I asked the new dog's name, they told me it was Moreno. I figured it was because he had dark fur, but they told me no, he was named for Lenin Moreno, Ecuador's current president. I assumed that meant they must like the president a lot, so I asked them their opinion of him. It turned out to be the exact opposite! They do not like Lenin Moreno at all. I wonder if naming their dog after the president was their way of insulting the president.