Week of Stories and Legends

Last week was one of the highlights of the year in Warmayllu: the annual Week of Legends and Stories (Semana de la Leyenda y el Cuento), already a tradition in Cajamarca. This year its theme was cultural diversity and the rights of indigenous communities.

The week started off with a mask workshop. It took up two afternoons (Monday and Wednesday); the first day we moulded the masks, and on Wednesday when they had dried up we painted them.




On Tuesday, we showed a documentary (Buscando el azul) on an Amazonian indigenous community, followed by a debate. On Thursday, it was time for a conference on the laws and norms regarding the rights of the indigenous communities.

Friday morning saw us parading through the streets around the Plaza de Armas in honour of cultural diversity. The pupils from several schools in and around Cajamarca took part and we filled the streets.




The children from rural communities wore their traditional festive clothes, and I also dressed up in a similar outfit: a richly adorned blouse and a heavy woollen skirt with several layers of underskirts. My secondary school students looked very amused every time they saw their señorita profesora!




Straight after the parade, we celebrated the Festival of Live Culture where all the schoolchildren had the chance to sing, dance or act.






My students from Chamis secondary school acted out a play based on the recent conflict between the indigenous population and Peruvian police forces in Bagua, in the Amazon rainforest. Fortunately everyone knew how the story went, since not even those standing in the front row could hear the dialogue. For those who have not followed the reports on the events (which I doubt were front-page news in Europe), the Peruvian government recently passed laws in the spirit of the free trade agreement with the U.S. that make it a lot easier for multinational corporations to exploit Peru's natural resources. The indigenous communities are understandably concerned that mining and oil-extraction will endanger their livelihoods and destroy the rainforest they depend on for their very survival. Therefore, on the first week of June Bagua witnessed a violent conflict in which hundreds of indigenous demonstrators and policemen were killed.

On Saturday, the Week of Legends and Stories ended with a fair in which schools displayed their recent activities and art projects. To gather funds for the schools, the pupils (and their mothers) sold the fruits of baking, weaving and cooking workshops.