Excerpt From a 1998 Book About The History Of Afro-Bolivian Saya and The History Of Bolivian Caporal

 Edited by Azizi Powell

This is Part IV of a four part pancocojams series about Afro-Bolivian people and Afro-Bolivian music & dance. 

This post presents an excerpt from a chapter in a 1998 book about Afro-Bolivians. 

Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2022/01/information-videos-about-afro-bolivians.html for Part I of this pancocojams series. That post presents an excerpt from the Wikipedia page about Afro-Bolivians and a reprint of an online article about Afro-Bolivian history and culture. That post also showcases three videos about Afro-Bolivians.

Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2022/01/information-four-videos-of-afro.html for Part II of this pancocojams series. That post presents information about and four videos of the Afro-Bolivian Saya music and dance.

Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2022/01/online-comments-about-saya-caporales.html for Part III of this series. That post presents selected comments about the Afro-Bolivian Saya music and dance, and about Caporal and other Bolivian folk dances.

Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2022/01/blackface-in-bolivian-tundiki-and.html for Part V of this pancocojams series. That post showcases a video and presents excerpts and comments about blackface and blackfishing in Bolivian Tunkiki and Caporal dances. 

The content of this post is presented for historical, cultural, and educational purposes.

All copyrights remain with their owners. 

Thanks to Robert Whitney Templeman for his research and writing. Thanks also to the publisher of this video on YouTube.  

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BOOK EXCERPT
"We Are People of the  Yungas,  We Are the Saya Race" by Robert Whitney Templeman (426-444) in Blackness in Latin America and the Caribbean: Social Dynamics and Cultural Transformations, Vol 1, editors Norman E. Whitten, Jrand Arlene Torres, (Bloomington:Indiana University Press 1998)
[retrieved from Google Books)

[...]

430
....Following the Agrarian Reform of 1953, the first school house was built in Tocana.  When asked how Tocanas had learned history before teachers were sent and the first school house was built, Sr. Mnauel Barra (approximate age 71), the eldest and most prolific saya composer and musician told me “solamente saya”. (there was only saya). An elder Afro-Bolivian woman recalled a saya that black school children sang around this time

Me mandan a la escuela
 Me mandan a la escuela
Pero sin paper ni lapiz
con que voy a escribir?

They sent me to school
They sent me to school
But without paper or pencil
with what am I going to write?

On the surface this song seems to address the need for school supplies; however the underlying text may reveal confusion caused by a state-imposed logocen-

431
tric teaching method onto a people who maintained knowledge of their history through singing saya lyrics.

[…]

434
…As she recounts the story, high school students had not previously danced in the entrada (entrance parade) of their town’s annual festival.  The idea to dance in Coroico’s parade was suggested by Oscar Gisbert, secretary of Coroico’s high school.  Before this, the only representation of Bolivian black people to be found at regional festivals such as this were parodies like los negritos (pejorative: “the cute Blacks “) and tundiki, which comprises black faced mockeries of stereotyped colonial slaves performed by Aymara dance troupes (Templeman 1996).  Sra. Fortunata Medina de Perez, along with other Afro-Bolivians, says that to dance back then was to expose one’s cultural features to the enacted discourse of disparagement leading to mockery and ridicule.

Following the instructions of the village elders in Tocana, the students borrowed and built musical instruments they needed to dance saya. These included different tuned and sized drums, bamboo scrapers, and sets of bells worn around the legs of the guias, the lead dancers.  Sra. Fortunata Medina de Perez was led by her mother to what was the last remaining saya blouse, which one woman was preserving for her mother’s eventual burial.  It was a white blouse decorated with figures on the front and the back made from brightly colored fringes and lace.  Using this blouse as a pattern, the students contracted seamstresses in Coroico to sew 35 men’s and women’s saya dance uniforms.  The men wore similarly decorated white shirts with red-bordered slacks.  Women wore the white blouses along with red-bordered polleras (broad skirts commonly associated with Aymara market women in La Paz) and they carried sky-blue shawls draped over their arms.  Men learned to drum from Sr. Manuel Barra, one of the oldest saya compositores (composers), capitanes (captains), and guias (guides). Sra. Angelica Pinedo, the only able and willing saya dancer still living from Barra’s generation, taught the women saya dance steps and choreography. (Templeman 1996)..

On October 20, 1982, these high school juniors entered Corioco’s parade to publicly dance saya in honor of the Virgin de la Candelaria.  Furtunata Medina, one of the members of that high school class and one of the founders of the Movimiento Negro, told me that the people of Coroico cheered with delight when we entered the plaza dancing saya.. Also present. But less enthused, were Afro-Bolivians from the Yungas and La Paz who were shocked and embarrassed by the display.  Sixteen years later, one of these individuals explained to me that she felt ashamed to see her brothers and sisters dancing saya.. She, along with many others. felt that dancing saya was fueling the continued mockery of black people by indios (Indians, but with a definite pejorative connotation) and tundiki dance troups. (Templeman 1996).

Mendina danced again in her senior year, and after graduating, she moved to La Paz.  In the following years she, along with other migrants, returned to Coroico and continued dancing for the October 20 celebration and for what was becoming a reclamation of Afro-Bolivian culture and an acknowledgement of a new Afro-Bolivian identity.

[…]

440
The Struggle To Reclaim Saya

The most popular dance in Bolivia from 1994 through1996 was el caporal (the slave foreman), a dance that is accompanied by brass band music.  Bolivians commonly refer to this music as “saya” and its rhythm as “ritmo de saya” (saya rhythm). While caporales is not related musically (i.e. melodically or rhythmically) to the saya that Afro-Bolivians sing and dance, it is directly linked to the history of black people and their presence in Bolivia since the early sixteenth century. Caporal is a colorful, energetic, and syncopated, mestizo comparas (dance genre) based on the character of a black colonial slave overseer.  I estimate that between 1994 and 1996 more than one third of all dance troupes participating in regional and national fiestas across Bolivia were caporales.

Topping the recording industry charts and driven by a similar “ritmo de saya” (saya rhythm) that is danced by caporales, are “sayas” by professional folkloric bands such as Los Kjarkas and, as of 1996, Pacha, a spin-off of Los Kjarkas aimed at a more international audience (Fernando Torrico, personal communiation).  These professional folkloric groups typically adopt native instruments such as panpipes and other indigenous flutes, and they make their living by performing “authentic” Andean music in hotels and at tourist night clubs and by selling tapes and CDs.  This style of Andean folkloric music has joined the international market attracting consumers of world beat and new age music.

Like popular culture throughout Latin America, Bolivian popular culture has been dominated by these economic tides (i.e. world beat) and black music has become a commodity.  “Sayas” appeared on the last three Los Kjarkas CDs and then on the first Pacha CD, each one sounding more African than the previous” according to Los Kjarkas and later Pacha saya composer Freddie Torrico.  Torrico told me in a recorded interview that he had heard sayas for the first time from his grandmother, who used to sing them to him, and that they have the same ritmo de saya which the caporales now dance.  About a decade ago, Torrico was walking through the streets of La Paz when he heard Afro-Bolivians drumming and singing saya, and in it he felt the same ritmo de saya that his grandmother sang and that he now uses in his saya compositions.  Torrico believes that the saya rhythm of his popular compositions was brought to Bolivia by colonial slaves.

Page 441

When asked what the difference between saya and caporal is , Torrico told me refers to the ritmo negro and caporal is the dance.

Participation in these musical forms, whether by joining a caporal dance troupe or by purchasing Los Kjarkas and Pacha CD, works as an identity marker for young Bolivians interested in participating in world beat and the celebration of blackness throughout the diaspora.  Unfortunately, all of these forms of saya have undermined the grassroots political and educational efforts of the Movimiento. By 1995 Afro-Bolivians viewed these popular “sayas” as a direct assault on their culture and an obstacle to their consciousness-raising goals. By misrepresenting that which Afro-Bolivians present as “cultura netamento Africano” (purely African culture), they had dwarfed the Afro-Bolivian mission to demonstrate an African cultural heritage.

Fighting against tundikis (Aymara black - faced mockeries of stereotyped colonial slaves) and commercial folkloric groups like Los Kjarkas quickly became the raison d'etre for the Movimineto Negro.  As viewed by black activist, the distraction and misinformation caused by these “sayas” were disabilitating.  The Movimiento Negro, determined to reclaim the word “saya”, began calling their saya “la saya original” (the original saya), and la saya autentica (the authentic saya). “What these other groups play and dance is not saya”, they announce; “ it is caporal; it is tundiki “.  …

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