Hombres in Chongos Bajo, Peru, 1987

"Chongos Bajo looks like a set for The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. It consists of a few streets of two storey adobe buildings, some painted, some not, arranged round a large dusty square. We are here because we have heard about the village’s unusual fiesta. There are no other tourists present. We are befriended by a couple of be-hatted old men, both already somewhat squiffy. They have no English, and our Spanish is poor, but they never stop smiling at us in their watery eyed way.

A group of men emerge from a building, doing a kind of conga. They are wearing jackets, jodhpurs and riding boots. More oddly, they have silk scarves tied under their hats, and are wearing ‘blackface’ masks. Naturally, each one is carrying a bullwhip. They perambulate around the square, and then disappear again, to great applause and shouting from the mostly pissed on pisco crowd. We ask our new friends what it is all about, and are told it is a ‘tradition.’ We learn nothing more."

Excerpt from my own unpublished short story, 'Baja! Baja!'
Extra photo: The local painter!