The tinku dance as “choreopolitical” action in street protests in Santiago de Chile

Ignacia Cortés-Rojas

Résumé | Index | Plan | Texte | Notes | Citation | Auteur | a | A

Résumés   

Index   

Index de mots-clés : Danses andines, Danses boliviennes, Manifestations sociales, Chili, Tinku, Choreopolitical.
Index by keyword : Andean dances, Bolivian dances, Social demonstrations, Chile, Tinku, Choreopolitics.

Plan   

1. Introduction

1For at least three decades, the performance genres from the musical traditions of the Aymara and Quechua peoples and Bolivian neo-folklore have been present during social protests or marches in Santiago de Chile1. One of the dances that features most frequently in social demonstrations is the “tinku”, a term derived from the Quechua word for “encounter”. This dance has become popular in street protests and is performed by men, women, non-binary, and indigenous and non-indigenous dancers. Participants are also of different ages, professions, and social positions, which provides a sense of political vindication for the sectors who are marginalized within Chilean institutional politics.

2Although the tinku performed in Santiago retains many of the visual, sonorous, and choreographic aesthetics of the Bolivian folkloric tinku, which was created by university students from the middle classes in Bolvia during the 1980s, it also differs from it, thereby producing a new local significance. These changes can be observed predominantly in terms of the meanings that dancers construct around the practice of the tinku within the context of marches and political commemorations, which suggests that the Santiago tinku does not faithfully reproduce the folkloric sense of the dance. In contemporary Bolivia, the “folkloric tinku”, as I shall now refer to this practice, is mainly performed by young people during the celebrations of large folkloric entrances and urban carnivals. In these events, groups of dancers compete for recognition among numerous troupes from different musical-choreographic genres, delivering striking performances typical of the Aymara-urban or “Chola” aesthetics, whose main attribute is decorative excess2. This case study shows how the dancers in Santiago produce a local adaptation of the tinku by attributing to it a sense of rebellion, communicated through clothing, shouts, and movement during street protests. In short, the performance of the “tinkus”, as dancers in Santiago call themselves, aims to occupy the public space through a collective dance that evokes strength and political commitment.

3Among the movements that dancers reproduce from the folkoric tinku is the simulation of kicks and fist blows; the execution of acrobatic turns and jumps; the sustained march through space to the rhythm of the the bass drum and the cymbals of the brass bands that accompany the dancers; and, finally, the adoption of a defiant bodily attitude of simultaneous combat and joy3. The folkloric tinku is a recreation of a physical confrontation ritual performed through music and dance by the indigenous communities of northern Potosí during the Cruz de Mayo (May Crosses Festival) at the beginning of May. In its original indigenous context, the tinku is used to reestablish equilibrium between two communities or “ayllus” through individual and collective hand-to-hand combat between opponents of similar conditions. This ritual functions as a catalyst for social conflicts within the communities, through what could be recognized as an exercise of “violent harmony”4, i.e., explicit and balanced violence that aims to establish harmonious relations or, at least, reach an agreement5. The ritual of the tinku is preceded by a traditional dance in which “(…) the different groups usually march towards the place of encounter to the rhythm of the julajula (ceremonial music played with Andean aerophones in hocket-style melodic alternation, in pairs of 4- and 3-cane flutes, called respectively arca and ira). Wayños are also interpreted with charangos and guitarrones”6.

4Based on the aesthetics of the ritual tinku, the folkloric tinku aimed to develop a new form of the popular street dances performed at urban carnivals in Bolivia7. According to Eveline Sigl, the folkloric tinku, or “urban tinku” (tinku urbano), in her terms, is a recent mestizo expression that conveys an idealized and even exotic vision of indigenous cultural practices8. This thesis is shared by Thomas Abercrombie, who states that, through the dancers’ movements and clothing, the folkoric tinkus performed at carnivals were seen by urban elites as “exotic indicators of violent savagery” and, consequently, used to caricature rural indigenous peasants9. Beyond these critical views, I consider that the folkloric tinku should not be reduced to a performance of contempt or exoticization of the indigenous peoples since it brings together cultural elements of the ritual tinku – such as body movements, clothing, and music – and places them in dialogue with other national and global cultural codes. In doing so, this musical-choreographic repertoire has become a widespread creative practice valued in Bolivia and other countries, particularly Chile, Peru, and Argentina.

5In Santiago, the tinku performed by non-professional dance collectives acquires an explicit political meaning through its inclusion in demonstrations that advocate for social demands and criticise the neoliberal model in Chile. The tinku is part of a larger circuit of Andean performances in Santiago called the “movimiento andino” (Andean movement). This expression alludes to the crossing of political activism with forms of artistic expression, the majority of which are from Bolivian neo-folklore. In Santiago, these political performances have been observed in the streets for at least three decades10. The causes supported by these groups of dancers include ending the violence exercised by large landowners and the Chilean State in the Wallmapu, the historic territory of the Mapuche people, the cessation of extracting natural resources by private and foreign companies, such as mega-mining, defending human rights, advocating on the behalf of those who disappeared during the 1973 civil-military dictatorship, and protecting free public education. The varied nature of these causes means the tinku collectives actively participate in many demonstrations during a given year, with different social organizations frequently requesting their presence.

6The tinku dance acquires political meaning in Santiago through the collective endeavour of creating choreographies in the streets through a counter-hegemonic praxis that is visible in their slogans, shouts, costumes, and forms of body movement. In this article, I focus on the performative event of the “tinkunazo”11, the collective practice of the tinku dance that emerged in Santiago in approximately 2006. Tinkunazo refers to a particular interpretation of the tinku, where different dance collectives share common choreographic knowledge and prepare to take to the streets, thus exercising a “choreopolitical” activity. Choreopolitics is a concept developed by André Lepecki to connote bodily actions, including dance, that are performed in public spaces as political action.

7My hypothesis is that the tinku during instances of tinkunazo becomes a rupturist form of collective action in social demonstrations by breaking with the martial tone adopted through the participation of militant and associated groups and representing a rare turn toward indigenous aesthetics, even though artistic expression has ostensibly been incorporated into protests since the student movement of 201112. This rupture comes mainly from the burst of Andean colors and aesthetics, which breaks with Chile’s traditional forms of protest that tend to be sombre affairs, whether physical violence is present or not. This sense of rupture can also be observed in the intense corporal confrontation gestures and choreographic movements. Thus, whilst this could be interpreted as a ritual battle due to its historical roots, these demonstrations have other objectives, such as to experience a collective feeling of strength and to pose a challenge, albeit symbolically, to the police contingents.

8This article begins a brief review of scholarship dedicated to the phenomenon of the Santiago tinku to investigate how this practice is understood and to identify areas that have not yet been explored. Next, I suggest some conceptual tools to read the tinku performance and its corporal and sonorous dimensions through the lens of André Lepecki’s concepts of choreopolitics and choreopolice and Brandon LaBelle’s notion of sonic agency. Finally, from a transdisciplinary perspective, I analyze a heterogeneous corpus composed of interviews with dancers and ex-dancers; informal, uncatalogued audiovisual recordings and the photographic and audiovisual recordings that I collected for this research available on social media (Facebook and YouTube)13; and my own experience of marches from the perspective of my different roles as researcher, demonstrator, and dancer. As part of the Andean circuit in Santiago, I have participated in many protest days, popular carnivals, and Andean festivities, including the Fiesta de la Cruz de la Chakana (Chakana Festival)14. The embodied knowledge of the dances and music performed allows me to recognize motifs, variations, and, in general, the history of this urban dance practice that for at least three decades has been inscribed, in the words of Michel Serres, in the “muscles and bones” of its dancers15. Together, these materials portray the various political junctures in the country between 2011 and 2021. Without in-depth reference to each socio-historical context, I propose a diachronic look to understand the Santiago tinku and, more specifically, the tinkunazo as a form of contentious artistic action.

2. Research on the phenomenon of the Santiago tinku

9In spite of the tinku’s presence for over fifteen years during social unrest, little scholarship is dedicated to the dance. Nevertheless, the works of Francisca Fernández and Javiera Benavente have addressed the political role of the tinku in Santiago. Across multiple works, Francisca Fernández, an anthropologist, stresses the renegade nature of these practices. According to Fernández, the tinku becomes a device of social struggle in citizen protests16. For instance, she identifies that the musical repertoire expresses political positions linked to the Mapuche cause, defending nature, and supporting cases of young anarchists subject to the antiterrorist law, among others. These positions not only seek to convey a sense of “social praise” or “given status”, but they also highlight the tinku’s activist edge as collective political action that moves away from the traditional ways of exercising citizenship, i.e., electoral participation17. Francisca Fernández and Roberto Fernández thus state that dancers from organized groups articulate “diverse subject positions, such as indigenous, Andean, mestizo, feminist, and urban, around a political use of identity as a possibility of influencing public affairs from the space of dance itself”18.

10Benavente reflects on the transformations of the folkloric tinku as it migrates from its original context to Santiago’s social demonstrations. She explores the mutations that the tinku undergoes from being a Bolivian folk dance performed mainly at carnivals within the Catholic festival calendar (e.g., the Virgen del Socavón, Oruro) to being performed in Chile’s social protest context19. By eliding its association with Catholism, the dance is desacralized, and its indigenous component as a rite still performed in the Bolivian high Andean communities is recognised. In being appropriated by the foreign culture of urban Santiago, the dance acquires new meanings whilst, at the same time, favouring its ritual origins over its folkloric representation, from which it proposes visually and sonic aesthetic transformations, thereby valuing the transculturation of this practice.

11Furthermore, Benavente analyzes the incorporation of foreign elements, such as adding “patches”, imported directly from the local punk and metal subcultures, that express slogans or political symbols to traditional costumes (see examples 1 and 2), most of which were acquired from folkloric clothing workshops in La Paz, Bolivia. In the folkloric tinku, women wear a long dress below the knee, sashes and colored aguayos, a hat decorated with feathers, mirrors and colored ribbons that fall over the face of the dancers, a rebozo (similar to a shawl or blanket) that covers the hair, and sandals (ojotas). As for men, they wear brightly coloured embroidered jackets, cloth or wool trousers, legwraps, and ojotas. On their heads, they wear a chullo or wool cap with earflaps and a montera or helmet, which is constantly hit against the ground as an act of strength and virility during the performance. In Santiago, the dancers have opted to simplify their wardrobe by wearing sneakers and short-sleeved black T-shirts, and women have adopted trousers to offer greater freedom of movement.

12Example 1 shows a dancer wearing a screen-printed patch on her back featuring the image from the emblematic poster that accompanied the fiftieth anniversary commemorations of the 1973 coup d’état. The image features the silhouettes of a man and a woman alongside the phrase “¿Dónde están?” (Where are they?) in allusion to the detainees who disappeared under the civil-military dictatorship. Example 2 shows a screen-printed patch with a female face covered by a handkerchief that evokes the Wiphala, the flag of the Andean people, and an Indianist symbol. This accessory was worn for the first time during the Chakana festival celebrations in 2010 by many of the Santiago tinku ensembles. The political content of the patch alludes to the demands of the Mapuche and Andean peoples, embodied in two iconographic elements found at the two upper corners: the kultrun (a Mapuche ritual drum) and the chakana (the Andean stepped cross), which directly references the constellation of the Southern Cross.

Example 1 : Tinku dancer at aprotest commemorating the 50th anniversary of the coup d’état, outside the National Stadium, Santiago, Chile. Photo by the author, 11 September 2023.

Example 2: “Tierra, cultura, justicia y libertad” Land, culture, justice, and freedom” (Land, justice, culture and freedom) patch designed by tinku dancers to celebrate the Chakana festival in 2010 –personal file–.

13Through these visual elements, Benavente concludes, like Francisca Fernández, that the political dimension of the tinku becomes explicit due to the incorporation of these elements since they “allude to the social demands that the tinku's practitioners are linked to”20. Quoting Jacques Rancière, Benavente considers these patches as aesthetic objects in movement that “exercise their political power [...] by allowing the subjectivization of the non-told”21. Thus, it can be argued that the costume worn by the tinkus in Santiago is a resource of political significance because it exposes a variegated or “ch’ixi” (mestizo) identity22 through the interweaving of Andean clothing and screen-printed fabric patches with political messages. In this sense, I interpret that the dress of the tinku dancers as exhibiting the possibility of a cultural practice that challenges the principles of normative citizenship to build a sense of alternative community that does not conform to hegemonic Chilean subjectivity23.

14Whenever research is undertaken on traditional dances and their re-creations, the question of folklore arises, as it does in the works cited. Whilst there is no doubt that the Santiago tinku is based on a Bolivian folkloric dance, we can consider that it originates as an act that aestheticizes an other for constructing a national identity, as folklore effectively does, and is then applied to the context of the Chilean capital. The Santiago tinku, especially in the tinkunazo, thus emerges as a repertoire of popular protest or political performance, as a physical exercise that takes on the meaning of the struggles and identity symbols of marginalized sectors of the population, in this case, the indigenous communities of the Andes. In other words, the Santiago tinku is experienced as a form of political activism as the dancers and musicians’ bodies adopt a critical stance in the face of processes that affect public and collective life in society24. The original folkloric motivations of the Bolivian tinku are thus eschewed.

15My analysis focuses on the physical and sonorous dimension of the tinkunazo, and, more specifically, on the dancers' bodies in movement, an aspect that has not yet been analyzed in depth. My objective is to observe how they move during the marches, their place within them, and how they react to a context marked by violence, particularly exerted by the police forces. For this reason, my primary examples are demonstrations where police officers intervened, including the commemoration of the coup d’état, the Mapuche march held on annually around October 12, and the days of mobilization following the Estallido Social (literally “social outburst”) from October 2019 onwards. Each of these examples offer the opportunity to reflect on the political uses of dance. Unlike other public performances where Andean troupes participate (neighborhood carnivals, religious festivities, among others), these demonstrations correspond to politically sensitive dates as they represent latent social conflicts in Chile.

16Returning to the explicitly political dimension of the tinku, I am interested in investigating how the dancers simultaneously use and configure the urban space. I consider their resistance to the disciplinary control and repressive technologies employed by the police force, the Carabineros de Chile, such as tear gas bombs, water cannons, and, more frequently after the Estallido Social, pellets fired at demonstrators. To do so, I employ a conceptual framework that views the role of dance as a political act, capable of transgressing, even if only for a few hours, the usual rules of circulation or movement in the city.

3. A conceptual approach to dance as political action: choreopolitics and choreopolice

17Two useful concepts for analyzing the tinku in social demonstrations from the corporal dimension are choreopolitics and choreopolice, as developed by Lepecki. Since the 1970s, along with the performative turn in the arts and humanities, a current within cultural studies addressing dance’s political dimension has begun to take shape. Dance studies, which emerged as a discipline no more than twenty-five years ago, understands dance as relating to culture, identity, subjectivities, and social conflicts in their multiple contexts and aesthetic forms.

18In his understanding of dance as concerning the political, Lepecki draws on contemporary philosophy that assumes the body as one of its main objects of study. Among his theoretical references are the contributions of Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, and Felix Guattari. From Lepecki’s perspective, these thinkers established a philosophy that provides concepts which allow for “a political reframing of the body” by understanding “(…) the body not as a self-contained and closed entity but as an open and dynamic system of exchange, constantly producing modes of subjection and control, as well as of resistance and becomings”25. Lepecki develops the concept of choreopolitics, a neologism composed of the Greek roots “choros” (dance) and “polis” (city or citizenship). This concept allows us to understand the practice of dance movement in public spaces as an experience of political appearance. This appearance is characterized by imposing other movements and forms of using public space, which, according to the author, would make it possible to escape the regulated movement or circulation set, especially in cities26. In short, it is about observing the political function of dance and, more broadly, of all the demonstrators who defy the rules of the road and intervene in the flow of movement in the city. Lepecki emphasizes that choreopolitics is based on choreographic planning since the political requires a preset plan or, in the words of Deleuze and Guattari, a program defined as “the motor of experimentation”27. This planning implies an individual and collective effort on the part of its performers, as it needs to rely on a relationship with others to come into existence collectively. In this way, choreopolitics is understood as a community practice that, once it comes to life, must insist on its permanence or, in Lepecki’s words, it “(...) has to be learned, sustained, and experimented with. Again and again. Lest it disappears from the world”28.

19As a concept that emerges from dance studies and performance studies, choreopolitics allows us to understand the Santiago tinku beyond its possible interpretation as a mere artistic resource that animates a march or as a simple practice to attract attention29. Instead, choreopolitics invites us to view these performative practices as political exercises of social provocation and community emergence. According to Diana Taylor, these performances are characterized as “a political act almost by definition, although the political is understood more as a posture of rupture and defiance than as an ideological or dogmatic position”30. On a corporal level, this provocation is manifested, for example, in the insistence of male and female dancers to maintain their practice even though the contingents of police forces in the streets press for their dispersion across a given space and their separation as a collective bloc. For Lepecki, the free movement of dancers – and by extension, of demonstrators – escapes the control embodied in the figure or function of the police, which this author calls choreopolicing, a concept strongly influenced by Rancière's approaches to the notions of the political and the police developed in Disagreement: Politics and Philosophy31. Lepecki understands choreopolicing as a function of power wholly opposed to the political, that is, a blocking force that reduces bodies to a controlled displacement through public space and that, in its maximum expression of coercion, demands the dispersion of subjects. In other words, choreopolicing also has as its primary objective the displacement across a given space. This should be considered a “counter-movement” because “its main interest is movement, but it aims to promote a movement that, while moving, veers away from freedom”32.

20According to Lepecki, it is possible to explicitly recognize the relationship between choreopolitics and choreopolice in instances of social protest. It is in this context that the dispute for public space and displacement between two differentiated sectors, police officers and demonstrators, becomes explicit. For this reason, Lepecki suggests it is vital to analyze how the demonstrators and the police move to investigate what he identifies as a choreographic movement that fluctuates between control and freedom. A difficult issue to unpick, which Lepecki warns about, is the introjection of police power in society, which can be recognized even at a corporal level. In this regard, he points out that the police, as a piece of abstract machinery, generate a self-regulated mode of movement in societies because:

(…) even without a cop in sight, a daily choreography of conformity emerges, even within so-called free or open societies. Because, even in those societies, the possibility of imagining a movement towards freedom is foreclosed from the start by

a kind of impoverishment of choreographic imagination; movements can only take place in spaces preassigned for “proper” circulation. Choreography is introjected as a policed dance of quotidian consensus33.

21Although Lepecki’s position may seem somewhat deterministic since there would be no escape from the choreonormated society, for him, the figures of demonstrators and, in particular, of dancers destabilizes the police kinetics as long as they develop movement with a political intention. According to Lepecki, it is through bodies moving towards freedom that they break with regulated circulation. They generate spaces of subversion and, simultaneously, configure new patterns of political movement by going against the police in its double meaning: as an institution and as an introjected function of power.

22In addition, street dances constitute a form of artistic and ideological resistance that, by modifying the habitual or normative patterns of behavior, constructs new forms of occupying social space. This can be observed in the interventions of dance and street theatre collectives in Santiago, which, according to Adeline Maxwell, subverts the daily movement procedures in the city and challenges, through their appearance, the norms restricting freedom of expression in the streets34. Moreover, it is necessary to recognize the importance of sound in dance practice. In this regard, the tinku, especially in its collective and disruptive modality through the tinkunazo, can be understood using the notion of “sonic agency”, developed by Brandon LaBelle, to describe how sound and active listening can foster relationships between people with emancipatory purposes. According to LaBelle, “sound operates as a generative medium for keeping open the project of a new social body”35. Applied to the case of the tinku, LaBelle’s notion makes sense, especially because when brass bands accompany the dancers, they experience an intense feeling of community. Live music can reverse the extreme physical fatigue the dancers feel when marching in the streets, and the music even generates a kind of force field that protects all who are part of the tinkunazo36.

23The sound dimension of the tinku is identifiable in the sounds produced by the movement of the dancers, as well as the chants and shouts they enunciate during their performance. Examples include the monteras (helmets that men wear) hitting the ground, the shouts, the energetic stamping of feet on the tarmac, and the applause of the dancers that accentuates the rhythm of the drums. Moreover, the sonic dimension also includes the performance of the brass bands and the musical repertoire they interpret. From my experience as a dancer, I notice how live music affects the bodies of the performers or tinkus who experience emotions related to joy, strength, and community. This emotion is also associated with the volume of sound that the brass band reaches: the more musicians there are, the louder their music. The tinku dancers therefore will experience a strong sense of collectivity and strength while appearing in the streets. In short, from this theoretical approach, the tinkunazo in the context of the marches in the capital should be considered a musical-choreographic performance of dissent, a tactic of corporal and sonorous enunciation that represents choreopolitics. Through the dancer’s presence, they oppose the regulated circulation, even when at risk of violence from Carabineros or being criticized by those who accept the usual circulation conditions in the city.

4. The tinkunazo as a choreopolitical expression in street marches

24The expression tinkunazo is used by musicians, dancers, and tinku dancers, most of whom are not of Quechua or Aymara descent, to refer mainly to the performance of the folkloric tinku in marches in Santiago by a group of dancers who are not necessarily part of the same collective or group. Dancers from all the groups share common choreographic knowledge. The choreographies performed are part of a collective creative process and were developed by the groups in the context of the Chakana festival. For this particular celebration, each group brings, as an offering to Pachamama37, a choreography that all the groups rehearse before participating in the festival. The dancers learn the choreographies, also called “steps”, during in-person rehearsals and practice them at collective events that bring together many participants. Dancers can also access the choreographies virtually, rehearsing with video tutorials that each group uploads to YouTube38. Having developed this shared choreographic knowledge, the dancers can identify the right moves during the tinkunazos and organize themselves as a cohesive dance body. The choreographies are named after the collective that created them and are constantly shouted out during the demonstration. Examples such as “Tinkus Legua”, “Yuriña”, and “Uta masi” reveal a genealogy of the Santiago tinku based on the choreographic motifs and their respective collectives. By naming their choreographies, the tinkus use their bodies to recognise groups that have contributed to the consolidation of this practice and even remember those groups that have since disappeared.

25This way of remembering and evoking collectives through their choreographies can be seen in line with Rebecca Schneider’s thesis on the persistence of performance and the idea of the body as an archive, originally proposed by Lepecki39. Both researchers recognize that bodily action can produce knowledge and offer other forms of memory and remembrance, different from those generated in official history as evidenced in documents. Schneider argues that marginalized groups or minorities, who are often absent from official narratives, construct their memories or “counter-memories” through performances, rituals, oral histories, and other devices. Through these practices, which have traditionally been considered “primitive, popular, folkloric, naïve”40, the memories of populations overlooked by the dominant culture are kept alive, thus ensuring that they do not disappear.

26In the tinkunazo, the guides, who are in charge of directing the dance and defining the rhythm adopted throughout the march, generally identify the names and choreographic movements. They shout them out to help their peers recognize the right choreography. With this, the dancers can anticipate the movements they will need to execute. It allows them to mentally prepare for the choreographies. When the call is made, the dancers wait attentively for the guides’ signal to begin synchronized movement. Synchronization as an aesthetic concern on the part of the dancers is related more to the search for an effect of corporal synchrony than to correctly executing the choreographies. This objective strengthens one of the characteristics that Lepecki identifies as part of choreopolitics: its collective vocation. This is achieved, for example, with simple motifs that make it possible to present the image of a cohesive body of dancers, such as the zigzagging advance, where participants are placed in a single undulating row41. In other words, the tinkus, through their movements, expose a bodily consciousness that aims to configure a large collective body, which is a necessary condition when assessing whether a physical practice can be recognized as choreopolitical. As Lepecki stresses, choreopolitics does not relate to individual activity since personal protest practices generally tend to disappear more quickly, becoming unique events that can persist in the collective memory only due to their emotional charge 42.

27Tinkunazos do not require rehearsal prior to marches because the dancers have already learned the choreographies within their individual collectives. However, considering that the presence of a large dance troupe is more important than a thorough knowledge of the choreographies, the marches also become instances of practice and learning since, in addition to learning in situ, the dancers acquire more memorable experience when performing in the space of the social demonstrations. This is evident, for example, in the formation of the dancers: at the front of the troupe are those who perform best at executing the steps, while at the back are those who do not know the choreographies well, but who bring enthusiasm and energy to the group, encouraging their peers. The role of the guide is central as they decide which figures will be performed, at what moment, and how they will be combined with “loose” or forward steps. The latter is essential to maintain a fluid flow of traffic in the march and evade the Carabineros’ control, an issue that, as one of the ex-dancers interviewed for this study recalls, they do not consistently achieve.

28The Santiago tinku has more than twenty choreographies, but not all are performed with the same frequency. There is a marked preference for the most striking choreographies in the repertoire, such as those that represent a greater degree of complexity or those that, are used to provoke police forces through their body gestures. For example, choreographies that simulate fist blows and kicks, such as the one performed by the Yuriña group,43 which, according to Giovanni Salinas, a social work technician and tinku dancer for the past fifteen years, is one of the “insignia steps of the fight”44. This choreographic motif is characterized by stopping dancers' movement through the public space, combining forward and backward steps. The choreography begins with a provocative gesture accompanied by some verbal expressions acting as a call for attention, saying, “ven, ven, ven” (come, come, come). By moving their arms, the tinkus demand spectators come closer and, immediately afterward, they make fist blows by shouting, “toma, toma, toma” (take, take, take). In addition, the step incorporates gestures and movements that communicate physical fatigue: the dancers pass their hands across their foreheads as if wiping away the sweat. In the context of the 2018 Mapuche march, the choreography was directed toward the police officers stationed at the corners of the route.

29The video “Tinkunazo en Marcha Mapuche” shows this choreography being performed at the intersection of Avenida Libertador Bernardo O'Higgins and Enrique Mac Iver Street. At this corner, the tinkus resisted the advance and obstructed the movement of the marchers. This contrasts with the more fluid movement of other demonstrators, who avoid the group of dancers. In addition, the recording shows the discomfort of one march organizer, who addresses the tinku group with a megaphone to encourage them to move forward. However, the tinkus march at their own pace, creating a disruptive event. This delay meant the dancers were in the direct line of fire when the Carabineros threw tear gas. These gases produce sensations of asphyxiation and, when combined with the water from the cannons, burning skin. The physical effects of this type of weaponry include uncontrollable coughing, momentary blindness, and disorientation, so the collective action of the tinkus blocking the march is essential to help those most affected.

30In my field research, I felt it was pertinent to ask why tinku dancers decide to expose themselves to the police force. Compared to other dance groups, they are the only ones who repeatedly disrupt the march's movement. Francisca Michel, a dancer and anthropologist, argues that this could be due to the tinku’s rhythm, which she perceives as “a powerful force that breaks with the other rhythms and dances that are more harmonious or that are more pleasing to the ear and the eye [...] because you present yourself to dance with an attitude that combines celebration and struggle”45. According to Giovanni, the Santiago tinku has always had political connotations, being closer to protest than to carnival as an institutionalized act in Andean nations. Recalling the Santiago tinku's beginnings, Giovanni declares that the space of the street has always been a site of political struggle for public use, especially in the La Legua neighbourhood46 (commune of San Joaquín), where he has lived since childhood. There, this Bolivian musical-choreographic repertoire has always marked political action, whereas other Andean dance and music genres, such as Caporal or Morenada, have been incorporated during the last five years:

In the Andean world there are now caporal fraternities, morenadas. The tinku groups [in comparison to those fraternities] are smaller, but when I was a kid, I never saw caporal or morenada groups in the street [...] the tinku has always had the 'thing' of getting you out into the street47.

31From Francisca and Giovanni’s testimonies, it is possible to recognize their fascination as they recall their first encounter with this dance. Their excitement becomes apparent as they refer explicitly to the notion of energy associated with the movement of bodies and the use of public space by turning it into a stage for appearances. Moreover, the dancers allude to the fact that through the tinku they embody the defiant attitudes that animate the protest days. Among these, the simulation of fist blows and the subsequent blocking of the face with the forearm can be identified as a possible response to a strike from another person. By demonstrating their strength and high physical resistance, dancers experience the tinkunazo’s emotions and bodily sensations, which allow them to counteract the fear of external threats, specifically police contingents who strongly repress social demonstrations in Santiago. Through their choreographies, the demonstrators seek to create tension within the space of the street by provoking their recognized opponents while also moderating their reactions. By avoiding taking their actions too far, they minimize the potential bodily harm to which they are exposed48.

32Another way that the tinkunazo in Santiago deals with the threat of force is by incorporating capuchas (hoods) as part of the costumes. Hoods began being worn more frequently by the tinkus during the student mobilizations in 2011, which took place throughout the country. This mobilization was characterized by the deployment of a wide range of artistic expressions and, at the same time, of an expression of violence that could be recognized as a kind of ritual in university spaces where the hood, the barricade, and stones appear as repertoires of contentious action49. For similar symbolic reasons, some dancers used red scarves or T-shirts to cover their faces, as shown in Example 3, at the march organized by relatives of the disappeared on 11 September 2012, Whilst red is often associated with left-wing politics, it also suggests blood. The red worn at the march was linked to those murdered during the dictatorship. The route of the march acquires greater meaning since the culminating point of the march was in Patio 29 of the General Cemetery of Santiago, where victims of the dictator Augusto Pinochet's regime were clandestinely buried. Lastly, covering one’s face with a scarf is also a gesture of resistance by conferring anonymity to male and female dancers. This aspect has been constantly condemned in speeches of political authorities when reproaching “vandalism acts” of demonstrators, either for those who demonstrate peacefully or those who resort to violent repertoires (e.g. throwing stones at the Carabineros Special Forces and destruction of public and private spaces). The criticism is based on the idea that the anonymous-covered face allows demonstrators to act with impunity.

Example 3. “Hooded” tinku dancers. Commemorative march of 11 September 2012. Photograph by Miguel Hidalgo Espinoza.

33One of the dancers I interviewed, Sandra Ramírez, a member of the Quillahuaira Collective, a group in which I participated for five years, referred to the risk involved in dancing the tinku at the marches. Sandra said that police repression is deliberately directed against the groups of dancers and recalled how her colleagues had been arrested at various marches for dancing. Sandra has seen her fellow dancers “being held prisoner” and being “beaten by the police” even during their arrests 50. In addition, Sandra mentioned the tinku costume is an element already identified by the Carabineros in Santiago, assigning them a negative connotation of disruption during periods of unrest. The costumes of tinku dancers in Santiago has varied over time. Sometimes the characteristic folkloric dress described earlier is not worn. Lately, there has been an incorporation of relatively urban black clothing accompanied by a few elements that allow for a visual identification of the dance with Andean aesthetics, such as the aguayo, the tongo (hat), and the colorful sashes. The aesthetics of the Santiago tinku is interpreted by both demonstrators and police forces as a counter-hegemonic symbol.

34The tinku in Santiago can also be linked to other countercultural scenes and aesthetics. According to Ignacio Meza Martínez, a tattoo artist, the tinku represents the “most hardcore Andean dance”51 since its gestures and movements resemble physical movements that feature in hardcore punk music recitals or tokatas. An example is the pogo, a dance that “is characterized by jumps and intense body-to-body contact, to the rhythm of the music”52, which, in some cases, incites confrontation. The similarity between the pogo and the tinku can be read in the words of the ex-dancer: “you could get into combos, and let your anger out with the dance”53. However, as Ignacio points out, the Santiago tinku cannot simply be interpreted in line with the movements and gestures of the countercultural music scene. Instead, the tinku’s origins as a ritual of confrontation between partialities, where violence is explicit, must also be recognized. Nancy M. Sánchez similarly argues that tinku dancers:

(…) perceive the genre as being simultaneously popular, traditional, and folkloric. This is because their symbolic content evokes the local traditions of Potosí while at the same time, due to its energetic nature, it generates experiences of physical contact (‘pogoing’, the act of jumping and pushing each other while dancing) similar to those that occur in rock communities54.

35Ignacio recognizes the importance of violence or gestures that evoke it in the performance of the tinku at marches:

You could not confront the police directly because you were unarmed, but, at least by dancing, you felt that you were provoking them, that you were making their job more difficult and, for that reason, many of us were arrested and formally charged for disorderly conduct on the public highway when we were only demonstrating55.

36In a few words, Ignacio summarizes that the Santiago tinku “becomes politicized; it stops being just a folkloric dance and assumes a discourse contrary to peace”. According to him, “[the tinkus] were not asking for peace when we were marching against the application of the Antiterrorist Law to the Mapuche and the kids [youths] of the Bomb Case”56. His testimony suggests that performing the tinku can oppose a notion of civil obedience, which accepts the control of the subjects through a policed circulation.

37 Another key characteristic of the tinkunazo is the joy the dancers experience in the collective dance, present even in the marches where participants were physically exposed to excessive police action. This is important to highlight since it shows that political militancy through dance can be joyful despite the risk or collective pain perceived on days commemorating episodes of state violence in Chile. The joy, moreover, is not only experienced by those who embody the tinkunazo, but it also manages to sweep up those who witness it. I recorded the public’s emotions when watching the tinkunazo outside the National Stadium during the events commemorating the 50th anniversary of the military coup57. In this video, it is possible to observe the group of dancers and musicians of the tinkuzano entering the dressing room area of the stadium. Through the tinkunazo, this area, used during the first months after the coup d'état to torture detainees, became a place of memory but also of hope and life. Towards the end of the recording (6:30 onwards), the clear joy generated by musicians and dancers impacts the other demonstrators, who are encouraging with applauses and shouts.

38In summary, following Lepecki's approach, choreopolitical acts are characterized by the destructuring and questioning of the occupation of public spaces that accept the movement imposed by the choreopolice. Thus, they constitute, in a certain way, an act of physical disobedience that leads to the emergence of political subjects. Lepecki interprets the function of the dancer in line with the experience of devotional practice, not as a religious adherence but as a political affirmation. Hence, “the choreographic reveals itself to be that which produces an agent, that which produces an effect, and that which reminds us that the political, to come into the world, requires commitment, engagement, persistence, insistence, and daring”58.

5. The musical repertoire of the tinkunazo as sonic agency

(…) mi canto es de los andamios

para alcanzar las estrellas,

que el canto tiene sentido

cuando palpita en las venas59

39The sound dimension cannot be excluded from an analysis of the practice of the tinkunazo60. As I have already noted, the agency of the brass bands is fundamental to triggering the emotions that contribute to the dance since the tinkunazo must be understood as a performative event where a reciprocal relationship between musicians and dancers occurs. In other words, the musicians encourage the dancers, while the dancers return their energy to the musicians so that they will play louder. This relationship is sustained, in turn, because many of the musicians who make up the politically engaged brass bands have also been dancers at some point in their careers on the Andean circuit in the capital. An explicit difference can be observed between the brass bands that attend social demonstrations and those that do not61. One of the bands that best represents this committed and communitarian sense of musical endeavor is the Flor de Bronces Band, who formed in 2010 in Santiago. This can be evidenced in the following discussion of the Flor de Bronces’ performance to commemorate the second anniversary of the Chilean social revolt.

40In 2021, the Flor de Bronces Band decided to use their social networks to call for a tinkunazo to commemorate the social uprising. The digital poster (Example 4) shows that the march began at Irarrázaval and General Bustamante streets in the Santiago Centro district. The musicians and dancers met at the intersection with Avenida Vicuña Mackenna, then headed north along Vicuña Mackenna towards the renamed Plaza Dignidad: the epicenter of mobilizations in the capital.

Example 4. Digital Poster “Tinkunazo 2 years after the revolt”. Retrieved from Flor de Bronces Facebook page, public access, 14 October 2021.

41During the tinkunazo, the police force was deployed in different areas around the Plaza, exposing the musicians and dancers ­once again to repressive violence. In Figure 5, the musicians can be seen wrapped in a dense whitish fog. Those of us on the streets that day, accompanying the tinkunazo, experienced a physical sensation of suffocation due to the effects of the tear gas bombs thrown by the Carabineros. The throwing of bombs became continuous as we approached Plaza Dignidad. As the tinkus and the musicians passed through the tear gas, they had to pause briefly to regain strength. Amidst coughing, itchy noses, irritated eyes, and agitated breathing, the musicians and dancers offered each other water to drink while others were checking that everyone was okay. I interpret these small gestures as kinetic learning, typical of the knowledge of how to move in the demonstrations, which the musicians and dancers have acquired over time. But they are also gestures of mutual care that convey an intense sense of collectivity in the face of street interventions that are often strongly repressed.

42Once the tinkunazo was reorganized, musicians and dancers advanced along the final stretch toward Plaza Dignidad. The band began to play louder on this last stretch. The melodies had an emotional effect on the dancers and the demonstrators, who began to applaud and open the way for the tinkunazo to advance through the crowd, and they succeeded in doing so.

Example 5. Artistic intervention by the Flor de Bronces Band, 18 October 2021, Santiago de Chile. Photograph by the author.

43I would argue that if the sounds of the tinkunazo allow for the development of shared emotion between demonstrators, musicians, and dancers, this is due to several factors, such as common historical memory, personal biographies, sensitivities, the context of performance, and the musical repertoire interpreted. I wish to explore the last factor further.

44The musical repertoire of the Flor de Bronces integrates traditional compositions from the Nueva Canción Chilena (NCCh), which are part of a repertoire loaded with political meaning and historical memory62. In this sense, the politicization of the brass bands, which, from my experience seems part of the consolidation of the tinkunazo as a creative protest strategy in Santiago, implied revisiting the national songbook of those productions. Their lyrics explicitly alluded to “contingent social concerns”63, both nationally and across Latin America. In addition, it is essential to note that the NCCh was characterized as a transnational musical movement whose referents included the cosmopolitan Andean music of the 1960s64. Based on this, the adoption of the NCCh repertoire in the musical performances of the brass bands currently participating in the Andean street circuit in the capital is understandable. For example, the songs that make up the “Tinkus Mix” commonly performed during the tinkunazos feature in a recording of a Flor de Bronces Band rehearsal65. Their musical arrangements include Víctor Jara’s and Violeta Parra’s compositions and classics of the Andean musical tradition. One of the compositions that regularly produces more incredible levels of emotion in the marches is Víctor Jara’s song “Manifiesto”, quoted at the beginning of this section66. I attribute this emotionality to its lyrics, which have been interpreted as a premonitory sign of the Chilean singer-songwriter’s horrifying murder at the hands of the military during the first days of Pinochet’s coup d'état. Therefore, the piece communicates a sense of political commitment and conviction. In my view, this composition best represents the sound performance of Flor de Bronces in the tinkunazo by transmitting emotion, political commitment, and collective union.

6. Conclusion

45In this article, I sought to interpret the performance of the tinkus in Santiago de Chile as a collective body that, under the modality of the tinkunazo, becomes a choreopolitical action when it emerges in the streets of the city with a sense of protest. Originally from Bolivia, this repertoire subverts its folkloric sense in the Chilean capital to connote the political struggle and commemoration experienced throughout the protest with its steps, movements, choreographies, costumes, and sonorities. In turn, the subversion of the folkloric through the contestation found in the Santiago tinku relates to the practice of the ritual tinku of the communities in the north of Potosi. That is to say, the Santiago tinkus, through the tinkunazo, elide the most folkloric dimensions of the performative genre to connect with the physical sensations of force conveyed in the battles performed by indigenous populations in their ritual context.

46The adaptation of the folkloric tinku in Santiago has meant the creation of a stable collective that has been growing over the years, mainly due to the visibility achieved by the tinkunazo in the company of brass bands who are politically involved in social mobilizations. My participation as a dancer in this musical-choreographic genre showed me how tinkus experience a strong sense of power and companionship when dancing in the tinkunazo, perhaps even suggesting that this repertoire best fits the energies produced in social mobilizations. The tinkunazo is a performative event that is composed of members of different Andean dance groups who share common choreographic knowledge and involves the body of dancers, which are configured together with musicians and protesters. Thus, the tinkunazo has established itself as a repertoire of protest or a choreopolitical action in the streets of Santiago.

47The tinkunazo emerges in different social demonstrations. However, the one common factor is that they are highly controlled by police forces. Performing dance and music in these contexts implies a risk for the demonstrators. However, as tinkus and musicians continue to appear as one cohesive body, they overcome fear and remain present in their performance.

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Quelques mots à propos de :  Ignacia Cortés-Rojas