Wolfgang Schüler

SEVERO GUZMÁN IS STRIKINGLY handsome, well-dressed in a red jacket, white felt hat, and white wool pants. He says he thinks he is 60, but he can't be over 45. I'm meeting him in an onion patch, escorted here by an intermediary, because it is the only way I can talk to him.

He is a campesino, a peasant. In this remote river valley, cut deep into the Bolivian altiplano, he works white people's land. And every year he walks into their town—San Pedro de Buenavista—to pay off his patrones in sacks of corn and fresh-killed meat, to enjoy its Catholic feast day, and to beat other campesinos bloody.

Severo fights the ritual battle called tinku. It is full-force combat; sometimes people die. Although it takes place alongside Catholic celebrations, tinku is an ancient festival, one that no outsider has come to understand. For days, I've been trying to get someone—a fighter, someone who knows—to explain it. But the campesinos in the market, the indigenous Quechuas and Aymaras, stare right through me. Lots of them don't speak Spanish, and I don't know Quechua or Aymara. And on top of language is history, a history of conquest and mistrust. But now Saúl, a white man, has arranged this meeting with Severo, who works his family's land. Saúl calls him "my peasant"; Severo calls Saúl tatay, Quechua for "my father." But Severo says Saúl treats him fairly, unlike many patrones. And so he is honored to explain tinku to a gringa.

"I fight every year, sagrado, sacred," he begins, with Saúl translating into Spanish. "I can never break my promise, for that which is sacred is sacred always. Tinku is perfect, like the lightning. When it kills you, it kills you; when you have to die, you die. There is no justice or law. He who lets himself fall, let the earth be the one to complain.

"And it is pleasant always to be a little drunk, because when you're sober it is not as much fun. It's a euphoria, a gift of the festival to hit one another. I feel more of a man when I hit someone.

"To prepare, some have ceremonies; they dedicate themselves to the mountains. In our house we always have something sacred where we make offerings. But there are mountains that are sacred and great, much greater than what we have in the house.

"There has been tinku ever since I had a memory. From our great-great-grandfathers, it is always there. Before the Spanish there was always this. In our veins we carry the custom of fighting. No matter what, each year I want to do it. It sears me. I think, ‘It's not just others who can fight, I too can fight.' My father, he beat hundreds, he was famous, renowned. My brothers, Lorenzo, Gregorio. My brother Eusebio, he cannot be beaten.

"Tata San Pedro, Tata San Pedro," he concludes, invoking the town's patron saint. "May he guide us and keep us always together. We are his campesinos, brave enough to offer ourselves up."

Severo promises to dedicate a fight to me. To honor him in return, I say I'll dress in campesina's clothes. As it happens, I never see him again, but my change of costume will propel me straight into the heart of the tinku.