Drums, dance and defiance in Santiago de Chile

A masked figure from the Chinchintirapié Carnival School in the La Challa Carnival, Santiago de Chile, January 13, 2024. On their shirt is a slogan against genocide in Gaza. Photo © Madeleine Wattenbarger.

Reportage • Madeleine Wattenbarger • February 16, 2024 • Leer en castellano

The sound of trumpets and drums reverberated through Santiago de Chile’s Barrio Yungay as late afternoon sun filled the neighborhood with a golden glow.

Residents stepped out to find a few dozen people in mismatched floral outfits dancing a choreography of cumbia steps and kicks, followed by rows of musicians playing percussion, wind instruments and accordions. A squad of masked figures danced around the edges of the troupe, their papier-mache skulls distorted into exaggerated grins. A skeleton bride blew kisses at passersby and then hid behind a tree to sneak up on a cluster of children. A young boy squealed with excitement.

The scene was punctuated by the drums of several chinchineros, percussionists who wear a bass drum topped with a cymbal strapped to their back, which they play with a strap attached to their foot, a traditional Chilean musical style passed down through the generations.

When the Chinchintirapié Carnival School, as this group of dancers and musicians is known, takes to the streets, they bring more than just song and dance: they reclaim a legacy of resistance that Chilean elites are determined to erase.

They follow in the footsteps of Violeta Parra and Victor Jara, Chile’s most famous protest singers. Members of the Chinchintirapié wear the faces of the disappeared on their sleeves, and embroider the names of murdered activists on their clothing. They fling leaflets with images of political prisoners into the air as they parade, which children scramble to pick up.

The wandering performance in Barrio Yungay that afternoon was a show unto itself. But it was also an elaborate invitation to the La Challa carnival, organized that Saturday by neighborhood organizations. 

A line of children gathered to watch the procession on a low wall outside of a high-rise apartment building. They yelled and applauded; cars stopped at the intersection honked their approval. As the sun set, the group returned to the school where they had begun the parade. An old lady in a long skirt has followed the troupe all the way back. “Ciao, mi niña,” she shouted to a skeleton figure dressed as a mother. “Saturday, Saturday!” 

“Bye, Skeleton, see you Saturday,” cried a little girl.

Reclaiming a culture of resistance

Rosita Jimenez is a willowy woman with long hair and bright eyes. The 50-year-old founded Chinchintirapié in 2006 with several other artists and musicians. A dancer and social worker, she became interested in carnival in the 1990s while she was studying African dance and working in La Pincoya, a neighborhood on the periphery of Santiago. 

Carnival was banned in Chile for almost two centuries. In 1816, the Chilean government barred it, claiming that it caused “disorder and filth.” With the exceptions of the northern cities of Iquique and Arica, which were part of Peru when the festivities were prohibited, otherwise, the history of carnival had been suppressed.

During the so-called transition to democracy, Chile saw the birth of the now-thriving popular street circus movement and its first Brazilian-style drum troupes (or batucadas). And a carnival revival movement spread throughout the country. La Pincoya was one of the first communities to start its own carnival.

Jimenez began to visit carnivals in neighboring countries and saw how the festivals brought communities together. She traced the thread that connects Salvador de Bahia’s samba schools in northeast Brazil, Iquique’s Andean dances and the street bands of Buenos Aires’s murgas porteñas: each celebration reinforced its region’s cultural identities and local histories.

The new carnival troupes in Chile brought together elements of other regions’ festive traditions. Jimenez decided to create a troupe that represented Chilean working-class identity, which has long been maligned by the state.

Jimenez had studied Chilean folk dance at the university, but as far as she knew, central Chile didn’t have an equivalent to Afro-Brazilian drums or Andean flutes. So, she asked herself, what would a distinctly Chilean carnival troupe look like?

The answer came to her one evening in Santiago’s Plaza de Armas, just before Independence Day. She watched as police forced a family of chinchineros to stop playing in the plaza. This act of censorship by carabineros, on the eve of the national holidays, was yet another instance of repression. 

“That’s the drum we have to take back,” she thought.

Jimenez and her co-founders started the Chinchintirapié Carnival School with a small government grant. The name is a combination of the words chinchinero and tirapié, the strap that connects the foot with the cymbals above the base drum. The chinchineros would mark the rhythm of the carnival band, an homage to the family banned from performing on the eve of Independence Day.

The chinchineros of the Chinchintirapié Carnival School play in the La Challa Carnival, Santiago de Chile, January 13, 2024. Photo © Madeleine Wattenbarger.

Carnival as pleasure and community

More than 30 students, musicians and artists responded to an open call to participate in the School, which made its debut at Valparaiso’s Mil Tambores carnival in September 2006. Eighteen years later, the “Chinchín,” as the group calls itself, plays a wide repertoire of Latin American music, from cumbia to reggaeton to the regional cueca. The group’s membership has fluctuated between 30 and 80 participants.

The school is organized into committees and troupes of musicians, dancers and masked figures. It follows a rigorous rehearsal schedule, meeting up to three times a week during carnival season. No one pays to participate; anyone can join, and all decisions are made in an assembly.

“You do a lot of free work. The people who are there want to be there,” said Clau Quipin, in an interview with Ojalá in Santiago. She joined the Chinchín in 2012 as a masked figurine and now dances. “Carnival is super subversive,” she said. “It always has been.”

The Chinchín’s participation in carnival blurs the line between party and protest. They often perform in areas where residents have little access to music and culture. “In a lot of the places that we play, children have never heard a brass instrument before,” said Magin Moscheni, who joined the school the year it was founded. He is part of the troupe of masked figures and spearheads the mask-making process.

In addition to carnival celebrations, Chinchín often plays at protests, marches and other community events. 

Every June they participate in the festivities for the We Tripantu, the Mapuche winter solstice celebration, in Santiago’s La Copihue neighborhood.

The group has also had to deal with repression during their performances. During a Labor Day march, they were kettled by police on Santiago’s main avenue. “We were in formation and told ourselves, ‘hold firm, hold firm, don’t provoke them’,” said Moscheni. “The line of police officers left. They didn’t know what to do with us. We were dancing and all dressed up, so they left.”

On other occasions, the Chinchín hasn’t had as much luck: its members have faced tear gas and water cannons and even arrest for dancing and singing in public. “We put our bodies on the line,” said Moscheni in a Zoom interview. “The masked figure is a shared body that you give over to the street.”

La Challa is for everyone

Spectators flooded the sidewalks of Barrio Yungay as the start time for the La Challa carnival approached. They readied bags of confetti, which they tossed in bursts over the parade. Brass bands followed up samba troupes, Andean Tinku dancers and Bolivian caporales with bowler hats and sequined dresses. 

The Chinchintirapié, costumed in matching red-and-black outfits, brought up the rear of the procession. Skeletons shimmied and teased the spectators, who laughed and danced along with them. 

By the time the band turned the corner, a crowd trailed behind them. They joined in the chorus of “Arauco tiene una pena,” Violeta Parra’s poetic protest song about resistance to colonial dispossession.

As darkness fell, the rebellious beat of the chinchinero’s drum echoed through the streets of Barrio Yungay. Eventually, the streets grew silent. After a break for the summer, the Chinchín would begin rehearsing again, renewing the cycle of joyful resistance and memory.