Cuoplets, Devils and Carnival About Celebrations and Celebrants Throughout the Andes

Abstract

La Copla has remained in America for centuries expressing the life of the original peoples in the Andes. It is, in the words of Leda Valladares, of collective songs accompanied by Cajas, whistles and rattles that appear in Carnival time with a strength of the accent and the voice expelled in spurts, and where the figure of the ¨diablo¨ is the one who presides all this Party space and joy. In South America, during the process of conquest and colonization, the Catholic Church began a period of catechism proposing to make known the images of both the Virgin Mary, Jesus and the saints, as well as that of angels and devils. Thus, these figures with different conceptions and assimilations were repeated from the colonial era to the present day in different parts of the American continent. The objective of this work is to make a comparison of the couplets of the Argentine Northwest, with the Couplets of the Cajamarquino Carnival of Peru, where the figure of the carnival devil represents a time when the most significant features of Andean social life become “bottoms-up”, which is then reflected in the lyrics and music of these songs.