IN STEREO

We dance, carrying the little virgin. We come dancing; we come drinking. That is the mining carnival. Until now we continue. Last year, we were not able to enter because many are exhausted. The band said they did not want to do it, so we had to rest, the leaders said. Maybe this year, we are going to dance, they have said. Now finally, with the Palliris’ Association, no one forces us, nor can we force them. Because sometimes our cooperatives force us. Our cooperatives oblige everyone to pay a share. In my cooperative, some have paid [and] some have not. They have said they want the males. They are still macho; they continue with male chauvinism. More than anything, they’re against women. When we were younger, we used to wear white hats and cherry-coloured skirts, like that.

[But now] I go down like a man, how I work. I am the same [as them]. We come down like miners; we’re little miners. I enter dressed as a man, with a miner’s helmet [or] hat, with sweater or jacket, always with the pants used for work. There are women in our dance, [but] two of [the parts] are male, [so] one of the costumes is that. Then she and I come down [the mountain] the way we work. [The miners] go down with their hammer, their tools; we dance exactly how we bring down the rock. In that, we won third prize. We used to go down like that. We have rested, but always the palliri women have gone down as ‘the palliris’. Quite a thing, we were. “Here they come, the palliris!” people would say after seeing us. Seriously! They shouted to us, “Hooray for palliris!” – Doña Herminia