cueca

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The word panuelo should have a tilde; a wavy line above the ‘n’ that tells you that it needs to reverberate in your nasal cavity in an entirely foreign way. Panuelo, which means handkerchief, certainly isn’t one of those words vital to the daily business of living such as comer (eat), beber (drink) or cerveca (beer). It is an inconsequential noun that really has no business being linguistically important. Nevertheless, after a month in Santiago, the simple panuelo’s emblematic status has surpassed the more internationally known Chilean wine, fruit, and Pantagonia.
The panuelo’s ascendancy is due to its central position as the primary prop in the Chilean dance the cueca. During September, a month of significant national consequence, the cueca is ubiquitous. The cueca originated amongst the rural working class and combined wine, women, music and dance. Not surprisingly, the combination of alcohol, music, and Catholic self repression produced a dance with overtly sexual overtones. Add a fair amount of chicha, a homemade sweet wine/brandy, a cacophony of music, and a panuelo to mating farm animals (the courtship ritual of the rooster and hen being the preferred metaphor for describing the dance), and you have the impetus for cueca.
The dancers stand a few paces apart facing each other. The women wear dresses that look like Betty Crocker was run over by a flower truck, but managed to preserve the starched chaste whiteness of her apron and handkerchief. The women’s long dark hair is braided and piled atop their heads. They wear heeled black shoes that click and clack precisely on the paving stones. In their hands, they hold their panuelos. Their partners wear outfits popular with their great grandfathers. Certainly, the enormous gleaming silver spurs are no longer essential for modern urbanite. In addition to the spurs, the dancers wear shiny black boots and gleaming black knee high shin guards that look like something a samuri or a baseball catcher might wear. Over a white shirt, the men wear a red and blue thickly striped wool poncho. The outfit is finished with a shallow black cowboy hat with a wide brim and of course, a panuelo.
With a vigorous strumming of guitars the cueca begins. One of the musicians slaps a wooden box to drive the tempo. Another rasps clam shells together. Clapping and heinia like barks accompanying the music. Fancier cuecas throw an accordion and synthesizer into the mix and shoot the whole thing through amplifiers. The dancers circle and vigorously twirl the panuelos above their heads. The women peer demurely from behind their panuelos batting their eyelashes and smiling big toothy grins at their partners who enthusiastically rattling thier spurs and flailing their legs about. They twirl the panuelos above their heads hopeful to distract their partners with the pretty white fluttery thing long enough to get down to the business of mating. Their advances are repelled by the women, who coquettishly spin away behind their panuelo veils. Seemingly following the progress of the courtship ritual, the musicians interject their heina barks and incomprehensible jeering encouragement which may or may not make sense. Although the dance is imbued with sexual innuendo , it has since moved off the farm and become complicated with various political dimensions.
These days, the cueca is intricately entwined with the events of September. Hired professionals cueca (now a verb as well as a noun) in front of the Palacio Moneda, the seat of government power, on the 11th to commemorate the coup of Sept. 11th 1973 when General Pinochet overthrew the democratically elected socialist government of Salvador Allende. Accompanying the government sponsored cueca in front of the Palacio Moneda are marches, protests, and riots in other parts of town. It seems not everyone is happy with the progress of democracy or the distribution of its bounty. As with everything else, the shadow of the dictatorship weighs heavily on the cueca. Pinochet appropriated it and used it as a national symbol to forge a ‘Chilean’ identity. Dancing cueca became part of the elementary school curriculum and was entwined with nationalistic holidays and commemorations. Conversely, it also became a symbol of resistance. Some 3000 people disappeared during the dictatorship. Another 27,000 or so got thrown in jail Guantanamo style and tortured, including the current president Michelle Bachelet. Understandably upset by the disappearance of fathers, husbands, sons, etc. mothers, daughters, and grandmothers took to the streets (protesting is a national past time here) where they danced the cueca alone with pictures of the desaparacidos pinned to their breasts. Even Pinochet dared not touch these women who danced alone. Consequently, the 11th is a day when the cueca has murkier overtones. Today, they try to reclaim it for the people.
During the Festa de las Patrias on the 18th, which celebrates Chile’s not quite declaration of Independence from Spain in 1810, the cueca is danced without reference to the still raw wounds of the dictatorship. As opposed to the dictatorship, there is universal accordance today that independence from Spain was a good move. Chileans, who largely live in Santiago, pour out of the city and inundate the countryside to spend 4 days eating empanadas, barbecuing meat, downing vast quantities of the repulsive, yet astoundingly cheap, chicha, and dancing the cueca until dawn. Bleary eyed from little sleep, chicha, and booze, fondas fill with revelers. Although they don’t wear the traditional garb, young and old dance the cueca. In a country where the wounds of the dictatorship are still very raw, affecionados hope the cueca can emerge as a unifier. Time may indeed heal all wounds, but perhaps the joy of the cueca and the fluttering of panuelos can facilitate the process.

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