“Para que no esté t´ojra…”. An Outline of the Custom of Painting the Walls of Corrals in the Puna of Jujuy

Abstract

At present, in the micro-region of Coranzulí (Susques Department, Jujuy Province), the custom of embossing the walls of the corrals with blood from the slaughter of an animal from the family ranch has been recorded. This practice takes place especially, but not only, during the celebration of the señalada (cattle branding ritual) and consists of carving different motifs on the inner sides of the corrals. Although in recent years these interventions have been reduced to “stains”, until a couple of decades ago some families used to make figurative motifs such as animals, plants, crosses and other geometric motifs such as lines and rectangles. The act of painting the walls includes the preparation of blood, utensils and a specific performance that is part of after the ceremony is over, being incorporated into the daily life of the herds and their shepherds. This research is based on the information obtained from the ethnographic fieldwork that includes interviews, participation in different señaladas and carneadas where this practice was recorded, and the photographic record of the paintings in corrals. In this work we are interested in discussing how the shepherds themselves conceptualize these images, how they interact with them, what properties and capacities they possess and how they are linked to the animals in the herds.