Headnote
ABSTRACT
Objective: This article aims to unveil the sacred and profane elements related to the Festival in Corraleja, especially in the context of the Corralejas tragedy that occurred in Sincelejo in 1980.
Theoretical Framework: Bakhtin's studies on carnival and Eliade's studies on the sacred and the profane were combined.
Method: A qualitative approach was employed, using the ethnographic method. The corpus of analysis was compiled from various sources such as books, video testimonies, comments on social networks and interviews with witnesses and survivors.
Results and Discussion: As a result, it is observed that the festivities legitimize the carnivalesque ritual experienced in the bullfighting festival, where its elements and dynamics are intertwined with the pagan festivities of antiquity, creating a constant return to the cult of the gods. This celebration breaks with the daily routine and acquires a sacred character, allowing the liberation of the body, although it also marks the limit of the sacred since every excess leads to a later reflection. In this way, the image of tragedy finds validation in a series of myths that help to understand the inexplicable.
Implications of the Research: The corralejas are festivities that share characteristics with the carnival tradition, and the tragedy of the Corralejas of 1980 is impregnated with the symbolization of the sacred and the profane.
Originality/Value: By combining Bakhtin's studies on carnival and Eliade's studies on the sacred and the profane, the research offers an original approach that goes beyond the simple historical account of the Sincelejo tragedy in 1980. This theoretical approach allows us to understand the Corraleja not only as a festive event but as a complex cultural phenomenon that transits between the sacred and the profane.
Keywords: Bullfighting Festivals, Corralejas, Sacred and Profane, Carnival Festivals, Mythical Time.
RESUMO
Objetivo: O objetivo deste artigo é revelar os elementos sagrados e profanos relacionados às festas em Corraleja, especialmente no contexto da tragédia de Corralejas ocorrida em Sincelejo em 1980.
Quadro teórico: Foram combinados os estudos de Bakhtin sobre o carnaval e os estudos de Eliade sobre o sagrado e o profano.
Método: Foi empregada uma abordagem qualitativa, utilizando o método etnográfico, e o corpus de análise foi compilado a partir de várias fontes, como livros, depoimentos em vídeo, comentários em redes sociais e entrevistas com testemunhas e sobreviventes.
Resultados e Discussão: Como resultado, observa-se que as festividades legitimam o ritual carnavalesco vivenciado na festa das touradas, onde seus elementos e dinâmicas se entrelaçam com as festividades pagãs da antiguidade, criando um constante retorno ao culto dos deuses. Essa celebração rompe com a rotina diária e adquire um caráter sagrado, permitindo a liberação do corpo, embora também marque o limite do sagrado, pois qualquer excesso leva a uma reflexão posterior. Dessa forma, a imagem da tragédia encontra validação em uma série de mitos que ajudam a entender o inexplicável.
Implicações da pesquisa: As Corralejas são festividades que compartilham características com a tradição do carnaval, e a tragédia das Corralejas de 1980 está impregnada da simbolização do sagrado e do profano.
Originalidade/valor: Ao combinar os estudos de Bakhtin sobre o carnaval e os estudos de Eliade sobre o sagrado e o profano, a pesquisa oferece uma abordagem original que vai além do simples relato histórico da tragédia de 1980 em Sincelejo. Essa abordagem teórica nos permite entender a Corraleja não apenas como um evento festivo, mas como um fenômeno cultural complexo que transita entre o sagrado e o profano.
Palavras-chave: Festivais de Touradas, Corralejas, Sagrado e Profano, Festivais de Carnaval, Tempo Mítico.
RESUMEN
Objetivo: El presente artículo tiene como objetivo develar los elementos sagrados y profanos relacionados con las Fiestas en Corraleja, especialmente en el contexto de la tragedia de las Corralejas ocurrida en Sincelejo en 1980.
Marco Teórico: Se conjugaron los estudios de Bajtín acerca del carnaval y de Eliade sobre lo sagrado y lo profano.
Método: Se empleó un enfoque cualitativo, utilizando el método etnográfico El corpus de análisis se recopiló a partir de diversas fuentes como libros, testimonios en vídeos, comentarios en redes sociales y entrevistas a testigos y sobrevivientes.
Resultados y Discusión: Como resultado, se observa que las fiestas legitiman el ritual carnavalesco experimentado en la fiesta taurina, donde sus elementos y dinámicas se entrelazan con las festividades paganas de la antigüedad, creando un constante retorno al culto a los dioses. Esta celebración rompe con la rutina cotidiana y adquiere un carácter sagrado, permitiendo la liberación del cuerpo, aunque también marca el límite de lo sagrado ya que todo exceso conlleva a una posterior reflexión. De esta manera, la imagen de la tragedia encuentra validación en una serie de mitos que ayudan a comprender lo inexplicable.
Implicaciones de la investigación: Las corralejas son festividades que comparten características con la tradición carnavalesca, y la tragedia de las Corralejas de 1980 está impregnada de la simbolización de lo sagrado y lo profano.
Originalidad/Valor: Al combinar los estudios de Bajtin sobre el carnaval y los de Eliade sobre lo sagrado y lo profano, la investigación ofrece un enfoque original que va más allá del simple relato histórico de la tragedia de Sincelejo en 1980. Este enfoque teórico permite comprender la Corraleja no sólo como un acontecimiento festivo, sino como un fenómeno cultural complejo que transita entre lo sagrado y lo profano.
Palabras clave: Fiestas Taurinas, Corralejas, Sagrado y Profano, Fiestas Carnavalescas, Tiempo Mítico.
INTRODUCTION
From Spain and its colonization, the American peoples receive traditions that mark the course of socio-cultural history. One of them is bullfighting, which has survived to the present day and is syncretized to become an activity of its own. Some derivations of the Spanish bullfight that are practiced in America are coleo, "a competition of riders who run after a bull while trying to grab it by the tail and turn it over, in full motion and from its saddle" Alzate, (2018, p. 7). The toropukllay, of Andean tradition that is performed on the date of the national holidays of Peru, just at harvest time (Meza, G. & Valderrama, G., 2000, p. 248), where, in addition to the bull, a condor, sacred animal of the Inca trinity, is used (Gerena, J., 2021, p. 22), both symbolize the two worlds, pre-Hispanic and Hispanic (Ho, 2010, p. 8).
A striking feature of these practices is that they are always linked to patron saint festivals, cyclical celebrations that intertwine Catholic beliefs and indigenous harvest rituals (Turbay, 1995, p. 19). It is deduced that they arise in America with the establishment of the Viceroyalty in 1532 (Galicia, 2017, p. 17). But, what interests us most in is to make clear the mythical and sacred feature of these celebrations, because: "The festivals are spaces of representation of the gods and the sacred, the rituals contain the symbolic information and the order of social action directed to the sacred is crucial piece of the mechanism of the party to energize" (Galicia, 2017, p. 16).
In Colombia, bullfighting originated in 1532 (P. Rodríguez, 2017); however, in the Caribbean coast region, what is known as Corraleja was developed. From a historical and cultural perspective, the Corraleja of Sincelejo is linked to the Catholic celebration of the patron saint San Francisco de Asis. However, there are a series of events that have influenced the Festival in Corraleja, which have left their mark on the Caribbean identity. It is this relationship with the Caribbean identity that we are interested in analyzing in the sacred, the profane and the carnivalesque. According to historical data, the first Corraleja was officially celebrated on October 3, 1845 in Sincelejo. Since that date, this tradition was consolidated and experienced such a growth that it came to be considered cultural heritage of the nation (Ley 1272, 2009). Despite having many detractors, the Corraleja has continued its historical course to the present day.
In the festivity of 1980 a tragedy occurred that marked the history of the city and its inhabitants, an accident in an area of the boxes produced a number of deaths and injuries and an endless number of stories that to date are repeated among the inhabitants, forming a series of social representations. This has already been investigated previously, however, we argue that the tragedy of 1980 involves complex meanings that can be evaluated from other perspectives, such as Mircea Eliade's view of the festivities.
In this sense, we ask ourselves: What is the relationship between the sacred, the profane and the carnivalesque around the Corralejas tragedy of 1980 in Sincelejo, Colombia, and how this feature contributes to the consolidation of social representations that mythically explain the event? For this purpose, we have proposed to unveil the sacred, the profane and the carnivalesque around the Corralejas of 1980 in Sincelejo.
To achieve this, Eliade's theory of the sacred and the profane will be used in complementarity with Bakhtin's carnival as a theoretical framework. Bakhtin's theory of carnival addresses the ambivalent nature of festivities and their relationship with the sacred and the profane in popular culture, given that the corralejas, as popular festivities, preserve religious and carnivalesque traits. In that order, the tragedy of 1980 breaks with the established order, creating a time of chaotic and sacrilegious license, stripping authority and power from the previous social order.
The links between Eliade's theoretical contributions on the sacred and the profane and Bakhtin's carnival may appear to be distant approaches, yet they complement each other for a deeper understanding of how cultures approach and make sense of life and reality. Both theories emphasize the importance of rituals, festivities and social practices in the construction of meaning and the formation of cultural identity.
As any research process is dynamic, in the coming and going from findings to theory and from theory to findings, the categories were consolidated or weakened, as the case may be, and subdivided. The basic theory was shaped by two authors: Eliade's (1981, 2001) proposals on the sacred and the profane and on mythical time, the studies of Bakhtin (2003) on carnival in popular culture in the Middle Ages.
2 METHODOLOGY
The research approach is qualitative and the grounded theory methodology was applied to analyze the data, following the approach proposed by Strauss, A. & Corbin, J. (2002). Grounded theory is used to discover and interpret meanings from the social reality of individuals, using an inductive method, as described in the work of Vivar et al. (2010).
For the analysis, the theories of the sacred and the profane of Mircea Eliade and that of the carnival of Mikhail Bakhtin are integrated as explanatory models of a cultural tradition of Colombia united by the popular character of the corralejas. To this end, a compilation of information was made to obtain a substantive corpus from various sources (30 in total): social networks such as Facebook (videos, comments to those videos), news, testimonies on the web, books published on the Corralejas of January 20th, 1980 or tangentially touching the subject, as well as interviews to witnesses of the event which were identified with the nomenclature SP followed by a number to safeguard the identity. This corpus was coded and analyzed using Atlas.ti software and from this examination the categories emerged.
3 ELIADE'S THE SACRED AND THE PROFANE
The sacred and the profane imply a duality, especially if they are observed from the point of view of religions. However, such a separation is only a reductionism of both concepts because the existence of one makes the other possible because, "if the profane could not in any way enter into relation with the sacred, the latter would serve no purpose" (Durkheim (2000, p. 80). The sacred represents the human capacity to distinguish what is considered real, powerful and meaningful from everything else that lacks those qualities, such as the chaotic and dangerous flow of things, their fortuitous and meaningless appearances and disappearances (Eliade, 1972, p. 23). In a word, the "sacred" is an intrinsic element of the structure of consciousness, not a historical stage in the evolution of the latter. The experience of the sacred goes beyond human materiality and allows for a reconciliation of being with meaning and essence. However, to reach this experience, it is necessary to cross the path of the profane:
The path is arduous, it is strewn with dangers, because, in fact, it is a rite of passage from the profane to the sacred; from the ephemeral and the illusory to reality and eternity; from death to life; from man to divinity (Eliade, 1972, p. 25).
For archaic and traditional societies, the sacred is a model of reality, and the existence of the world and its living beings is reproduced in imitation of the primordial act that establishes existence. Rituals and religious practices seek to restore the presence of the sacred and thus regenerate and revitalize life.
Now then, instead of posing the duality in terms of the natural and the supernatural, it is preferable to do it from two known domains: that of the everyday and ordinary, which would be the profane, and that of the strange, the mysterious or the uncommon, which would be the sacred (Espina, 1996, p. 252). In this sense, it is not a question of simplifying both concepts, but of a kind of pedagogy of the sacred in order to understand that there is no segmentation between the two, but that in our daily life, they are part of the representations due to the conditions in which we as subjects act and live. In fact, they are not necessarily linked to religion, but depend on the transcendental feature for the life of each individual.
4 CARNIVALIZATION OF BAKHTIN
Bakhtin analyzes how popular culture manages to overturn the establishment and renew itself through carnival. In this festivity, the established order is subverted through a game where the social strata are inverted and everyone participates in an exchange of roles: the king becomes the poor, while the lower strata assume the role of king for a day. The carnival is not a theatrical spectacle, but an experience lived by each individual in what he or she assumes.
Carnival time is short, hence it is longed for and celebrated with excesses, there is no reason not to live it intensely. As a historical and symbolic time, carnival precedes a sacred act (Lent) from the religious perspective and is the last opportunity to experience laughter, scandal, debauchery, before entering a period of asceticism, of reflection.
However, Bakhtin goes beyond the simple description of the phenomenon. He uses it as a methodology of literary analysis, applying the concept of carnival to the study of literary works to show how in the literary text established social structures can be broken with in a parodic and ingenious way. Thus, carnival is a powerful tool for challenging norms since it is a festive and subversive event in which hierarchies are inverted, social norms are suspended and the expression of the grotesque, the burlesque and the carnal is allowed. In carnival, there is a temporary liberation from social and moral restrictions, and life and fertility are celebrated through the mockery of authority and role reversal.
It is important to understand that carnivalization can have implications beyond the literary field, since it can also be applied to studies in the social sciences in order to understand that there are situations in real life that can be considered carnivalesque and that preserve in essence the characteristics described by Bakhtin (2003, pp. 13, 62): a) escape from the everyday forms of existence; b) resemblance to a theatrical representation where actors and spectators intermingle; c) experience of art; d) feast of licenses, everything that disrupts the Status Quo is allowed; e) elimination of social hierarchies.
In this sense, the festival is the mythical time that unites the human being with the divine in a mixture of chaos and order that reflect the worldview of the sacred and the profane. Moreover, both carnival and religious festivities share an objective of renewal and regeneration. In carnival, life and fertility are celebrated through mockery and temporary role reversal, while, in religious practices, the presence of the sacred is sought to be restored to revitalize life and society, where carnival can be interpreted as a reminder of the sacred order that underlies everyday life and how that order is essential to the functioning of society.
4.1 FESTIVAL IN CORRALEJAS
Etymologically, corraleja derives from "corral", that is, the space where livestock is enclosed. It has its origins in the tasks of slaves and peasants learning to tame the beasts; it began as one more work in the field. Currently, the corraleja is a traditional celebration that takes place "in a total of 102 municipalities" (Niampira & Barguil, 2021, p. 120) in northwestern Colombia, specifically in the departments of Atlántico, Bolívar, Cesar, Córdoba, Magdalena and Sucre, an area where large cattle ranches were established.
According to journalistic chronicles "The corralejas held in the old savannas of Bolívar, today savannas of Córdoba and Sucre date back to 1827, when Mr. Sebastián Zubiría decided to hold the first bullfights" (Flórez, 2008, p. 153). In the specific case of the Corraleja, it is mentioned that the first one dates back to October 3, 1845 in Sincelejo (Movilla Bello, 2003, p. 9). The word Corraleja also gives its name to the architectural artifact where bullfighting takes place. Contrary to bullrings, the corraleja: "is a temporary structure made of wood configured from modular elements such as boxes" (Niampira & Barguil, 2021, p. 120). It has a polygonal shape and the number of units or boxes depends on the relevance of the festival.
The first corralejas had a square shape, similar to the cow corrals; but, with the growth of the festival, the polygonal construction began, reminiscent of the sacred circular spaces of the aboriginal cultures (Chaves & Vásquez, 1989, p. 93). Today they are made of wood, iron nails and the boxes on the top floor have a zinc roof, for an approximate weight of 1300 tons of wood alone (Arrieta & Díaz, 2010, p. 41). Each box is made separately and is leveled with each other and has a protected space for the entrance of the bull which is called toril-rampa. The technique used in its elaboration is the same since the beginning of the celebration, probably as part of a culture that contravenes the ideas of modernity (Hernández, 2014, p. 159).
The boxes are occupied during the celebration following a strict social stratification, that is to say, those of greater social position are located in the shaded platforms, in the high part. The presidential box is reserved for important politicians, ranchers and personalities of the city. And the people of lower economic strata are located according to the value assigned to the box office up to those who enter without paying, who are located in the arena to improvisedly fight with the animal (Flórez, 2008, p. 154). The cause of this seems to be due to the "deification of the capitalist rancher who 'per-rated' the festivities with his money by making people pay for everything" (Fals, 2002b, pp. 98-99).
For its part, the Corraleja bullfighting is done without the attire of a traditional bullfighter. The order of the spectacle is imprecise, jubilant and disorderly (Sánchez, 2017, p. 57). Theoretically, all the roles of a corrida are implicit, but unlike this one, in the corraleja it is a matter of "opportunities". That is to say, everyone is in the arena and as they see the opportunity, they interact with the bulls since there can be three or four animals at the same time. The attraction is not only the pirouettes of the trained bulls, but part of the public enters with capes to distract and play with the bull. When the bullfight ends, those who have been in the ring go up to ask for money in the boxes, that money earned with the feats is called mangue (Sánchez, 2017, p. 27). Along with the show, in the boxes there is another dynamic: family reunions, reunions, passing drinks from mouth to mouth, bets, among others; "always accompanied by music" of bands and fandango (Turbay, 1995, p. 28).
The corraleja is divided into bullfighters-heroes (manteros, banderilleros, garrocheros and picadores), spectators (people and ranchers) and the bull. In addition, there are the surrounding vendors with their wares. The breed of bulls used is the zebu, typical of the breeding for consumption and there we have the idea of the origin in the livestock world; but also participate Creole bulls, a genetic mix between the first and caste bulls in order to confer some bravery. The bull that has run in other corralejas is called rejugao. The new bull is the one that runs in a circular motion and gets tired quickly. The first one is the one that gores the most because it looks for a specific objective.
4.2 TRAGEDY OF 1980
On January 20th, 1980, all the locals and those from other parts were making preparations for the Great Festival. By that time, they were already the most famous Corralejas in Colombia; however, many talk about the premonitions of the people, a "strange feeling that something bad was going to happen". Days before, those who make the decision of the bulls that participated in the central corraleja is the board of the festivities commissioned by the mayor on duty. This board decided to give the bulls of another bull breeder named Pedro Juan Tudela, displacing Arturo Cumplido. The act of taking the bulls away from Arturo Cumplido was engraved in the memory of the people, to the point that it is constantly referred to when remembering the tragedy of the corralejas of 1980.
The reason for the tragedy was a combination of circumstances: construction of the device in an irregular terrain that was filled and piled up. Second, the overcrowding of the box office; some tell how they were saved from dying because they were not allowed to go up because there was no more room for one more person. Third, the torrential rain that forced the spectators to run to the roofed area to avoid getting wet, thus unbalancing the weight. All of this, added to the landslide that left the pitchforks exposed and finally caused the wing where the unevenness was filled in to give way and the boxes fell. The upper floors crushed the lower floors, leaving people under the structure and other people.
The town collapsed, there was no capacity in the morgues and hospitals, nor enough ambulances. Many corpses were never identified, so a mass grave had to be opened and specific data was not collected at the time. The exact count of the dead is still imprecise today. Some speak of 300, others of 500 dead. Some corpses were taken to the townships and others died in hospitals in other cities where the wounded were taken. There is no record even in the central cemetery of Sincelejo, in fact, in the inventory there are only 6 graves dated 20/01/1980.
4.3 SACRED AND PROFANE FEATURES OF THE FESTIVAL IN CORRALEJA
The sacred and the profane coexist cosmogonically and symbolically as archetypes in the peoples. Just as in order to know good we must know evil, in the same way it is not possible to apprehend the sacred if the profane did not exist, and it is worth asking the question: Where does one disappear and where does the other begin? The study and analysis of Las Corralejas and, particularly, those of January 20th, 1980 in Sincelejo, more than answering that question and clarifying those spaces, confirms that the chaining of both is indissoluble.
After analyzing the information and considering the findings, we chose to combine the presentation of the results with their discussion, due to the complexity of the network of events and the belief system found, which is difficult to represent in a schematic way.
This strategy seeks to maintain the continuity of the discourse. The interpretation focuses on the sacred (Figure 1) and the profane (Figure 2), and in its development the categories and their analysis are presented, a certain chronology is followed and the carnivalesque elements are highlighted. In addition, the categories that emerged from the analysis are highlighted in bold italics so that the reader can identify them throughout this section.
The festivities, from Eliade's perspective, represent a mythical time that is related to the origins. Therefore, in the first place, we established the sacred features of the Festival in Corraleja, because, although for the common people it is only a prosaic festival, it is anchored to an expression of the sacred:
The feast is a time of joy that follows a mysterious orbit that successively brings it closer and moves it away from two poles that reveal themselves as the sacred and the profane. The historians of religions have shown how the manifestations of the sacred - hierophaniesof the divinity, the theophanies, have constituted a sacred time, distinct but inserted in the profane time, as a daily duration (Carrillo, 1998, p. 105).
In the categories of the festival, time is also space. This is linked to the physical structure of the Corralejas, which is temporary, it is built ad hoc and then dismantled, but at the moment of beginning its construction, the revelry and celebration, the pre-corralejas, also begins:
It was a date awaited by the entire population. The peasants, all the rural population moved during the construction because they brought the wood, the bejuco, and that generated a hustle and bustle around it. There were some whistle bands, some bands around all that and they started to sell the handmade liquor, it was a party before the party itself. (SP06)
This ritual marks the beginning of mythical time, the threshold between the profane and the sacred. The construction of the corraleja represents a temporal-spatial passage, paradoxical but communicating between the two worlds: from the profane to the sacred. It is the moment when the community enters a different sphere, where the daily rules and restrictions are diluted, and a sacred and transcendent experience, full of meaning and symbolism, takes place. It is a unique moment in which the barriers between the earthly and the divine are broken, allowing participants to immerse themselves in a collective and sacred experience that connects them with the deepest part of their cultural and spiritual identity.
The history of the corraleja has been marked by several changes. First, it changed location: from the square next to the San Francisco church to a larger area in the Majagual square and then to another in the Mochila neighborhood. It also changed its date, moving from October to January for two reasons: the influence of a gentleman from the high society of Sincelejo, Don Sebastián "Chano" Romero, who manages to do it in exchange for paying the condumio:
...he committed himself to everything, he paid for everything. Everything is everything, that is, he made the boxes, he gave the chirrinchi14, everything, then, aha, the mayor of that time told him "go play" and they even moved them to the square... there where the Majagual square is and from the Majagual square to Mochila, where they fell. (SP20)
It is attributed to the fact that Romero had his birthday on January 16 (Fals, 2002, p. 97), and the 20th was his saint's day. To these prosaic reasons is added an explanation related to the rainy season, which in October are copious in the region, in addition to the fact that January coincides with the beginning of the harvests (Movilla, 2003, p. 23) and in this, he reiterates the explanation of Galicia (2017) already exposed. When the corralejas are moved to the month of January, they do not lose the patronage as they will be linked to the celebration of the Sweet Name of Jesus:
And January was taken as the month to thank the divinities and among all the son of God himself represented in the God-child who was known as the Sweet Name of Jesus, displaced much later by another God-child: The Divine Child (Movilla, 2003, p. 23).
The cult to the Sweet Name of Jesus is recognized as a differentiator between the Sincelejan elite and the common people. But, from the sphere of the sacred, the relationship between feast and cult are part of that cyclical ritual that maintains the balance, that is, the pagan is regulated through the manifestations of the sacred: "There are the intervals of sacred time, the time of the feasts (mostly periodic feasts); there is, on the other hand, profane time, the ordinary temporal duration in which the acts stripped of religious significance are inscribed" Eliade (2022, p. 52).
In the Christian liturgy, the feast of the Sweet Name of Jesus is January 3rd. (El Santísimo y Dulce nombre de Jesús, s. f.) but, in Sincelejo, the date is changed to the 20th for the reasons already explained. In a certain sense, the transgression of dates implies a profanation of the ritual act, since it obeys a whim governed by power. The root of this transgression is the return to the mimetic circle of the sacred, which pagan rites imply.
It is important to mention the devotion to the Sweet Name of Jesus because it appears as a differentiating aspect in the tragedy of 1980. It is said that Arturo Cumplido had made a promise to the Sweet Name of Jesus and when this promise was broken, the tragedy originated. But, repeatedly, the event surrounding the bulls has given rise to the belief that Arturo Cumplido had a pact with the devil (Figure 2). This belief is reinforced by the fact that the origins of this rancher were humble, and over time he managed to accumulate an important fortune. In this regard, Arranz (2012, p. 81) argues that, in ancient times, when a person achieved extraordinary accomplishments, especially if there was no other explanation than the mediation of the supernatural, the community used to attribute it to diabolical influence.
Caillois (1996, p. 60) states that "The pact with hell entails a consecration, like divine grace". The pact with the devil is a rite in which the disciple surrenders body and soul permanently to the devil or demons, in exchange for power and/or wealth. On the other hand, a religious promise involves making a request to a celestial being, promising to give something in return, an offering or a sacrifice, which also involves a surrender. In both cases, the soul of the offerer, although in different degrees, is compromised, but the nature of the receiver changes. As can be noted, the differences between these rites are subtle, but in both cases, although with opposite purposes, they are in the sphere of the sacred.
Continuing the subject of the 1980 tragedy, this one is loaded with symbolic connotations. Although it is never explicitly mentioned, it is implicit that taking the bulls from Arturo Cumplido on the date he had set aside to pay for his promise was the trigger for the tragedy. The "rational" explanations that have been given are diverse; it is said that, in spite of his fortune, Arturo Cumplido felt offended and rejected by the "upper class of the Sincelejan society". In response to this situation, it is said that he invoked the devil and offered him 500 souls. (Movilla, 2003, p. 131). Similarly:
The peasants without political malice thought that the disruption of the tradition was a sign of bad omen. And on the 20th they went to the bullfight with the prejudice that something disastrous was going to happen in the corraleja (Movilla, 2003, p. 126).
This event can be interpreted symbolically as a kind of rupture with the established order, where social tensions, ambition and power conflicts intertwine with sacred and profane elements. The collapse of boxes and the loss of lives could be seen as a tragic event that questions the very nature of the corralejas ritual and its connection to the sacred and the profane. These symbolic connotations give the tragedy a deeper and more complex meaning in the cultural and social context of Sincelejo.
In the same atmosphere of the sacred, we find the story related to the fact that some of the characters who face the bull perform rituals such as the "Child in cross". This rite is "a santería protection or binding that grants those who possess it enormous strength, making them immune." (Palacio, 2017). It is also stated that the rancher, in order to protect his animal, also protects the bull:
On the other hand, the bull also has a myth surrounding it, what they call the composed bull, the fixed bull. The composed bull is a bull that has been given a series of things, why? Because if this one [the man] is super-powerful, I make sure mine [the bull] is too (SP11).
Now, as part of the signs of the sacred that are manifested in the tragedy we find the rain positioned:
January 20th, a traditional day, crowded to the brim, there was no hint that the sky would cloud over, no rain whatsoever, splendid sun, monumental sun. I believe that at about 3:30 in the afternoon the sky began to cloud over, and it began to cloud over... and it began to cloud over, but it was a cloud over the sector... that of the square. And it began to press and it rained in torrents, without stopping, it rained, it rained and it poured down a superb, tremendous downpour, not a downpour, a real downpour. (Gómez, 2020, 2m34s) (underlined by the authors).
The cloud is positioned... it is fixed over the corraleja (SP14).
...and that day there was a downpour only in the corraleja that the boxes fell down. (SP16).
In addition, Movilla (2003, p. 129-131), publishes the account of a former member of a now-defunct security organization in Colombia, who states that he found a video of the day of the tragedy, never made public, during an operation related to satanic sects in Sincelejo:
The shot, in the opening moments, is a panning across the darkening sky, as if to signify that something is about to happen. The panning is in the square of Mochila. The gray tone gradually turns dark gray until it reaches black. Lightning, captured by the camera, resembles the horns of a gigantic bull. The horns can be seen on the screen at least three times. It seems that the cameraman is informed of what is going to happen because by panning he searches the sky for the signal. A large part of the film focuses on the space above the corraleja, because the roofs of the boxes are left in the lower part of the screen, as a background that confirms the stage. The filming, according to the angles, was done from one of the sides of the construction that did not fall. It is seen when the rain comes down and perhaps when the boxes are about to fall, the filming is interrupted and then continues with the view of the collapsed boxes, just as they appeared in the photos in the newspapers.
The narrative presents the symbolic connection between the natural (the rain) and the supernatural (the figurativeness of lightning). The presence of the camera documenting the event adds a dimension of intentionality and knowledge about what is about to happen. For Eliade (2022, p. 14) the sacred manifests itself as a reality different from the natural, and is explained through analogies because it cannot be fully understood or expressed.
In the case of the symbolism of the flood, this is associated with the reabsorption of humanity in the water and the beginning of a new era with a new humanity. This cyclical conception of the cosmos and history implies an abolition of an earlier epoch and the beginning of a new era (Eliade, 1974, p. 245).
Another sign is related to the bulls. These play a fundamental role in the corraleja, not only as a central part of the playfulness of the bullfight but also as a symbol of sacrifice. Remember that this corpulent animal symbolizes strength and fury, the fecundating power. (Chevalier & Gheerbrant, 2000, p. 302). In the festival in corralejas, the bull maintains the ceremonial symbolism of strength, impetus and bravery. Well, once the boxes have collapsed, the spectators enter into chaos, time stops for a moment, leaving the image of the bulls petrified.
I jumped into the arena and the bulls stayed still because I passed by their side, there were three bulls, I passed by their side, three black bulls. When I passed by them, I got scared, but no, they stayed still (SP20).
There is a case of a friend who was in a side box, she was young and very active, a very empowered woman as they would say now, and she jumped from the second level, she jumped inside the ring, fell in front of a bull and the bull did not do anything to her, she moved and got out (SP11).
Suddenly I heard the roar and fell down sitting down, the first thing I did was to take my hands to my legs to check that I had them, I was frightened when I realized that I was inside the bullring where the four bulls were, but the bulls were petrified, they did not move from their place. (Merlano Rodríguez, s/a, p. 114).
As part of the mythical cycle of festivity and death, the role of the cemetery must be related because it was the most important sacred scenario of the tragedy. This rite became a collective act where the people bid farewell to the deceased and the mourners gave their condolences to each other. A witness who was in the corralejas of 1980 and, later, in the collective burial says:
But we were still able to limp out to the corner and since it was the only cemetery that existed at that time, you could see a long procession of coffins, one after the other. I can say that there were more people than in the corralejas themselves, because there was... there was a barbarian mare magnum (SP20).
The imaginary of the tragedy of the corralejas of January 20th, 1980 is framed with the circular, sacred-prophane-sacred temporal-spatial rituality: (a) sacred festivities of the death of St. Francis of Assisi, first, and celebration of the Sweet Name of Jesus, (b) Corralejas-carnival as a pagan ritual of celebration, as a theatrical spectacle of life, rebirth and renewal, provisional irruption of the everyday, and (c) Tragedy and death: collapse of the structure with the death of more than 300 people, many of them buried in the Central Cemetery of Sincelejo.
Funeral ceremonies validate death before the living; the cemetery becomes the new abode of the soul of the deceased, a space representing the other world, where the deceased is admitted into the community of the dead. This ritual is essential to avoid a void and to provide proper closure and completion (Eliade, 2022, p. 135). The cemetery becomes a living being that welcomes new dwellers, making it tangible and close, bringing reassurance to both the extinct and the bereaved. The cemetery becomes a threshold that communicates and becomes a communicating vessel ("cemetery was talking") to give peace and continue the mourning process.
The Central Cemetery of Sincelejo, a sacred space, witnessed a collective burial never seen before in the town, due to its magnitude. The funeral ritual is one of the stages of closure of grief and collective sadness for the death of family and friends. Survivors and other attendees said goodbye to their loved ones.
According to Eliade (2022, p. 23), places acquire an exceptional quality even for those who are emphatically not religious. These spaces become "holy places" in their inner universe, where they experience revelations of another reality, of the unnatural.
In this case, the space of the tragedy, the corraleja, was engraved in the memory as a place of chaos, death, pain and horror. However, in addition to the space, the testimonies also refer to the event itself, the fall and the time that followed, thus materializing the mythical time in the collapse, in the instant and in the days that followed. This revelation is now sacred knowledge.
5 THE PROFANE OF THE FESTIVAL
The profane refers to the everyday world, to the common and mundane activities of life. In the context of a multitudinous festivity of this type, it is natural that the profane is exacerbated and notorious to the extreme; from this perspective it is related to the carnivalesque. In this sense, it is common to find hyperbole, over exaggeration and excesses, as these elements are characteristic of this form of expression (Bakhtin, 2003, p. 248). The carnivalesque grotesque seeks to celebrate life and the community in an exaggerated and festive way, where the individual merges with the collective and is freed from social and moral restrictions, giving way to an intense and liberating vital experience (Ginés, 2020, p. 24). In Figure 2, we present schematically the findings related to the profane aspects in the tragedy of the corralejas of 1980.
One of the evident signs of the profane is the development of the underworld (of the Corralejas). In this space, political-economic negotiations marked by power relations are intertwined, as well as the sale of alcohol, among other activities. That is to say, adjacent to the structure there are canteens where spirits are sold, prostitutes practice their trade, gambling and betting, food and beverages typical of the region are sold, the mechanical city is installed where children enjoy while their parents attend the corralejas (Underworld of the Corralejas).
Eeeeh, a lot of canteens, a lot of canteens, there were some booths, even, there was even prostitution, well, from there, they went to their room... Outside the boxes there were sales of chicharron [crispy pork], empanadas, peeled oranges, ice cream, guarapo [panela and lemon drink] in glass cups, ñeque6, even in the fandango wheel they sold ñeque, too. (SP20)
This parallel dimension to the main event added a complex and controversial element, which coexisted with the public and festive celebration. Importantly, these additional aspects reveal how corralejas, beyond their festive and sacred nature, were also influenced by more complex and often conflicting social and cultural dynamics.
Likewise, among the spectators there are characters who wield economic power and represent scenes typical of the grotesque-carnivalesque:
The rancher throws [the money] only and exclusively when the bull is down there, underneath him he throws, he throws it to the bull, then the people run to pick up the money, that is a danger, and it seems to me that this is even murder on the part of the rancher. (SP22)
Something unforgettable is that they take the banderilla so that money is threaded there, there they break the amount of bills, they take their broken and bloody bills. That is crazy, there are cruel things, right, the rich, the people with money that throw money, for example, a guy can go to the bank and say that they should give him 2 million pesos in 2 thousand bills, then, the guy picks up and at the foot of where the bull comes out he throws bills and the people come and crowd around where the bills are falling and at that moment they release the bull7. (SP11)
Finally, within the accounts of the day of the tragedy, there also appears a desecration recognized by everybody as the theft from the dead. With the social order broken, it is now the chaotic sacrilegious time without authority or power, it is a non-time of license in which the survivors steal from the dead... (Caillois, 1996, p. 133).
We went out from the side where it was fallen, that is, we went out on the boards, there were people there stealing, there at the time, they were watching and fell on a body to check it and steal it (SP11).
I remember seeing many who did not help, but took advantage to steal even from those who were asking for help (SP21).
It is not only the chaos of the social order, it is the chaos of the universe produced by the collapse of the human order that gives rise to debauchery and license to subvert social control, and is an extension of the excesses that occurred in the arena: alcohol, prostitution, blood in the ring, crematorium demonstrations of power, defiance of death.
But, at the same time, in the carnival context of the corraleja we can find religious and symbolic elements that reflect, once again, the worldview of the sacred and the profane. Fundamentally represented by the bullfighters. Most of these characters find meaning in their precarious lives for a moment of glory and recognition. Augusto Amador Soto affirms that in the fiesta brava [bullfighting festival] there were bulls that became famous for their bravery and nobility. These bulls performed extraordinary acts, such as jumping over the barrier of the circuses and throwing themselves into the crowded arena, causing great disorder and terror. These bulls left a sad trail of death, painting the dust of the plazas with the varnish of the blood of many people, some drunk and others sober, but all surprised by the same death that came from the vigorous horns of these ferocious beasts (Contreras, 2014).
The bull-fighters-spectators link, gives rise to the idealization of the fighters in heroic, mythical characters with quasi-supernatural characteristics. This micro-universe is a staging of the carnival festivities (Corralejas-Carnival), fusing elements of the Corralejas with the festivities of Carnival.
In this sense, (Bakhtin, 2003, p. 9) points out that in the Middle Ages the correlation of the feast with the higher purposes of human existence, resurrection and renewal, could only achieve its fullness and purity in the carnival and in other popular and public celebrations. "The feast became in this circumstance the form taken by the second life of the people, which temporarily penetrated into the utopian realm of universality, liberty, equality and abundance."
5 CONCLUSIONS
This study revealed that, for the population of Sincelejo, the tragedy of the corralejas of January 20th, 1980 was configured in a space of memory that blurs reality and sacralizes it; but, at the same time, these memories respond to an order of thinking that is still feudal and is related to the level of poverty of the department, its scarce contribution to the economic development of the country and its low rates of educational quality.
According to Bourdieu (1999, p. 59), collective memory is ambivalent because it is constituted by a material and a symbolic dimension, in which asymmetrical sociocultural and power relations are validated. That is to say, what happens in the tragedy evidences an alteration of social status: a man (Arturo Cumplido) who, for the prejudices of the time, was by nature a transgressor: born illegitimate, comes to economic power; however, the conservative high society rejects him and this triggers a supernatural explanation since, for the people, more than a political game, it was a sacred rupture. For what permeated the imaginary of the survivors and witnesses is a series of events that are related to the carnival ritual of the festival and derives in a mythical time, in agreement with Durkheim (2000):
A cult, in fact, is not simply a set of ritual precautions that man has to take in certain circumstances; it is a system of rites, of feasts, of diverse ceremonies that all present the character of being repeated periodically. They respond to the need experienced by the faithful to strengthen and reaffirm, at regular intervals of time, the bond that unites him to the sacred beings on whom he depends (p. 115).
This is confirmed by Eliade (2022, p. 6) when he alludes that the feast is an act that is a transcript of timelessness and that the repetition of rites is the return to the eternal return, to the mythical time of the origins.
Thus, analyzing the tragedy from a scientific point of view can reduce the understanding of the facts that survive in the collective memory to simple statistical data. But hearing, reading and talking with the survivors is to understand the reasons that a people has to sacralizes the pain, to mythologize the facts. Or, as explained by Nicolescu (2009, p. 47):
For magical thinking, Nature is a living organism, endowed with intelligence and consciousness. The fundamental postulate of magical thinking is that of universal interdependence: Nature cannot be conceived outside its relations with man. Everything is sign, traces, rubric, symbol.
The town was characterized in its imaginary by a before and an after, with magical and symbolic elements associated with it according to the testimonies collected; this raises questions about its origin and its relationship with the tragic event (Rodríguez et al., 2024). Finally, the Festival in Corraleja, as a whole, is a representation of the carnival from the Bakhtinian perspective where the excesses of life come together to reach grotesque characteristics, putting into play the social dialectic of power: poor and rich, rulers and people. In addition, this particular festival portrays the licenses of the basest pleasures, since in the bullring all kinds of pleasures are allowed: music, liquor, body, dance, food. Collective and profane pleasures that burst the time of everyday life to become the mythical time of the festival.
Finally, the research reveals how the Corraleja has roots in pagan festivities and carnival practices that allow the liberation of the body and the rupture with the everyday, which contributes to understand the continuity and resignification of popular traditions today.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This article is part of the Project: The Central Cemetery of Sincelejo, a cultural history 1878 - 1985. Social representations in letters and photography. It received funding from the National Program of Science, Technology and Innovation in Social Human Sciences and Education of the Minciencias, Colombia.
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