The day’s entertainment often closes with some
daring vaquero lassoing, saddling and mounting a big, untamed bull.
One of the purposes of a rodeo is that the owners of cattle in
neighboring haciendas may have all of the cattle brought in from the
hills, identified and separated. The cattle belonging to each estate
bear the registered mark of the owner by which they are identified.
Frequently animals stray from their ranges and potreros and join the
herds in neighboring haciendas. In these annual rodeos, or round-ups,
they are divided and each lot according to mark or brand is returned to
the owner. All the vaqueros of the different estates in the locality
attend and participate. In this way the hacendados get all the wild
young animals from the hills brought in, separated and branded at
practically no expense. What is considered sport, and a festival by
the vaqueros and employés on the big farms, is in reality the annual
collection of cattle, as a matter of business to the owner.
The crowd constituting the spectators at a rodeo is made up of peons,
inquilinos and vaqueros from neighboring haciendas. They dance the
cuaca, and there is music of primitive harps and guitars. There is much
drinking of chicha and exchange of badinage, all mixed with talk of,
and comment on the rodeo, and the personal skill and bravery, or the
lack of those qualities, displayed by those engaged in the sport. In
the evening, after the conclusion of the rodeo, along the dusty country
roads leading to the homes of these people one may witness strenuous
and exciting contests in topeadura, in which sturdy Chilean ponies and
tipsy riders form the component part.
CHACRA.
Chacra (vegetable farm), is usually land rented in small sections by
the poor people from the rich landowners. After the servants have been
allotted their portion of land in the poorest soil of the hacienda,
other portions are rented, usually for a stipulated rental of two
thousand kilos of beans for each quadra (four acres). At the harvest
time the landowner must be paid his rent, either in the proportion
of the products stipulated, or the cash market value of same. This
settlement must be made before the “chacrero” is permitted to remove
any of the crops. The lessee’s family live in the chacra in huts made
of the branches of trees. The hacendado knows the productive capacity
of his land, and gauges the rental value accordingly. If the renter
manages to save a few sacks of beans, after living and paying his rent,
he is fortunate. As a rule this class of tillers of the soil receive
nothing more than a meager living for their labor.
HABITS AND CUSTOMS
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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