THE DANCE OF THE DEVIL AND THE CUCAMBA
In Atanquez, a small town at the bottom of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Colombia, the Kankuamo indigenous community celebrated the Corpus Christi, a celebration that combines Christianity beliefs, brought by the Spaniards during the Colony, and the native ancestral traditions which survived the invasion.
This festivity, celebrated annually in several regions of the country commemorates the battle between good and evil, or God and the Devil. Here in Atanquez the celebration included several sacred dances such as the “dance of the cucambas”, during which men dress up as cucambas, a type of bird, using rooster feathers and long stripes of the “dugao” palm tree, which each man collects from the mountain to fabricate his own costume.
According to the oral tradition, God presented himself in the shape of a bird in a battle against the Devil, held at the top of a mountain, where the Devil was defeated thanks to the cucamba’s thick feathers and long beak.
