'Takanakuy' traditional peruvian fighting festival

By Nestor Palomino

While most of catholic people around the world celebrate Christmas day usually into family meeting, remembering Jesus birthday, eating typical foods, giving gifts and mainly sharing love and peace; in contrast to this kind of celebration there is a little town in Perú where people celebrate Christmas like enemies, due to it’s a special day for punching, fight like boxing sport, where the local residents fix up their personal problems among them just by fighting. This unusual festival is called in Peru’s native language “TAKANAKUY” which means “Punching Fight”, this takes place every year on December 25^th just on a faraway little town called Chumbivilcas, located in Cusco – Perú and it’s a custom that comes from ancient Inka’s people.

Fights are short 3 minutes of free boxing, because they don’t have many rules, the only thing that isn’t allowed for fighters is keep hitting when the opponent is fallen, matches among men, women and children, always begin with a greeting and a huge hug between fighters, that means they aren’t really enemies, so after finishing the short battle their arguments will finish for ever, and they will remain as good friends.

Last year several foreign tourists came to Chumbivilcas town to spend Christmas day and of course enjoy of this famous festival, two of those visitors Robert and Steven, Australian people, decided to take part of this contest as international challengers of “TAKANAKUY 2014”, to everyone´s surprise both of them were winners by knockout punch to their opponents. After the fighting, when Robert was asked how he had heard about TAKANAKUY, he said “by google, just searching by google”, on the other hand, Steven after getting congratulations for his good performance said “I had never fougth in my life, I don´t know how I won the fighting, I think it was luck”.

All in all many people hate and reject this controversial fighting festival due to they believe it’s an awful way to display violence, harmful specially for children’s personality, also they consider it’s a wrong and silly way to settle their personal arguments or disagreements, so those kind of problems should be fixed up under the laws; but others agree and enjoy with this festival, everyone in the community likes it a lot, because it’s a nice time for relaxing, dancing and singing folk music, eating typical foods and drinking different beverages. Finally, this unusual way to celebrate Christmas is difficult to understand for current people who don’t know well old customs of ancient Peruvian culture, so many years ego Inka’s people used to live just as warriors, they overcame their enemies and other cultures. However, I don’t agree with children’s participation in any kind of fighting, because violence is so harmful for their personality.