Bahá'i & Tinku

03.22.2004

My first Bahá'i experience was interesting. Saturday night, the Bolivian Bahá'i community hosted its Naw Ruz (new year's) celebration — and I was invited by M, who's a friend of Karen, a gringa Bahá'i. After a not-so-brief set of scripture readings & explanations of the community's faith, there was a tinku presentation.

Now. Tinku's not a Bahá'i tradition, but one from Bolivia's altiplano. It's a lovely dance that ritualizes (a better word than "interprets") the meeting (tinku roughly means "meeting") between two villages. As lovely as the dance is, it's essentially ritualized violence. The dance involves lines of men & women dancing in "warrior" steps — and eventually clashing in a męlée of fisticuffs & whatnot, literally (it's not uncommon for someone to die in a genuine altiplano tinku celebration).

But. The Bahá'i are non-violent pacifists. So. This tinku dance had no "fighting" — replaced w/ everyone joining hands, instead. Sort of described to me as "tinku meets square dancing."

I was roped into taking pictures & filming the event as best I could, juggling a digital camcorder, a film camera, and my own digital camera. I'm told the dance was quite lovely. I did get to see it later on video.

After the tinku, there was a sajta de pollo & ají de lengua dinner. We sat, talking politics & telling jokes, eating delicious ginger cake. Then, it was down to Zona Sur to Rockhouse for dancing & drinks — and listening to Té con Té.

Posted by Miguel at 04:31 PM

Comments

Cool! Sunday we celebrated the Persian New Year "NoRooz" aswell. Saloumeh set up a little get together. :) I'm gonna post on it .. I am still working on this MT thing .... I have more time now .. so i can fool around with it. :)

Posted by: Andres Centellas at March 22, 2004 06:16 PM

Interesting post.

Posted by: tom at March 23, 2004 12:48 AM

Lo del Bahai en Bolivia, en casa se llama SNOBISMO. Pero bueno, pa' todo hay gente.

Posted by: Sinaloa at March 23, 2004 07:43 AM

Interesting, did you eat arab food?

Posted by: Daniel at March 23, 2004 10:13 AM

We ate sajta de pollo.

Posted by: Miguel at March 27, 2004 05:24 PM