“¡Huayra huayra pichcamanta!”: Augurio, risa y regeneración en la política tradicional (Pacota, Huarochirí)

Abstract

A variant of the oracular game pichca, different from variants described by Gentile Lafaille (1998), provides an annual augury for agropastoralism in central Huarochirí (Department of Lima, Peru). It is playful, but beliefs and practices around it also have practical consequence. Today as in the Huarochirí Quechua manuscript of 1608 [?], a pattern of alternating dualism serves to regenerate political order in the face of climatic and historical imponderables.