There were a lot of interesting bits in this week’s reading that stood out to me. Conceptually, I thought that one of the most intriguing parts at the beginning was the bit about how land was stolen “officially.” The importance of the land was talked about a lot at the beginning, in relation to the animals and the landscape as well as the people. This made it all the more impactful reading about how the land was stolen. As the land was mostly stolen little by little, in ever-decreasing sections, along the way there seemed to be an integration of the indigenous into the colonizer’s systems and ways of living. This reminded me of the idea of double consciousness that we talked about last week, especially in the section about how they were able to work within the system to earn money as maids and hands, turning into “town dwelling community members.” Meanwhile, however, they also developed a political consciousness from living close together in the same place as others with similar experiences, and developed a collective expression of hatred for the colonizers who had taken their land. These notions together with the ways of life that they had before their land was stolen seem to make up a double consciousness.

Another thing that I enjoyed about this book was how it told a story with a specific vision. The bullfight and the telling of it provided the novel with a nice structure and plot that stood out to me. I liked how the book did not try to do it all, or tell us everything about these people which is impossible, but rather focused on one specific aspect and used that to illuminate what life was like for different social classes in Peru. I felt that this topic gave it a tone that was less looking down upon Indigenous peoples or trying to explain the entire world. I don’t think there is anything inherently wrong with stories that explain the origins of a worldview, and I think those can be valuable too, but I liked how this story showed us that not every book about Indigineity has to be that way.

The third thing that I found interesting was the title of the book. The significance of the languages used for each word did not really strike me until after reading the first bit of the book. Especially because this translation is written in neither Quechua nor Spanish, the titular words stand out. Yawar in Quechua, because it is the blood of their people that is being celebrated, and Fiesta in Spanish because they are doing the celebrating. The context within which these parties were described highlights the violence even more by contrasting the actions of stripping people of the things that mean the most to them and their children, like the bulls, and then talking about happy music, wine, and dancing.