Peruvian retablo

Retablos are a sophisticated Peruvian folk art in the form of portable boxes which depict religious, historical, or everyday events that are important to the Indigenous people of the highlands.

Retablos came to the New World as small portable altars, Nativity scenes and other religious topics used by the early priests to evangelize the Indigenous.

Later, retablos evolved to include daily scenes in the lives of the Andean people, such as harvests, processions, feasts, and tableaux depicting shops and homes.

The use of wood for the outside box remained, but other materials, such as gypsum, clay, or a potato-gypsum-clay paste mix, were increasingly used for the figures because of their ease of handling and durability.

In recent years the political violence and the fighting between the Peruvian Army and the Marxist Sendero Luminoso (“Shining Path”) guerrillas around Ayacucho has forced many peasant families in the area to migrate to the capital city of Lima, where they make and sell their crafts commercially.

He uses various herbs, including coca leaves, and passes a live Andean guinea pig (the cuy) over the body or the patient as a diagnostic tool.

The cuy is then killed and its entrails studied to diagnose the illness and prescribe treatment, which is a combination of traditional medicinal herbs and Christian practices.

The top part of the retablo represents the Colonial period and shows the Pistaku dressed as a Franciscan priest who extracts human fat to make bells whose sound varies according to the victim.

The middle portion shows the modern period when the Pistaku, wearing a cape, is a long-haired gringo who extracts fat to lubricate his airplanes and machines.