Caporales
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Caporales is a typical Bolivian dance. It is a legacy of the Spanish colony where caporales were Spaniards born in the colonies. After the Spaniards left both countries, caporales began as a dance to show that legacy. The dance however has a prominent religious aspect. One supposedly dances for The Virgin of Socavon (patroness of miners) and promises to dance for three years of one's life. According to Researchers at the University of San Marcos in Lima, Peru, the caporales is a Bolivian dance that came from the Tundiki and Saya, Afro Andean dances of the Yungas region, Bolivia and were presented formally as caporales in the religious festival of Gran Poder, La Paz Bolivia en the 40's by the Escalier family.
It has been popularized greatly and is also danced in neighboring countries such as Peru and Chile, and the Lake Titikaka region of Peru has also claimed its origin but research in Universities of Peru and Bolivia have not found any evidence of Africans in the highlands of Peru or of any formally organized Caporales groups with a registered and long history like in Bolivia.
Caporal or caporales today is a typical Bolivian folkloric dance very popular in the national festivities, Carnival in particular. A male caporal dress would depict an old Spanish military guard. Wearing heeled boots bearing large bells known as "cascabeles", a male dancer carries a hat in his left hand and a whip in his right. A female caporal dress consists of a miniskirt, fancy shoes and a round top hat pinned to her hair. The style and colours of the dress are maintained the same for both the men and women of a certain group, but can vary drastically between groups. Men and women usually dance separately in a progressive march style dance. Caporales is most popular among young men and women in their twenties and early thirties because of its physical demand.
The dance is often mistaken for the afro-bolivian Saya, a confusion partly due to popular Caporales song texts like the ones composed by the popular Bolivian group Los Kjarkas. However, there is a connection with the Saya: when the Caporales dance was created in the late 1960ies by the Estrada Pacheco family they claimed to have been inspired by the performance of some afro-Bolivian dancers from the Yungas region. First the dance didn't have a proper music - the dancers adapted Huayños and Kullawadas before the first Caporales songs were composed. The rhythm is different from the Saya as well as the whole dance which gradually became on of the most popular dances in Bolivia, especially appreciated by young people of the middle and upper class who form huge Caporales groups for Carnival, Gran Poder and other "entradas".
