La Perseverancia Chicha Festival, 2014

How about some chicha? These folks also had chicha made from quinua.

This weekend the La Perseverancia neighborhood is putting on its annual Chicha Festival. Chicha, usually made from fermented corn, is a traditional drink inherited from the Muisca Indians. La Perseverancia is a hardscrabble, working class neighborhood where families have made chicha for generations.

The 'best' chicha. And they
say so themselves.

The neighborhood, popularly known as 'La Perse', has a reputation for crime and is off limits to tourists and even most Colombians on normal days. But during the festival police abound and the place opens up. 

The area was long known for making chicha. But around the turn of the last century Gustavo Leo Kopp founded the La Bavaria beer brewery down the hill and built a model neighborhood for his employees here. Beer payed taxes, chicha did not. Industry and government allied themselves to denounce chicha consumption as dangerous and unhealthy. But chicha-making persevered, and today many residents brew the drink in homes and stores. And, ironically, fermented foods have today become trendy for the health-conscious. 

We visited La Perseverancia today during a bike tour.

The festival continues thru tomorrow.

Pouring chichas. 

The statue in the background is of Jorge Eliecer Gaitán, a populist politician assassinated in 1948, who was popular in this working-class neighborhood.

'Delicious chicha of corn and honey.'

The chicha festival, with La Perseverancia's church in the background.

'Chicha Doña Leo.' Doña Leo has won several chicha competitions.

Baby birds for sale on the street. 

This boy got a baby chick. 

Don't wander down here. A closed-off street in La Perseverancia.

A La Perseverancia house.

A tourist tastes chicha.

'Chicha creates brutes. Don't consume fermented drinks.' A sign from another era warns against drinking chicha.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

La Perseverancia's Chicha-less Festival

During the festival a band played to a crowd seated in front of the church. 

I attended the La Perseverancia neighborhood's annual Chicha Festival this year, only to be  isappointed - there was no chicha for sale. An acquaintance met there explained that the chicha had been sold out to a record crowd on Saturday. That's no too surprising, since the last several weeks have been quite warm, with a blazing sun. I suppose that that's a vote in favor of the festival organizers' decision to move the festival from its historical October date, when it often rained.

A dancer spins during the chicha festival.

La Perseverancia is a traditional blue-collar neighborhood on the lower reaches of Bogotá's Easter Hills, between La Macarena and the National Park. Originally built by and for the workers of the Bavaria Beer Brewery with the support of the company's far-sighted owner Leo Kopp, it has become known instead for brewing of chicha, a traditional drink made from fermented corn. 

Serving chicha from a plastic bottle.
This was about the only chicha I saw today.

The neighborhood, known affectionately as 'La Perse', grew up in the first decades of the 1900s, when families migrated from the Egipto and Belen neighborhoods to work in the Bavaria Brewery, located down the hill across Ave. Septima from what was then a prison and is now the National Museum. The old Bavaria brewery, with its recognizably German arquitecture, today contains shops and offices. The company, which continues to dominate Colombian beer-making, has a newer brewery in western Bogotá. 

A street fills up - but not with chicha drinkers. 

Bavaria owner Kopp, a Jewish-German immigrant, helped his workers pay for their homes and assisted them in bringing water, electricity and sewerage services to the neighborhood. Many families also built adobe homes with their own hands and sweat. In the spirit of a blue-collar community, the church was named after Christ the Laborer and the plaza featured a 'Monument to Work', which has apparently disappeared. 

The neighborhood became a stronghold of support for fiery leftist politician Jorge Eliecer Gaitan, who was assassinated in the city center in 1948. Today, there's a small statue to the martyred leader, his right arm as always raised up toward the sky.

A crowd in front of the
Church of Christ Laborer.

The chicha festival, which began in 1988, honors a drink which has survived in a hostile world. For decades in the early 1900s the beer and liquor industries and the government propagandized against chicha, claiming that it caused diseases and turned drinkers insane. The anti-chicha lobby's real motives were economic - to sell more of competing alcoholic drinks. The government also wanted to turn the public away from homemade chicha, which didn't pay taxes, to other drinks, which did. 

But chicha has survived, and continues holding an important place in the stomachs and minds of many Bogotanos.

Chicha's survival also happens to be an illustration of another thing - the futility of trying to prohibit mind-altering substances.

Candies for sale. 

A poster celebrates the festival...but where's La chicha?

A man selling pieces of cocoanut fried in sugar cane sugar. 

A statue of working-class hero Jorge Eliecer Gaitan, who was assassinated in central Bogotá in 1948.

A children's band performs traditional music.

An uncommonly warm and sunny day. 

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

La Perseverancia's Chicha Festival!

Every year, around this time, Bogotá's troubled hillside neighborhood La Perseverancia becomes a center of attention, music and popular culture - it's their annual Chicha Festival!

Chicha is a traditional Colombian drink made from fermented corn. (In other countries they make chicha out of other fruits and vegetables.) And La Perseverancia is Bogotá's traditional chicha-brewing neighborhood.

Today's bike tour included chicha tasting in La Perseverancia!

Dance to make it rain chicha instead of water!

Pour that chicha!

Much more than chicha was for sale at the festival. Corn on the cob is called mazorca in Colombia.

The La Perseverancia neighborhood, popularly known as La Perse, was founded to house the employees of the Bavaria Brewery, which was located directly downhill, across the street from what is today the National Museum. (The old brewery building has now been converted into shops and offices.)

The brewery's founder, Leo Siegfried Kopp, was a German-Jewish immigrant who helped his workers bring drinking water and other luxuries to their neighborhood. Today, Kopp's tomb in Bogotá's Central Cemetery has become a place of pilgrimage for people who call Kopp a saint and believe that he can do them favors.

Chicha was first made the Muisca indigenous people, who also made chicha from yucca, pineapple and other crops. Today, across Latin America people make chicha from different fruits and vegetables. In some rural regions, the women start off the fermentation process by chewing the corn kernels and then spitting them out.

See more pics on flickr.



Much of the chicha is finally drunk in La Candelaria's Callejon del Embudo, right around the corner from Bogotá Bike Tours.

Lots of chicha is drunk in La Candelaria's pasaje del embudo.