Argentina
Casabindo
Argentina's only bull ceremony strips ribbons from horns at 3,400 metres each August.
Casabindo in Jujuy Province holds the Fiesta de la Virgen de la Asunción every 15th of August — the only toreo de la vincha in Argentina, a ceremony where a bull enters the village plaza not to be fought or killed but to have a ribbon with coins pulled from between its horns by young men who try to dodge it on foot. The church facing the plaza, built in 1772 and one of the finest colonial baroque churches in the northwest, holds more gold-leaf than most Argentine museums; the village surrounding it has 200 residents and no services beyond a single irregular bus.
Casabindo is a village in the Puna de Jujuy at 3,400 metres, historically the centre of a colonial administrative district that once extended across the high plateau. The Iglesia de la Asunción de Casabindo, built 1772-1796, contains an exceptional collection of Cuzqueño school paintings — a colonial-era Andean artistic tradition that merged European religious iconography with indigenous Andean motifs — and one of the most elaborate gilded altarpieces in the Argentine north. The annual Fiesta de la Virgen de la Asunción on 15 August combines the Catholic feast day with the toreo de la vincha, a pre-colonial ceremony that may predate Spanish arrival and has been absorbed into the Catholic calendar rather than replaced by it. The surrounding puna landscape — flamingo lagoons, salt flats, and vicuña herds — is accessible by dirt road from Abra Pampa (the nearest town, 40 kilometres north).
Solo
Arriving in Casabindo on 15 August for the toreo — staying in the community hospedaje the night before, watching the procession take the virgin from the church to the plaza, then the ceremony itself in the high-altitude morning light — is one of those Argentine cultural experiences that the normal tourist itinerary never finds. The puna setting adds altitude to everything else.
Friends
A group making the Jujuy puna circuit — Salinas Grandes, Casabindo, Laguna de los Pozuelos, Yavi — covers a complete Andean cultural landscape in two days. Casabindo is the point where colonial religious art and indigenous ceremony appear in the same building, which is the experience that northwest Argentina provides nowhere else with this concentration.
- The Toreo de la Vincha is Argentina's only surviving corrida-style ceremony — the bull is unharmed, only ribbons taken.
- The ceremony occurs once yearly on 15 August in front of the white Baroque church, in the same form it has for centuries.
- Casabindo's church (1717) holds a colonial painting of the Virgin with a military breastplate and gunbelt — unique in the Catholic world.
- The village has a permanent population under 50 — on festival day, thousands arrive from across Jujuy and Bolivia.
Humita en chala steamed in corn husks and empanadas jujeñas filled with charqui appear at festival stalls.
Api morado, a thick purple corn drink spiced with cinnamon, warms hands at 3,400 metres.
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