Dancing With the Devil, South American Style : Festival: Tapping oppression for inspiration, joyful performances celebrating independence will be featured during ‘A Salute to Bolivia.’

A foreman mercilessly and continuously whips African slaves forced to work the mines of the Andes. Other slaves move lugubriously under the weight of their chains. Seven devils--one for each sin, serpents springing from their foreheads--are pitted against Michael the Archangel.

If Bolivia under the Spanish colonial system was not a very happy place, dances such as the three described above--all of which will be performed at a South American Festival on Sunday at Old World Village in Huntington Beach--today inspire mirth in participants and spectators.

And it seems that the darker the subject, the greater the glee.

“It was the slaves who survived who created the dances,” noted Alfonso Bernal of Santa Ana, coordinator of “A Salute to Bolivia” with Old World Village merchant Julietta Lewis. “These are very happy dances.”

Performances by dance groups including Diablada Boliviana--Bernal is one of its devils--Fraternidads Morenada, Bolivia Joven Caporales and Bolivia Andina Caporales will take place in the streets of the village and are free to the public.

The group Alturas will use such instruments as sampona (pan pipes) and patitas (sheep hoofs) in music of the ancient Quechua and Aymara cultures. Saltenas (meat-filled rolls) from Bolivia and alfajores (custard-filled pastry) from Peru will be served at Old World Bakery.

The dances are not only happy, but they’re also very colorful. The Morenada dancers, who represent the chained slaves, wear vestments embroidered with silver thread and completely covered by ornaments and semiprecious stones; some of the costumes weigh 65 pounds.

The devils of Diablada wear bejeweled capes and horse- and oxtail-hair robes embroidered with lizards, toads and snakes. The devil dance also has its roots, appropriately enough, underground: It honors the Virgin of the Mine Shaft.

“These dances all satirize the Spanish in the 18th Century,” noted Lewis, who owns the village’s South American Corner shop.

“The music of Bolivia, however, is much older than the conquistadors. And when it comes to the music of the Incas and other ancient civilizations, Bolivia is the most pure.

“Bolivia is landlocked. It lies at the very center of South America, and more of the population is indigenous. There is a Catholic influence, but there is less outside influence than in any other South American country,” Lewis said.

Alturas founder Raul Ayllon plays 40 musical instruments, ranging from the charango, a small guitar made from an armadillo shell, to the bombos, drums made from a hollow tree trunk and horse, goat or llama hide. He’s been known to play five of the instruments simultaneously-- charango, bombo, patitas, quenas and, his favorite (“for its haunting sound”), sampona .

Ayllon makes all the instruments he plays. The most difficult, he said, is the quenas, which appears to be little more than a simple bamboo flute.

“To make a guitar, everything is there,” Ayllon explained. “(For) the flute, the holes have to be exactly right. Either they’re sharp or they’re flat. Left, right, bigger, smaller. . . . The flutes take time.”

Bolivians have much to celebrate this month, Bernal said. The country gained its independence from the Spanish on Aug. 6, 1825, an event that has been celebrated throughout August. And its soccer team will compete Sunday against Brazil in the World Cup match, which will be aired by three of the Old World Village shops.

Beyond that, he said, “Bolivia is a small country but very rich in resources. In the mountains, we have snow year-round. In the valleys we have all kinds of fruits and vegetables. The low part, the Amazon, is very hot, with all kinds of vegetation and an immense variety of animals and snakes and exotic flowers.

“We don’t have a beach--we lost it to Chile, and we’ve been negotiating for years to get it back. But there’s so much else to be happy about. We party a lot.”

* The South American Festival, “A Salute to Bolivia (Un Saludo a Bolivia),” takes place Sunday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., at Old World Village, 7561 Center Ave., Huntington Beach. Free. (714) 894-5151.