This paper examines the role of magic in shaping gendered trajectories within the Huanchaco festival in Baños del Inca (Cajamarca), celebrated in honor of the Virgin of the Nativity (Cánepa Koch 1993, Martínez & Rodríguez 2014)). The ritual performance is organized around distinct dance groups: the chunchos (adult male dancers associated with Amazonian inhabitants), the pallas (young, unmarried women representing Inca maidens), and the incaicos, who are often schoolboys (Reichlen 1953). Although publicly framed as Catholic, the festival incorporates indigenous conceptions of magical efficacy.

Drawing on repeated field visits conducted over three consecutive years, I analyze how male dancers account for their withdrawal from performance. While pallas cease dancing upon marriage in accordance with norms of female chastity, and incaicos withdraw as the boys reach adulthood, chunchos often explain their discontinuation to having been harmed through magic. This belief also motivates protective practices undertaken privately by dancers and musicians in preparation for the festival or during the making of instruments.

I argue that magic operates as a discursive framework that externalizes masculine decline. Rather than interpreting bodily limitation as personal failure or social regulation, male withdrawal is attributed to occult aggression. Ritual masculinity is thus symbolically preserved even as participation becomes precarious.