matanza

Captain Hall has given a very excellent description of a matanza, the slaughtering place of a large hacienda, where cattle are killed in numbers with the view of making charqui : the fleshy parts alone are used, all the soft fat being carefully cut off […]

The slaughtering period (matanza) lasts usually a month, and is a holiday for the shepherds, […] and fatten themselves and their families for a long time with sheep's heads and livers. The cooked meat, from which the fat has been extracted (carne de chito), lies there in complete mountains after a matanza : it is bought up by the dealers and conveyed to the villages, where the Indians buy it at the market for a mere trifle […]