Title: Yermis

General Information about Item:

• Genre and Sub Genre
  • Customary folklore: Childhood folklore game

• Language: Spanish

• Country where Item is from: Colombia

Informant Data:

Carlos Quintero was born in Cali, Colombia on February 18, 1968. He was born to two Colombian parents and grew up in Colombia. He lived in Colombia until 1993 when he began working on cruise ships and then moved to Maryland, USA, where he currently resides, in 1994.

Contextual Data:

Carlos grew up in Colombia to Colombian parents, so he was completely immersed in the Colombian culture. As a young boy, Carlos would spend a lot of his time outside playing with other children. One of the most common games played in Colombia by children is Yermis. It is a really unique game to Colombia. Carlos played Yermis mutiple times as a child and continues to see children playing it in Colombia today.

Item:

Yermis is a game where there are 2 teams with about 5 to 10 people each. One team is the attacking team and the other is the defending team. The attacking team has to roll a ball towards a stack of bottle caps. Once the bottle caps are knocked down, the defending team has to try to build the stack back up and the attacking team has to prevent them from doing that by hitting members of the defending team with the ball. Once a defender is hit with the ball, they are out and can no longer play. The game ends when either the attacking team hits all of the members of the defending team or the defending team is able to build the stack of bottle caps back up. If the defending team succeeds, they yell “¡Yermis!” to symbolize that they have won.

Informant’s Comments:

Carlos notes that Yermis was mostly played in parks or on the streets and that it was mostly played by children from the lower classes. He also mentioned that when he goes back to Colombia he no longer sees as many children playing Yermis as when he was a child. He credits this to the advances in technology and how children are more attracted to video/computer games. He finds it to be a shame because Yermis is a real community and family game that brings a lot of people together and now that is not really happening anymore.

Collector’s Comments:

I noticed that the simplicity of Yermis really facilitates it to be a game common to the street and to the lower classes. Bottle caps can be found pretty much anymore as well as a single ball. These are easily accessible items to everyone and allows for Yermis to played by anyone, regardless of class.

Collector’s Name: Chris Quintero

Tags/Keywords:

• Game, Colombian folklore, Colombia, Colombian