matanza

/məˈtɑn.zə/

Etymology

Borrowed from Spanish matanza (“slaughter”), from matar (“to kill”).

Why this word is great

MATANZA — [Noun] A place or act of slaughter, particularly of animals for their products or of people in a massacre, often within a Latin American context. Borrowed from Spanish matanza (“slaughter”), from matar (“to kill”), of uncertain earlier origin, possibly from Arabic مَطَرَ (maṭara, “to rain down, strike”) or Latin mactāre (“to sacrifice, slaughter”). Unlike "abattoir" (a sterile, industrial killing floor) or "carnage" (a frenzy of human bloodshed), matanza carries the weight of ritual, of necessity, of a blade honed for both feast and atrocity. It is the iron scent of a village pig slaughtered at dawn, the crimson pooling in dry earth; the bullet-riddled plaza where bodies fall like wheat; the quiet efficiency of a butcher’s hands, parting flesh from bone. To name it is to acknowledge the intimacy of killing, the way life is taken and transformed.

noun

  1. A place where animals are slaughtered, for their hides, meat, tallow, etc, particularly in a Latin American context; a slaughterhouse.“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 […]”
  2. A slaughter, as of cattle or pigs (for their hides, meat, etc), of tuna, or of people; the act of butchering or slaughtering.“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 th”