Until the 18th Century, they existed as satellite communities linked by a narrative of common ancestry. It was not until the 19th Century that one could speak of a Betsileo state, a union forced by conquest by the Merina, the largest ethnic group in Madagascar.
The Betsileo are Madagascar’s third-largest group. Betsileo, a Malagasy people living in the central highlands of south-central Madagascar.
They speak a dialect of Malagasy, the West Austronesian language common to all Malagasy peoples. River valleys inhabited and farmed by Betsileo are separated from one another by dense montane forest. The Betsileo were initially divided into many autonomous clans.
The expanding Merina kingdom to the north conquered them in the early 19th century, after which they came under French colonial administration. They are efficient cultivators of rice on painstakingly irrigated and terraced hillsides.
They also grow cassava, corn (maize), yams, bananas, and sugarcane. Many others have become carpenters, bricklayers, or other skilled craftsmen, or have settled in other areas of Madagascar to work as merchants or government employees.
The Betsileo are of Malayo-Indonesian origin, whereas Madagascar’s population is largely mixed with Bantu African and East Asia descent. Traditionally they claim a common heritage with the Antemoro from the east coast and the Bara from further south.
They traditionally lived in huts made of vegetable fiber, reserving wooden huts for the nobles, per Malagasy architectural norms. Both were often adorned with decorative motifs or even the horns of zebu. Nowadays mud and brick houses are more common.
Bullfighting, locally known as savika, is a sport that sees young men line up to defeat a zebu, the humped breed of cattle. An audience cheers as the young men are bloodied by the beasts or successfully get to ride it.
It begins by letting the bull into a fenced yard and teasing it into anger by trying to climb it via its hump. A young man, who is barefooted, has to hold on to the hump for as long as possible if it cannot possibly ride the animal.
Savika is a rite of passage. Whoever a young man has his eyes on will be at the occasion, verifying for herself how strong the young man is. The history of savika itself is undetermined.
It, however, appears indigenous to the people, unborrowed from matador culture in Iberian countries. The Betsileo maintain savika is from an-drazana, the ancestral way of doing things. In recent times, the sport is still ongoing, with its purposes unspoiled by modernity.
