A big crucifix around their necks, ringing bells, and spewing chicha

Some have called me a world traveller, but the Virgin Mary, that woman gets around. Over the decades, she seems to have appeared in some of the most random places. Some see her in the silhouette of fence posts, and even in the frosting of a Cinnabon. But most of the time it seems that her apparitions occur on hills or in caves in pretty remote places. The local example was when a young man from the pueblito of Quillacollo saw her on the “top of the mountain” (or, “Urkupiño” in the native Quechua lingo) on 15 August in the early 1800s. Since then, a huge celebration of her appearance has grown to a festival lasting three days and attracting over a half million people from all across South America (and, of course, a handful of gringos like ourselves).
Hopefully from my pictures (which I will add soon) you can get an idea of the masses of people attending mass (masses, by the way, were celebrated back to back throughout the day). The dudes in the white hard hats in front of the crowd are military guards there for crowd control. Here’s how it works (the best I can tell anyway). Festivities began on Monday 14 August with two days of groups from all over Bolivia doing their native dances, each performing according to their local custom. On the third day there is a pilgrimage of sorts, “caminata,” they call it, which begins in Cochabamba, and continues for about 10 km to the summit of the hill. The devout (either those who want the most solemn experience, or those who want to avoid the crowds) begin the four-hour trek around midnight. Pilgrims continue to pour in in droves throughout the next day. Brad and I, not really knowing what was going on, opted to come the next morning and ended up on a bus that took us all the way to the foot of the hill, so we missed the bulk of the caminata. So, after what turned out to be a 2 ½ hour journey from Tiraque, Brad and I arrived around noon.
What we saw was staggering. More people in one place than I had ever seen before, about three times the number of people that show up to Bristol Motor Speedway on race day (and about 30 times more than surround the Smurf Turf for home Boise State games). What’s more, they were in much closer proximity to one another than most of us are comfortable. With one hand guarding my pocket with my money in it, and the other hand keeping a hold of Brad so that we didn’t get separated, we inched along, literally taking steps that were little more than shifting our weight, packed together in the crowd more tightly than in a game of sardines, and having no control over which direction to move in. At one time when we were climbing the hill I experienced fear for my safety for the first time since I arrived in Bolivia. Brad and I were in a mass of people moving up the hill, but there was also a mass moving down the hill. With gravity on their side, they gained momentum pushing down the hill. Squished so tighly together, there was not even room for us to have our feet shoulder width apart, so we didn’t have a base on which to stay balanced. We were totally at the mercy of the sway of the crowd, which truly moved like an amoeboid monster. Ironically, it was the fact that we were packed so tightly together that saved us. Although we were being shoved around, it would have been virtually impossible to fall, because those who surrounded us served as a wall to support us. However, if anyone had have fallen, certain injury would have occurred.

But here’s the weird thing. Indigenous culture runs deep, and people are always hesitant to simply turn in their beliefs for another set just because they are told to do so. Pagan influence still perforates our modern Christian culture (the association of ghosts and goblins with Halloween, trees at Christmas, and of course rabbits, chicks and eggs at Eastertime as a symbol of fertility. The word “Easter” itself has the same origins as oestrous cycle, for you biologists and agronomists out there). In any case, the Quechuan people are no different. So, even though the Spanish conquerors, colonists and missionaries introduced Catholocism here nearly half a millenium ago, old habits die hard, and an interesting mix of Catholicism and ancient tradition is the result.
Back to the weird thing. The Pachamama. The goddess of the Earth. Fertility, bountiful harvest, the bearer of all goodness. A similar figure exists in many religions: a female figure, the symbol of birth and nurturing. It was to the Pachamama that the people turned for their needs, the crops in their fields, the health of their families. And it was to the Pachamama that they gave thanks. So, it is no surprise that when Catholic missionaries shared with them the Greatest Story Ever Told, they identified most strongly with Mary, the Mother of God, the bearer of Eternal Life. Since then, devotion to Christianity has encompassed an understanding of the Pachamama as a part of the picture.
During mass on Sundays, the local priest even says “We give thanks to Jesus Christ and the Pachamama,” strengthening the association between the Giver of Life that they have always known and worshipped, and the Giver of Eternal Life that Europeans introduced to them. Our Lord already has so many names to help His people know Him better: Yahweh, I Am, Rabbi, Lamb of God, Abba, Alpha and Omega, the list goes on and on. While the Pachamama isn’t exactly the same as the God we know and understand, she is important to their understanding of their faith.

So, back to the festival of Urkupiña. Because it is a festival commemorating the apparition of Mary on the hill, acknowledging the Pachamama’s role in the whole thing could not be overlooked. It is a common occurrence at sights of apparitions for people to sing songs, pray rosaries, light candles. At Urkupiña, they take it to a whole nother level. There’s mass, sprinkling of holy water, visiting the statue of Mary, all that normal stuff, of course. Then there are the offerings. Traditions has it that if you bring a miniature replica of something, like a house, money, car, etc., to the wall around the monument, and burn it, then a real one of that thing will be yours by the time the year is through. So, in addition to worrying about being trampled by the crowd, there was the added obstacle of fires burning all around the edges of the walkway. Some people hedged their bets and let the yatiri (witchdoctors, sort of) do the burning. These were men, usually sort of scruffy looking, wearing woven ponchos, a big crucifix around their necks, ringing bells, and spewing chicha (a local maiz brew). My Bolivian housemate Wendy says it is all for show and money, but the people there believe whole-heartedly. It seems to me to be a bit like the lottery.

All in all, the festival/pilgrimage struck me as much less solemn and reverent than I had expected. The place was lined with tents of vendors selling the miniature replicas of the thing you want so that you could turn around a burn it. A role of fake dollars “worth” $2000 sold for about 12 cents. For two pesos (about a quarter) you could pet a llama or feed a foot-tall monkey dressed like a mariachi. Cotton candy, balloons, sun hats, all manner of food and drink, as well as artisan-type things were for sale everywhere. All the tents you see in the photos are selling these sorts of things. It was kind of like the Easter Sunday meets the State Fair.

However peculiar the people’s beliefs are to us, the people exhibit a kind of sincere devotion we could all learn something from. God is great, and as much as we try to describe, understand, and get to know Him, the totality of His infinite love is bigger than any box we could try to fit Him into. Couldn’t there also be an infinite number of ways to experience His love?