Back from Qoyllur Rit’i & Ukuku Madness

El Fotógrafo and I are back from the pilgrimage of Qoyllur Rit’i in the Sinakara Mountain range, 80 miles southeast of Cusco, where for three brutally cold nights (May 16 – 18) we camped out below Qolqepunku glacier, along with tens of thousands of pilgrims from parts of Peru and Bolivia. Our goal? To document, in photos and interviews, the changes that global warming has wrought on this 17,000-foot-high glacier, which is considered sacred by the Andean people, and to find out what pilgrims think about their revered glacier vanishing into the ether.

It was a rough stint, but worth it: EF got some wonderful shots, I was able to interview people in Spanish and even in Quechua (with a translator), and neither of us fell down a ravine or contracted pneumonia, both real possibilities in that harsh environment.

Tens of thousands of costumed dancers swarm over the mountainside during the pilgrimage, but none can beat the ukukus (“bear men”) for their energy, exuberance and daring. I must have seen hundreds of masked ukukus at this year’s pilgrimage, all of them brandishing whips and little doll miniatures of themselves and talking in odd falsetto voices. Young men in the Andes prove their manhood by serving as ukuku/guardians of the dance groups (comparsas) that travel to the pilgrimage site each year.

On the final night before the end of Qoyllur Rit’i, all the ukukus from different provinces climb the glacier to conduct a vigil and supposedly battle the condemned souls that live up there. It is not uncommon for one or two ukukus to die during these excursions, which take place on icy terrain under a full moon; prior to 2003, the ukukus descended at dawn toting blocks of glacial ice on their backs and raced downhill to see who would make it to the town of Mawayani first (ukukus also perished in this race as well). The race was discontinued out of respect for the dwindling supply of ice at the glacier, but even still, it’s a hard, perilous task being an ukuku.

I was told one ukuku died in a road accident on his way to the pilgrimage this year.

The photo above shows a group of ukukus accompanying a man who is carrying his village’s sacred image (lámina) to the shrine cathedral. The lámina spends several days in the church in the company of “El Senor de Qoyllur Rit’i,” a painted image of Christ that is said to have miraculously appeared on a rock back in the 1700s, following the appearance of the Christ child in the Sinakara Valley.

If you are confused what a picture of Jesus is doing with a bunch of wooly bear-men carrying whips, well – welcome to the world of religious syncretism. In the Andes, native beliefs blend (collide?) with Catholic traditions, and the result is a form of spiritual practice that is passionate, contradictory and bewildering to outsiders. The ancient pilgrimage of Qoyllur Rit’i is one of the most powerful expressions of this syncretic outlook. You could spend a lifetime trying to unravel the meaning of its dances, costumes and rituals.