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Largest Indigenous Religious Pilgrimage in Western Hemisphere
Media outlets such as National Geographic speak of Qoyllur Rit’i as “the largest indigenous religious pilgrimage in the Western Hemisphere.” But how big is it, really? The number of pilgrims most frequently cited by writers is 40,000. I’ve also seen estimates at 60,000 and 80,000. Wikipedia lowballs attendance at an incredible 10,000 pilgrims. But these figures seem skewed when you visit the site when the pilgrimage is in full swing. I tend to agree with a volunteer for Peru’s Civil Defense, who puts total number of pilgrims at around 300,000 over the four days of the event.
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Art, Film, Music & Dance, Climate Change & Disappearing Glaciers, Festivals, Sacred Rituals, Religion, Peru's Andes Mountains
Dancing for a Dying Glacier
Just back from the annual pilgrimage of Qoyllur Rit’i, which takes place just below a 17,000-foot-high glacier (actually, three glacial tongues) in the southern Andes, about 80 miles south of Cusco. Since pre-Inca times, Qolqepunku Glacier has been revered as a sacred site associated with nearby Mount Ausangate, the tallest mountain in the region, considered by Andean people to be the area’s most powerful deity or “apu.” For hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years, local people have made the arduous journey to this remote, high-altitude glacier to pay homage with music, dance and offerings. In return, the apu grants health and fertility to the devotees, as well as to their families, their…
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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…
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An American in Lima Goes to Qoyllur Rit’i
We’re in a frenzy here in our house packing to go on an expedition to a glacier near Mount Ausangate, in the southern Andes. Qolquepunku Glacier is the site of the ancient pilgrimage of Qoyllur Rit’i, whose name in Quechua translates “Shining Snow Star.” More than 100,000 pilgrims come from all over Peru and Bolivia to pay tribute to “El Senor de Qoyllur Rit’i,” to climb the sacred glacier and to dance for days and nights at 17,000 feet above sea level. Yikes! The pilgrimage is ostensibly Catholic but has its roots in precolombian rituals that were practiced long before the Incas created their vast empire. The three dancers pictured above (photo courtesy El…
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Happy International Workers’ Day! (May 1)
This morning at five to eight I left our house to walk to exercise class and encountered a deep silence. The roads were empty. There were no buses or taxis rushing down our street, no construction workers hammering away on the new condominium project two doors down. Parque Leoncio Prado, which at this time ordinarily would be filled with city gardeners trimming hedges and maids walking their employers’ dogs, was just an empty grid of grass and concrete. You could hear cuculis (morning doves) cooing plaintively, a noise that echoed eerily off the poured-concrete streets. For a moment I was puzzled by the lack of cars and people, and then…
