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Photo of the Day: Masked Sheep’s Head Dancer, Qoyllur Rit’i Pilgrimage 2006
Masked dancer at Qoyllur Rit’i festival, Peru, 2006 El Fotografo spied this guy at the 2006 pilgrimage. He embodies the fertility cult that underpins the festival’s Catholic traditions, which have been sycretized with older, Andean rituals. I find this image rather terrifying, for some reason. We looked again for the Sheep’s Head Dancer this past May but didn’t see hide nor hair of him, as they say. —Barbara R. Drake
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Photo of the Day: Ausangate Mountain Range
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Preparing to Visit Apu Ausangate
The local Quechua-speaking people consider Ausangate the mightiest apu or mountain lord of the region. Like all apus, Ausangate has a gender (male) and a personality (powerful, easily offended). Local customs dictate that we pay our respects to the apu prior to beginning our trek, to ensure a successful journey.
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Climate Change Briefing for Peruvians
It’s not every day that you can spend an evening with several brilliant climatologists and have them give you a simplified mini-course on climate change – a sort of “Global Warming and Glacier Recession 101,” if you will — but that’s what I experienced this past Tuesday (6/17) at Lima’s Catholic University (UCP). What a privilege. El Fotógrafo, I and about 300 other people gathered in the university’s law auditorium to attend a free forum on “Deglacination en el Perú y Cambio Climático.” EF and I care about deglacination because that process is happening to the mountains at the Qoyllur Rit’i shrine, whose rituals we’ve been documenting since 2006.
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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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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…
