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Global Warming Claims Another Peruvian Glacier
Awful news. Quilca Glacier (5,250 meters above sea level) in Puno has disappeared completely, reports Peru’s National Institute for Natural Resources (IRENA). The disappearance of Quilca is part of an ongoing recession of tropical glaciers throughout the Andes, where climate change (mainly rising air temperatures) is making it impossible for the ice to regenerate. Experts such as Marco Zapata, of IRENA, predict that no glaciers will be left in Peru by 2025. Please do the math. That’s 16 years away. Why should people care that tropical glaciers are melting in this Andean country? The reasons are both local and global. First, Peru derives 80% of its water for drinking, agriculture and hydropower…
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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…
