The Festival of Urkupiña

Readers:

August marks one of Bolivia's most important cultural events, the Festival of Urkupiña in Quillacollo. For a week the small town outside of Cochabamba is taken over by dancers, pilgrims and Bolivian culture in full living color. Here is a post from two members of The Democracy Center team, Leny Olivera and Lily Whitesell, on the festival last week. For readers interested in seeing a vivid slide show on the Festival, visit here.

For readers interested in the ongoing Bolivian Constituent Assembly, we will continue with our posts from Sucre later this week.

Jim Shultz

The Festival of Urkupiña

Last week Cochabamba came alive, as it does this time every year, with the Festival of the Virgin of Urkupiña. Thousands of people flocked to Quillacollo, a town just outside of Cochabamba to see the dancers that rival the color and energy of Bolivia’s Carnaval parades. On this date, however, most are also attracted to Quillacollo out of devotion to the Virgin of Urkupiña, the most renowned virgin figure in the region. People arrive from every corner of the country and even from Bolivian communities abroad to participate. Local papers have estimated that half a million people attended this year.

Urkupiña is not just a Catholic festival. It is a fusion of Catholic and indigenous traditions, a mix particularly prominent in Bolivia because of the strength of its native cultures.

Catholic evangelism was one of the driving forces of exploration and settlement in Bolivia when the Spanish arrived in the sixteenth century. But it could not replace indigenous spirituality – which focused on a deep connection with the natural world. Much to the first evangelists’ chagrin, Catholicism was often mixed and fused with the original traditions. But some found that this was a more effective way of winning converts. Some bishops and priests even built churches on sites that previously had honored Andean deities, both masculine and feminine.

Even today, religion in Bolivia continues to blend Catholic and Andean traditions. Nowhere is that more evident than in the story and the annual celebration of Urkupiña.

The Story

The "Cota" hill where the shrine to the Virgin of Urkupiña now sits was originally an Andean waca, a sacred place where natural energy is concentrated, or the equivalent of a Western church. The hill was spiritually significant because of a concentration of female energy, representing fertility and the earth.

In pre-colonial times, local communities would go to the waca to make offerings to Pachamama, or mother earth, particularly during the month of August. In Bolivia, August is the end of winter; a time when the earth awakens from its slumber and the fields are prepared for the spring planting. The August celebrations at the Cota hill waca were important for ensuring a good harvest.

The Catholic part of the story was added in the 1780s. According to Church legend, on one miraculous day in August, the Virgin Mary with the baby Jesus appeared on the Cota hill to a small shepherd girl. When the girl went home, she told her family what she had seen, adding that they had come down from heaven to play with her. The next day, her worried parents went up the hill with her. Suddenly, the shepherd girl shouted “Urkupiña … Urkupiña!” In Quechua, Orqophiña means “she’s on the hill,” meaning that the Virgin Mary had again appeared to the girl – on the sacred Cota hill.

The Festival

From then on, the Festival of the Virgin of Urkupiña grew, with a mixture of both Catholic and Andean elements. Today, Urkupiña includes three principal days of festivities, though associated celebrations last all week.

Tuesday, August 14 marked the beginning of the festival, kicked off with a parade of traditional ‘folkloric’ dances that lasts from early in the morning until long after the sun sets. This year, fifteen thousand people danced in the parade, wearing traditional hand-sewn costumes. The dances range from flamenco-style Chacarera from southeast Bolivia to the lively feet-stomping and fist-raising Tinku dance from northern Potosi, each accompanied by a band.

Every dance represents a different moment in Bolivia’s history: dances and instruments that date to pre-Hispanic times, dancers dressed up as African and Andean slaves and even as the slave-drivers, devils embodying miners' superstitions, caricatures of the Spanish, and current-day imitations of traditional dress from every corner of the country. Each group comes complete with their own complex choreographed dance steps that the groups have been practicing for months.

The following day is the main religious celebration and the second day of parades. The town’s one church is filled with people who have made pilgrimages to show their devotion to the Virgin of Urkupiña. The dance groups also come back for a second day of parades with a more religious intent.

Thursday is the Calvario, which means “ordeal” in Spanish and also signifies the Stations of the Cross, the suffering that Jesus went through on the path to his death. The “ordeal” begins late Wednesday night, when groups leave Cochabamba on foot to walk the eight miles to Quillacollo, where Urkupiña is celebrated. The pilgrimage route is filled with people of all ages – many young people but also families even elderly grandparents – all choosing to walk instead of sleeping that night.

In the early hours of the day, they arrive in force at the church for morning mass. Local vendors line the streets, selling Bolivians’ greatest desires – in miniature. Tiny cars, houses, university diplomas, suitcases, and even mini American dollars are purchased to represent the pilgrim’s wishes for their family for the year to come.

The pilgrims then make their way to the old Cota hill. Borrowing a pick and hammer, they go up to a rocky outcropping and chip away a rock or two. These rocks represent the things they will pray for and ask of the Virgin and Pachamama. The pilgrims will carefully care for the stones all year until the next Urkupiña, when they will bring them back. To make sure their wishes are fulfilled, they must get the rocks – and the miniatures they bought – blessed. First this is done with a traditional Andean shaman with incense and smoke as an offering to Pachamama – then by the priest with sacred water in the Urkupiña chapel on the top of the Cota hill.

During these three days, everyday life in Quillacollo is paralyzed, as every local cook, salesman, and devotee is dedicated entirely to the festival.

In 2000, a new addition to the celebrations strengthened the Andean spiritual dimension of the festivities - the Autochthonous Parade. On August 13, the day before the main parade, groups from nearby communities play flutes, panpipes, and drums and perform strictly pre-Hispanic dances. It is a strong contrast to the post-colonial “folkloric” blend of dances that are performed in the main parade the following day. The autochthonous event has grown in recent years as new generations of musicians and dancers who identify with Andean culture form new groups and wish to take a visible part in the festival. These groups also combine their devotion to the Virgin Mary with the celebration of August as the month of Pachamama, the Andean time of honoring the earth and asking for a good harvest year.

The fusion between the Catholic faith and pre-Hispanic traditions that has grown out of Bolivia’s complex history has preserved a vibrant Andean presence. Cultural resistance to colonization – and more recently, globalization – has long been a rallying cry for indigenous groups intent on preserving their rich, diverse traditions. In Bolivia, this resistance is manifest on a daily basis and in major festivals like Urkupiña – where traditions and rituals have incorporated Catholic elements without losing the essence of their own, unique culture.

Written by Leny Olivera and Lily Whitesell.