El Sol de adentro: wakas y santos en las minas de Charcas y en el lago Titicaca (siglos XV a XVII)

Abstract

The Sun within the World: Wakas and Saints in the Mines of Charcas and in Lake Titicaca (15th-17th Centuries)

Mines and mining offer both for the Andean as the Spanish systems of beliefs the background of a setting in which were developed rites and cult complexes, and if there was an adaptation of European beliefs it is because there existed compatibilities between the two systems of representing the world. Alchemical beliefs approximated, in some manner, both the etiological myth of the Inca-Sun and the the same myth of origin of Andean gold, which was a solar myth. However, the encounter between the two systems of representation did not necessarily determine a series of syncretic practices. All appearances indicate that in Potosi, in the middle of the 17th century, the cult to the Virgin-mountain did not correspond to a popular practice, but neither did it preclude the practice of various autochthonous cults of major historical significance which, in turn, were related among themselves. In the present work, these shamanic cults are analyzed in different mines. The images that issued from them put in play a series of artifacts, of figures and entities that were also encountered in the description of the old Colla cult of the Island of Titicaca, heir of Tiwanaku. All these cults were influenced to a large degree by the religious system elaborated by the Incas.