![]() ![]() ![]() Walking behind the priest in a small procession, the bearers carry the saint for all in the plaza to see, just as the Inca once shouldered the mummies of their revered kings. As the prayers draw to a close, four men dressed in black raise a rustic wooden litter holding a painted statue of Santiago. ![]() In Inca times this would have been the festival of Illapa, the Inca god of lightning. Today, on a fine summer afternoon, I watch from the sidelines as they celebrate the fiesta of Santiago, or St. On festival days they gather in the plaza to dance to the sound of wooden pipes and drums. They weave brilliantly colored cloth, speak the traditional language of the Inca, and tend their fields as they have for centuries. Descended in part from Inca colonists sent here more than 500 years ago, the inhabitants of South America's Taquile keep the old ways. On the remote Peruvian island of Taquile, in the middle of the great Lake Titicaca, hundreds of people stand in silence on the plaza as a local Roman Catholic priest recites a prayer. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |