The tears of the sun
Andean religiosity in small-scale gold mining in South America
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15381/ishra.n6.18462Keywords:
Andean religiosity, gold, small-scale miningAbstract
The purpose of this article is to characterize the continuity of Andean religiosity in small-scale gold mining areas in Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. Miners and their families are characterized as a floating population and as organized crime, and governments do not have a cultural understanding of their future. However, they have religious experiences that are interrelated and juxtaposed as part of Andean culture. I argue that Andean animism, where pachamama is the reproductive field of life and death, has its counterpart in mining areas with a vein of gold. Ethnohistory indicates that a vein of gold was like a huaca and the miner, a pilgrim who symbolically sought the tears of the sun. Five hundred years after ethnohistorical sources, contemporary ethnography understands the presence of the Gringa as a spirit that has a strong impact on natural phenomena, riches, infatuations, beatitudes and punishments for miners in their daily life, as well as ritual evocation of mining as a pilgrimage to gather the tears of the sun.
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Copyright (c) 2021 Víctor Hugo Pachas
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