Spirituality and the Pachamama in the Andean Aymara Worldview - Earth Stewardship: Linking Ecology and Ethics in Theory and Practice - page 69

Box 6.1. (continued)

Fig. 6.1 Candelaria ritual ensures abundant harvests and is celebrated every February 2 by
women in potato fi elds with offerings of coca leaves and smoke (Mamani-Bernabé 2002 ).
The Earth and its products, as well as women, are considered feminine because they are
sources of life in the Aymara worldview (Photo by Vicenta Mamani-Bernabé)

6.3 Aymara Spirituality

The village of Ticohaya maintains its Aymara traditional customs and sacred rituals
until today. In spite of 500 years of colonial invasion and Christian presence, the
different Andean traditional sacred rituals continue to be practiced fervently, such as
rites for planting and harvesting, marriage, roofi ng of a new house, a child's fi rst
haircut, among others. The village maintains numerous sacred places among the
nearby hills, where the feminine divinity ( Pachamama , Mother Earth) and the mas-
culine divinity ( Achachilas , hill or mountain) are celebrated to assure family and
village well-being.
These practices are an essential dimension of the faith experience of the Aymara
people. Such spirituality is part of their cultural identity and vice versa, because
there is no cultural identity without spirituality, and no spirituality without cultural
identity. For this reason, we are convinced that spirituality is an expression of life
itself. Spirituality is born in the human heart, and there God is present, present as
life itself, in all and everything, in the entire village.
Women have a key role in this spirituality. The Aymara woman coordinates the
rituals for planting and harvesting potatoes. She keeps permanent contact with
nature and speaks to the Pachamama and Mama Ispalla (protector spirit of agricul-
tural products). When she does so, she is speaking with the God of life, and through
speaking to God, is doing theology. Women know the importance of symbols and
how to interpret them. Thus women live and practice their own experience of faith
from deep within the Aymara culture itself.