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Festival of the Sun: Reviving an Inca Celebration in Cuzco, Peru
| Article
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11172 |
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Section : |
CULTURE
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| Issue
Date : |
10 / 1993 |
885 Words |
| Author
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Jim Lo Scalzo
Jim Lo Scalzo is a free-lance writer and photographer who has
traveled extensively in South America. He resides in
Rockville, Maryland. |
Three days before the winter solstice, in the Andean city of Cuzco, an Inca high priest stood atop a ceremonial platform and stared into the sun. Below him, tens of thousands of Incas stood silent and pensive, waiting for their cue. The heavenly body they believed to be the natural father of the first Inca was fast approaching the point of its smallest appearance. All had gathered to try and lure it back.
"0 sun, my father," chanted the high priest, "let thy Sons the Incas be conquerors and despoilers of mankind. We adore thee and offer this sacrifice." At this, attending women fell to their knees, extended their arms, and prayed to the sun. The prayers and ceremonies went on for three days while men, wearing animal skins and richly ornamented headdresses, with garlands of gold around their necks and condor wings tied to their backs, paraded the mummified remains of twelve Inca leaders through local temples.
The ceremony culminated when three men slit open the belly of a live llama. A high priest thrust his hand into the llama and predicted the success of upcoming harvests from the animal's innards. Thousands of sheep and llamas were then sacrificed, roasted in the public square, and distributed among participants in the largest feast of the year.
This was Inti Raymi, the Festival of the Sun, an elaborate costumed ceremony practiced annually in Cuzco, Peru, at the height of the Inca Empire in the fifteenth century. Inti Raymi was the most important festival within the Inca calendar, and every year participants gathered from across the Andes to worship their principal deity. The first Spanish visitors exhibited no enthusiasm for this pagan practice, however. When the conquistadors charged into Cuzco in 1533, they abolished the festival.
After a four-century absence, Inti Raymi celebrants are again parading through the streets of Cuzco, though actors have replaced the kings and high priests. In the mid-1940s, wishing to honor the religious rites of their ancestors, Inca descendants revived the Festival of the Sun. Now, every June 24, the day of South America's winter solstice, modern Incas bring to life a remarkable tale of perseverance.
Spanish repression
When Spanish explorers first planted their boots on South American soil, the Inca Empire extended from Santiago, Chile, to present-day Colombia, spanning 2,600 miles of the continent's western
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