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Myths, culture and history

Every story carries a label so you know whether it is a legend, an oral tradition or documented history.

  • La Virgen de Tito Yupanqui, imagen tallada por Francisco Tito Yupanqui, Basílica de CopacabanaDocumented history

    The Virgin of Tito Yupanqui

    Basilica of Our Lady of Copacabana

    The image was carved by Francisco Tito Yupanqui, a descendant of the Inca Huayna Cápac. His first figure, made of clay, was removed from the altar by a priest who found it crude; Tito travelled to Potosí, learned the craft in a Spanish sculptor's workshop and came back with a Virgin of maguey wood, stuccoed and gilded, with a dark face. She entered Copacabana on 2 February 1583, Candlemas, and on 1 August 1925 she was canonically crowned and proclaimed Queen of the Bolivian Nation.

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  • La Virgen de Copacabana en su camarín de la BasílicaOral tradition

    The Virgin who never leaves the church

    Basilica of Our Lady of Copacabana

    The original carving never leaves the shrine; a replica goes out in the processions. Popular belief holds that if the true image left its home, the waters of Titicaca would overflow and sweep the town away. That is why, since the 1925 coronation, the Mamita has not crossed the door again.

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  • Capillas del vía crucis en la cumbre del cerro Calvario, frente al lago TiticacaOral tradition

    The stone that carries the sins

    Cerro Calvario

    The penitent picks up a stone at the foot of the hill and carries it all the way up; at each station they throw it at the cross and pick it up again. The stone stands for one's faults: if at the end it stays on the pedestal, they say, the burden has been forgiven and the request will be heard.

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  • El sol pasa entre los pilares de piedra de la Horca del Inca, con el lago al fondoDocumented history

    A solar clock, not a gallows

    Horca del Inca (Pachataka)

    Despite its name, the Pachataka predates the Inca Empire: it is attributed to the Chiripa culture, and calculations by the Bolivian Institute of Cosmic Physics date its construction to around 1700 BC. The Spanish destroyed most of the solar observatories of the altiplano but left this one standing, believing it was used for executions. No one was ever hanged here: every 21 June at dawn a ray of sunlight passes through a hole carved in a nearby rock and casts a circle of light on the crossbeam, announcing the Andean new year.

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  • Muros del Iñak Uyu, el templo de las vírgenes del Sol, en la Isla de la LunaLegend

    The Moon rises to the sky

    Island of the Moon (Koati)

    The myth says that Wiracocha, after bringing the Sun out of the Titikala, ordered the Moon to rise from Koati. That is why the island belongs to her, and why for centuries only consecrated women could live there: it was Mama Killa's home on earth.

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  • Ruinas de Iñak Uyu, la casa de las escogidas, en la Isla de la LunaDocumented history

    Iñak Uyu, the house of the chosen women

    Island of the Moon (Koati)

    The island was already a ceremonial place for Chiripa and Tiwanaku, but it was the Inca Túpac Yupanqui who built Iñak Uyu, the “women's compound”, on its eastern slope: an acllahuasi where the Virgins of the Sun learned to weave, to make chicha and to serve in the cult. Chroniclers tell of a statue of a woman with a gold torso and silver legs inside, an image of the Moon, and say the temple was looted and abandoned in colonial times.

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  • Terrazas de cultivo en la ladera de la Isla del Sol frente al lago azulLegend

    The birth of the Sun

    Island of the Sun

    They say that after the flood the world was left in darkness and people lived in fear. One day the Sun rose in all its splendour from the cleft of the great sandstone rock in the north of the island; that is why the crag was called Titikala, the puma's rock, and the island, Island of the Sun. Another version says the Sun hid under the rock during the flood and the island was the first land to emerge when the waters went down.

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  • Representación de Manco Kápac y Mama Ocllo en el lago TiticacaLegend

    Manco Kápac and Mama Ocllo

    Island of the Sun

    The Sun god, taking pity on people who lived like beasts, sent his children Manco Kápac and Mama Ocllo to civilise them. He made them emerge from the sacred rock and gave them a golden staff: where it sank at the first blow they were to found their city. They walked north to the Cusco valley, where the staff disappeared into the ground, and there the empire was born. He taught men to farm and build; she taught women to spin and weave.

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  • Fuente de las tres aguas al pie de la Escalera del Inca, Isla del SolOral tradition

    The fountain of eternal youth

    Island of the Sun

    The people of Yumani say the three spouts of the Inca fountain flow from a spring that has not run dry in five hundred years, and that whoever drinks from them stays young. They say each one tastes different and that drinking from all three brings health, wisdom and youth; the three spouts also recall the threefold Andean law: ama sua, ama llulla, ama qhella (do not steal, do not lie, do not be lazy).

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  • Islas flotantes de totora con churatas, lanchas amarradas y criaderos de truchaLegend

    The raft of the flood

    Chañi Floating Islands

    Legend says the altiplano was a fertile valley until people disobeyed the Apus and climbed to the summit of the Sacred Fire. As punishment the Apus let loose hundreds of pumas, and Inti wept for forty days and forty nights until the valley flooded. Only one couple survived, aboard a totora-reed raft. That is why the reed is seen as a gift from Mama Qota: permission is still asked of the lake before cutting it, and raft and island builders treat it with the respect owed to what saves lives.

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