Pachamama

Colonial attestation

Pachamama is named in the Jesuit José de Acosta's Natural and Moral History of the Indies (1590), which lists among the objects of Andean worship the earth, called Pachamama, and the sea, called Mamacocha, following the jurist Polo de Ondegardo's earlier inquiries. The extirpation literature of the early seventeenth century, such as Pablo José de Arriaga's Extirpación de la idolatría del Pirú (1621), describes offerings of maize beer and coca made to the earth in agricultural rites. She belonged less to the imperial theology of Cusco than to everyday agricultural practice, which is one reason her cult survived the destruction of the state religion.

A living tradition

Offerings to Pachamama continue across the Andes: the ch'alla, sprinkling alcohol or maize beer on the ground before drinking, and the burned or buried despacho bundles prepared by ritual specialists, especially in August, the month considered hers in much of highland Peru, Bolivia, and northwest Argentina. In colonial art she was sometimes merged with the Virgin Mary; the anonymous painting La Virgen del Cerro (c. 1720) in Potosí shows Mary as the silver mountain itself.

Cautions

Much popular writing today presents Pachamama as an ancient goddess with elaborate myths. The colonial sources attest her name and offerings, not a detailed mythology; modern ritual practice is her richest record.