Pachamama is a goddess
worshiped by most people in the Andes. She is also known as Mother
Earth and is a fertility goddess who presides over planting and
harvesting. Pachamama is omnipresent and an independent deity who has
her own self-sufficient and creative power to sustain life on this
earth. People usually toast to her honor before every meeting or
festivity by spilling a small amount of chicha on the floor, before
drinking the rest. This toast is made almost every day. Pachamama has
a special worship day called Martes de challa, when people bury food,
throw candies, and burn incense. In some cases, people assist
traditional priests in performing ancient rites to bring good luck by
sacrificing guinea pigs or burning llama fetuses.
Rituals to honor
Pachamama take place all year, but are especially abundant in August,
right before the sowing season. Because August is the coldest month
in the Andes, people feel more vulnerable to illness at this time.
The Andean people believe that they must be on very good terms with
nature in order to keep themselves and their crops and livestock
healthy and protected. In order to do this, families perform
cleansing rituals by burning plants wood and other items in order to
scare evil spirits who are thought to be more abundant at this time.
In order to bribe
Pachamama, people will call in someone to perform a ritual offering
by digging a hole and putting the fetus of an animal in it. They
cook and give food to the earth and ask a particular blessing from
Pachamama.
This may seem bizarre and
rare but it is normal and common in Peru. Hartur works for a company
that is paving a new highway outside of Cusco. The weather has been
rainy so the engineers called in a lady to perform this ritual in
their morning meeting. They dug a hole, put in some llama fetus',
cooked some food and offered all of this to Pachamama so that she
would make the weather better for construction. These are not
ignorant people, they are very well educated but enslaved in
superstition and animism. Hartur was very upset and worried for
their souls. He told me he has shared the gospel with all his crew
but they don't listen to him any more. He has a fire in him to
proclaim the gospel.
I must say that I love
teaching new believers that have a fire for God. I disciple Hartur a
couple nights a week. I just started to teach him a course on
evangelism every Tuesday night. I asked him what he hoped to achieve
in the evangelism course and he told me that he wanted to learn how
to preach the gospel correctly on the streets here in Cusco as well
in his home town of Trujillo. Good answer. He then went on to say
that he wants to share the gospel with everyone in Trujillo, which
caused me to chuckle a little because I know how many people there
are in his home town. I asked him again, “You know there are over
a million people in Trujillo don't you?” He said, “Yes, I know.”
You want to share the gospel with everyone there? He looked at me
with a very serious and sober face and said, “Yes.” To Hartur,
things seem quite simple. God saved him. He wants others to know
the glory of Christ in salvation. Therefore, he is going to tell
everyone. Sometimes I think we make things too complicated and get
distracted from what we should be doing in the Great Commission.
