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In Puno, on the shores of Lake Titicaca, some 20,000 tourists gather each year to watch the entire city celebrate the fiesta of its patron.
Although Puno is alternately blisteringly sunny, cold and wet, only visitors to this austere highland city ever actually shelter from the elements, because the people of Puno are made of sterner stuff. You have to be tough to want to dance on a cold, wet February night at 3,800 metres above sea level. During the Festival of Candelaria, rain or shine, night and day, high-stepping dancers alternately drench themselves in sweat and lift the puddles in great plumes that soak both participants and spectators alike.
Puno is a land of contrasts, as evidenced by the extraordinary variety of the dances on display. Groups come, or so it would seem, from every tiny village in the province to compete in the annual competition of traditional dances held in the local football stadium. Aymara or Quechua, their bright polleras and parrot feathers moving to simple, graceful rhythms, dancers prepare for months for the central event of their calendar, sewing elaborate costumes and rehearsing before travelling from villages like Ayapata in the faraway forests of Carabaya or the highland shepherd community of Azángaro. Sometimes, as in the case of the imposingly titled “El Carnaval de Chacu de Chucahuacas”, it seemed as if the entire village had come to Puno to dance.
The Origin of the Fiesta
The origin of La Candelaria dates from the Great Rebellion of Tupac Amaru II against Spanish rule in 1780. One of the indigenous rebel leader’s captains, Julián Apasa Tupac Catari – who succeeded in capturing La Paz twice during the revolt – laid siege to Puno in 1781. Tradition has it that the puneños, who lacked the means to defend their city, paraded instead the 70 centimetre-high image known then as the Virgin of the Purification. It is said that the besiegers, seeing only a mass of bright lights and burning torches coming towards them, fell into confusion and retreated. The people of Puno renamed their saviour La Candelaria in memory of the event and made her their patron.
Today, when the Virgin is taken from her church to celebrate her famous victory, she goes surrounded by lights and an army of more than forty groups of folkloric dancers attired in bright costumes and wearing fantastic masks. Fuelled in equal parts by alcohol and camaraderie, the groups compete for the attention of the crowds in nightly dusk to dawn street parades with a tireless energy that would discourage any would-be invader and leaves the thousands of spectators spellbound.
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