Religious practices in the Andes and their relevance to political struggle and development: The case of El Tío and miners in Bolivia

For the native population in the Andes, the mountains are sacred places and central elements of a mythical historical identity, since the founding fathers, according to Inca legend, arose out of the land. In honour of this tradition, the mountains are objects of worship: one asks for their protection, while returning, through sacrifice, the wealth obtained from the earth. The mountains, moreover, are the place of the dead and of different gods and spirits that require special attention. In the mining centres, for example, there is an ambivalent figure, El Tío, both evil and good, residing in the dark caves deep below ground. These belief systems, reproduced over and over again in ritual acts, inform everyday practices of the Andean population and constitute part of its world view. They are the result of the conflictive combination of Spanish Catholicism and Indian cosmology during the modern period. Ignoring this tradition turned out to have considerable drawbacks for development agencies and the political parties that tried to organise miners. The religious culture of this mountain society was, and to a certain degree still is, an important source of class struggle and a basis for development politics.