Solsticio, Bolivia

Bolivia, on June, 21, celebrates the solstice that mark the beginning of Aymara New Year 5514, the first sunshine is taken place in Tiwuanacu, is also celebrated in different places by several Bolivians, showing the renewed Andean rituals. From this moment, the sowing season begins.  The sun will give vitality for having a good harvest. The former indigenous farmers from the Andean high plateau, observed the different astronomical phenomenon for knowing when they had to begin the agricultural and livestock works as sowings, harvests or shearing seasons.

The rite indicates that the first rays of the sun, near the 06,00 local time (10,00 GMT), fertilize the ground in the beginning of a new agricultural year for the aymaras that repeat of the same way the rite of Tiwanaku in the archaeological ruins of Cochabamba and Samaipata, Santa Cruz the east of Bolivia.
According with some Bolivian anthropologists, the rite objective is to assure the reproduction of life with the blessings of sun for seedtime and the harvest and although it is carried out since the 80 years decade in the city of Tiwanaku, remembers old practices of the aymaras communities.
The natives also request the Earth fertility with the sacrifice of the zone animal named “llama”, whose blood is an offering to the sun and the ground and other Andean deities to assure the agricultural and cattle prosperity.

TIWANAKU

Tiwanaku was an old, sacred, indigenous and South American city, one of the most important ones of South America. Unfortunately, there is little information about its history; it is believed that it was base of an empire extended by the high plateau and Atacama Desert. On June 21, there are indigenous rituals that commemorate a past full of splendor. The native aymaras who live in Bolivia, Chile and Perú, celebrates this day at the beginning of aymara year with ancestral rites in Tiwuanacu, located 71 Km away to the north of La Paz.

Machaq mara (New Year) coincides with winter solstice that “amutas” (Andean shamans) receive this early morning in Tiwanacu, where the most important archaeological remains are raised. In the winter solstice, the first sunshine appear through the Sun Gate in whose frieze -according the specialists of aymara culture- there is a calendar that mark both solstices and the astronomic equinoxes.