Latin American Rituals

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Pages: 3

The native Indians celebrated traditional rites and festivals in conjunction with Catholic worship and feast days. Throughout the archdiocese of Lima, and likely many other parts of Latin America, key points in the Catholic calendar often occurred during, or in close proximity to traditional religious and agricultural rites and festivals. In time, many of these festivals were combined and celebrated simultaneously as one event. Mills refers to an Indian woman, Ysabel Chumbi in 1655 who revealed that after attending mass in the church, the people of her village in Ihuari, Chanay would conduct divinations for the wellbeing of the community. According to Mills, the Sabbath had become a day of observance for the Indians and is an indication of the blending of religious traditions in the minds of the native Andeans. When …show more content…
Carolyn Dean Inka bodies and the body of Christ: Corpus Cristi in Colonial Cusco, Peru attributes this as a refashioning of solar worship and the triumph of Christ over Inti. Toribio Motolinía in History of the Indians of New Spain recalls the dual celebration of Easter and the quadrennial feast to honour all the native gods. He observed many parallels between the rituals attributed to each festivity including processions, abstinence, fasting, penance and even the self-scourging by the natives.

Nancy Farris in Sacred Power in colonial Mexico: the case of the sixteenth century Yucatan works to interpret various syncretic rituals, particularly sacrifice