Pachamama
Also known as: Mama Pacha
Mythological Narrative
Pacha in Quechua means at once earth, world and time; Pachamama is the living ground itself, the body that bears and feeds all things. She presides over sowing and harvest — potatoes and maize come out of her flesh, and the increase of the herds depends on her goodwill. Because she is everywhere underfoot she needed neither temples nor idols: offerings go straight into the soil, and a farmer asks her leave before the first cut of the plow, since to break ground is to knock at her door.
Her thanks follow a set etiquette. The first sip of chicha is tipped onto the earth, a libation called ch'alla; perfect coca leaves are presented in threes or buried at the field's edge; on graver occasions a despacho bundle is laid out — coca, llama fat, seeds and sweets arranged in order, then wrapped and burned or buried for the earth to receive. In the southern Andes August is her month, and the first of August remains her feast day in Bolivia, southern Peru and northwest Argentina: the hungry season when the earth 'opens its mouth' before planting begins.
After the conquest her figure and the cult of the Virgin Mary grew into one another, and many Andean Marian feasts keep the dates and places of her older rites. She is a living faith: Ecuador's 2008 constitution invokes Pachamama by name in its articles on the rights of nature, and drivers on Andean roads still spill a few drops for the earth before setting out.
Scholarly Commentary & Evolution
## Colonial attestation
Pachamama is named in the Jesuit José de Acosta's *Natural and Moral History of the Indies* (1590), which lists among the objects of Andean worship the earth, called Pachamama, and the sea, called Mamacocha, following the jurist Polo de Ondegardo's earlier inquiries. The extirpation literature of the early seventeenth century, such as Pablo José de Arriaga's *Extirpación de la idolatría del Pirú* (1621), describes offerings of maize beer and coca made to the earth in agricultural rites. She belonged less to the imperial theology of Cusco than to everyday agricultural practice, which is one reason her cult survived the destruction of the state religion.
## A living tradition
Offerings to Pachamama continue across the Andes: the *ch'alla*, sprinkling alcohol or maize beer on the ground before drinking, and the burned or buried *despacho* bundles prepared by ritual specialists, especially in August, the month considered hers in much of highland Peru, Bolivia, and northwest Argentina. In colonial art she was sometimes merged with the Virgin Mary; the anonymous painting *La Virgen del Cerro* (c. 1720) in Potosí shows Mary as the silver mountain itself.
## Cautions
Much popular writing today presents Pachamama as an ancient goddess with elaborate myths. The colonial sources attest her name and offerings, not a detailed mythology; modern ritual practice is her richest record.
Cross-Pantheon Parallels & Archetypes
Academic Discussion & Critique
Exchange peer-reviewed hypotheses, comparative Indo-European etymologies, and archaeological field interpretations regarding Pachamama.
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