In the Bolivian city of Oruro, there is a religious and cultural festival known as the Carnival of Oruro, which has been celebrated since the 18th century. This festival has its origins in an indigenous celebration, but it has since been incorporated into a Christian celebration by the Virgin of Candelaria (Virgin of Socavón) as part of a Christian ritual.
The town of Oruro is located at an altitude of 3,700 metres in the mountains of western Bolivia and was once a pre-Columbian ceremonial site. The area was also a vital mining area in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Since its colonization by the Spanish in 1606, it has been a sacred site for the Uru people who often travel long distances for their ritual performances, especially during the principal festival of Ito.
It was the Spanish who banned these ceremonies in the seventeenth century, but they continued under the guise of Christian liturgy, where the Andean gods were veiled behind Christian icons and divinities were regarded as saints.
In ancient times the Ito festival was celebrated as a Christian ritual on Candlemas, which is observed every year on 2 February. During the Carnival of Oruro, the Diablada is the main dance of worship of the Uru god Tiw, which is a traditional dance of llama llama.
In conjunction with the annual Carnival, which has been happening for more than 100 years, there are a number of popular arts on display such as masks, textiles, embroidery, puppets and more. The Carnival is dominated by a procession, or entrance, held at the end of the parade.
For the duration of the ceremony, the dancers walk the four kilometres of the procession route and repeat the journey from start to finish twenty times without interruptions. About two hundred thousand dancers and ten thousand musicians are organized into fifty groups to take part in the procession, which still retains many of the features of medieval mystery plays.
There is a substantial acculturation process that has resulted in both a decline in mining and agriculture and increased desertification on the Andean high plateau, which is affecting both the Oruro population as well as creating a generational gap. There is also uncontrolled financial exploitation of this Carnival.
Currently, there are over 28,000 dancers, 15,000 musicians in 150 bands, and over 400,000 visitors. On Monday before Carnival weekend, there's a national festival for those bands that are televised on Bolivian television; the Bolivian President, government officials, and authorities attend the festival. As UNESCO proclaimed, the Carnival is one of the Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity, hopefully, there are more opportunities for the city to attract tourists to its carnival.