Qoyllur Rit'i (Quechua quyllu rit'i, quyllu white, rit'i snow) is a beautiful religious event held in the Sinakara Valley in Peru's southern highlands.
This festival is known among the indigenous people of the Andes as the native celebration of the stars. The celebration specifically celebrates the return of the Pleiades constellation, or Qullqa, which in Quechua means "storehouse" and is associated with the new harvest and the start of a new year.
In April, Pleiade disappears, and it reappears in June. Native people of the Southern Hemisphere celebrate the new year in June with the Winter Solstice, which is also a Catholic celebration. Many people have cherished this period of time for hundreds or even thousands of years.
There is a combination of elements from Catholicism and pre-Hispanic nature worship at the sanctuary of the Lord of Qoyllurit'i. The festival begins fifty-eight days after Easter Sunday when 90,000 pilgrims from around Cusco make their way to the Sinakara hollow sanctuary.
There are eight groups in which pilgrims are divided by their villages of origin: Paucartambo, Quispicanchi, Canchis, Acomayo, Paruro, Tawantinsuyo, Anta, and Urubamba. Pilgrims carry crosses up and down the snow-capped mountain and run processions for twenty-four hours, during which the Paucartambo and Quispicanchi people carry images of the Lord of Tayancani and the Grieving Virgin to the village of Tayancani to welcome the sunrise. The majority of pilgrims leave the sanctuary after a mass later today. The Lord of Quyllurit'i is carried to Tayankani by a group before being returned to Mawallani. Despite being found before the official feast of Corpus Christi, on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday, the festival is closely associated with it.
The pilgrimage is centered on dance: more than a hundred different dances represent the various "nations". Pablitos or pabluchas, figures dressed in garments made from alpaca wool and woven animal masks, maintain order as pilgrims follow the rules and moral codes established by the Council of Pilgrim Nations and Brotherhood of the Lord of Qoyllurit'i. There is a wide variety of cultural expressions within the pilgrimage, as well as communities from different Andean altitudes engaged in diverse economic activities.
Besides visitors from Paucartambo and Quispicanchis, Quyllur Rit'i is also a magnet for visitors from other parts of the country. More and more Peruvians, often middle-class and mainstream, are undertaking the pilgrimage, some at a different date than more traditional pilgrims in 1970. Moreover, in recent years, the number of North Americans and European tourists attending the festival is growing rapidly, prompting concerns that it is becoming too commercialized.
References
(https://ich.unesco.org/en/RL/pilgrimage-to-the-sanctuary-of-the-lord-of-qoylluriti-00567) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quyllurit%27i)