Hundreds of Bolivian worshipers arrived at the city cemetery in La Paz on Friday carrying human skulls decorated with flowers for the Ñatitas festival, a custom rooted in the Andes region but not recognized by the Catholic Church.
According to Bolivian belief, devotees ask Ñatita for health, money, love and other favors.
Mama Azapa is one of the Ñatitas, and unlike many others, her skull has braided hair.
“She is my protector,” said Elena Martínez, who identified herself as an “amauta,” or Quechua priestess.
During the festival, people throw coca leaves and flowers at them and put cigarettes in their mouths.
Some skulls even wear sunglasses and hats.
Some are kept in gold, glass urns, and others in shoe boxes decorated with flowers.
The festival is a mix of Andean ancestor worship and Catholic beliefs.
Experts say that in pre-Columbian times it was common to keep skulls as trophies and display them as symbols of death and rebirth.
Anthropologist Milton Eyzaguirre, a researcher at the National Museum of Ethnography and Folklore, explained that in Andean culture, death is linked to life.
The deceased are underground, in the ground, that’s why they are tied to the plants that are yet to give birth, he said.