Fiesta de La Tirana

Dancing for the Virgin

The Fiesta de La Tirana honours the Virgen del Carmen in the village of La Tirana, in the commune of Pozo Almonte in the Tarapacá region. It is the largest religious festival of Chile’s far north and the most popular in the country, drawing pilgrims from across Chile, Peru and Bolivia. Arriving in the village, the religious dance societies greet the Virgin one by one at the Cruz del Calvario, then process through the streets to the church. Many pilgrims fulfil vows, most often by walking the ten kilometres from the highway junction to the sanctuary along the “pilgrim’s path”.

From 10 July the societies dance day and night. On the evening of 15 July more than 200,000 of the faithful attend the vigil mass in the square, and at midnight fireworks burst over the village to celebrate the “birthday” of the Virgin, whom devotees call la chinita. The dancers greet her at dawn, and on the morning of the 16th the image of the Virgin is brought down to a square covered in thousands of ribbons, followed by mass and a procession through the streets that lasts more than eight hours.

Devils, miners and Incas

Each dance society has its own costumes and music. The Chinos, the oldest society in the festival, wear costumes recalling the region’s old miners, with leather pads on their backs for carrying ore. The Diabladas, inspired by the devil dances of the Oruro Carnival in Bolivia, wear elaborate masks that light up at night. The Morenos use rattles that imitate the sound of chains, the Cuyacas are an all-women dance of pre-Hispanic roots, and the Indios, whose feathered headdresses and spears were inspired by American films, dance around bonfires at night.

From the mines to the Virgin of Carmen

The festival grew among the Aymara and other workers of the region’s silver, copper and nitrate mines, as an Andean celebration linked to the Pachamama. After the War of the Pacific, Chileans, Peruvians and Bolivians celebrated it on different dates; around 1910, as part of the Chileanisation of Tarapacá, it was fixed on 16 July, the feast of the Virgen del Carmen, patroness of the Chilean Army. In 1917 Bishop José María Caro brought the dances closer to Catholic ritual, and over the twentieth century they absorbed Bolivian carnival dances, pre-Columbian traditions and the culture of the nitrate pampa. In January 2018 Pope Francis recognised the festival and crowned the image of the Virgin in Iquique.

A popular legend, spread by the historian Rómulo Cúneo Vidal, tells of an Inca princess, Ñusta Huillac, who led a rebellion from the tamarugo forests and was feared as “the Tyrant of the Tamarugal”, until she fell in love with a Portuguese explorer and was killed with him when she accepted baptism. A friar is said to have found a cross there in 1540 and built a chapel in their memory.