Ichapekene Piesta

The biggest festival of Moxos

Ichapekene Piesta is the largest celebration of San Ignacio de Moxos, in the Bolivian department of Beni, held in honour of the town’s patron, St Ignatius of Loyola. It is a syncretic festival: it retells the Mojeño founding myth of the Jesuit victory of Ignatius and blends it with Indigenous beliefs and traditions, a legacy of the Jesuit missions of Moxos. UNESCO inscribed it on its Representative List in 2012.

The programme is long and precise. From 22 July a novena for the patron saint is held, with a different dance each day — little angels and masks, achus and deer, bulls, sun and moon, tigers and little fish, bullfighters and more. On 30 July the bells ring at three in the morning and the dawn is greeted at four; on 31 July, after a mass led by the bishop, a procession circles the square and the macheteros and achus dance all morning.

Warriors of the sun

The most important dance is that of the macheteros — chipiperono in the Indigenous language — men wearing wide headdresses of feathers who dance with wooden machetes. Wearing the feathers is believed to invoke the soul of the bird, and so the sun, and the macheteros are often seen as warriors of the sun; some also read the feathers as a reference to Christ’s resurrection and ascension. The festival re-enacts the spiritual battle of the “Victory of St Ignatius”, in which twelve sun warriors fight the guardians of the sacred flag, the original owners of the forest and the water. Respect for nature runs through it all, including a procession of participants in animal masks.