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In the first 2 weeks of February, Puno hosts the largest festival of music and dancing in Peru in honor of its patron saint, the Virgen de Candelaria. Puno is a town in the southeast of Peru on the shores of Lake Titicaca and has a population of approximately 130,000. It is a main stopping point for travel between Cusco and Arequipa in Peru and different points in Bolivia and it also serves as a base for tours of Lake Titicaca and the islands and communities on the lake.

The origins of the festival are in Europe. The Virgen de la Candelaria is a Marian devotion for the Virgin Mary, who appeared to devotees in Tenerife, in the Canary Islands at the beginning of the 15th century. February 2 is celebrated in various locations around the world as the Dia de la Candelaria. The devotional cult was brought to the Americas by immigrants from the Canary Islands and is now celebrated throughout Latin America.

The celebration in Peru is interesting for the ways in which it illustrates the phenomenon of religious syncretism. In Puno, as in Peru more broadly, the Virgen de la Candelaria is associated with the Pachamama (Mother Earth), and she is locally known as Mamacha Candelaria. Candelaria means candle light.

Eighteen days of festivities are organized in payment for the gift of life from the Pachamama. Through dance and music, the festival puts on display indigenous Quechua and Aymara traditions as they interact with highland Andean-mestizo culture. Approximately 200 dances from different regions and communities are performed. By the end, over 40,000 dancers and 9,000 musicians perform and several thousand more participate in auxiliary roles.

For travelers to the region, the festival is a unique opportunity to see the interplay of living cultural practices in dance and music. On February 2, thousands of spectators fill the local stadium in Puno to witness the Gran Concurso de Danzas Autoctonas, or the Grand Competition of Autochthonous Dances. Male and female dancers don brilliantly decorated costumes and masks and perform these dances, which have deep indigenous roots and yet also bear the influence of Spanish colonization.

One of these dances in the Diablada puñena, which originated as a didactic mechanism in the colonial period to illustrate the catechism in form and movement.

The Candelaria festival is the first in a series of religious festivals that continue with Carnaval and then Easter. Across the border, the Bolivian city of Oruro hosts a Carnaval festival, also in February.
lighting at weddings

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hotel simbad Simbad – Ibiza index Hotel Simbad is located in the bay of Talamanca that is only 3 km from the town of Ibiza. This hotel is the front of the beautiful promen.