Supay- Inca GodDeity"Lord of Death"

The Death Lord

Before the Spanish, Supay was lord of Ukhu Pacha, the inner world where the dead continued their existence and seeds germinated in darkness. The chronicler Bernabé Cobo noted that the Incas feared Supay and made offerings to appease him. Cristóbal de Molina recorded these offerings during Inca ceremonies: gifts given to the powers below so they would not take more than their due. The Incas did not worship Supay as they worshipped the sun, but they recognized his power and maintained a relationship with it through reciprocity.

Diego González Holguín's 1608 Vocabulario defines "supay" in terms that oscillate between "angel" and "demon," suggesting the pre-Columbian meaning encompassed spiritual powers that defied easy categorization. The word could denote a spirit of the dead, a shadow, or a powerful being of the lower world. Garcilaso de la Vega acknowledged that the Incas "abhorred" Supay and spat when saying his name, but their understanding of the underworld bore no resemblance to hell.

The Dead and Their Lord

The Incas practiced elaborate ancestor veneration that brought the living into direct contact with Supay's domain. Royal mummies remained in their palaces, attended by servants, consulted for advice, carried in festival processions. The dead were not gone but transformed, still present and still powerful.

Offerings to the dead included coca leaves and chicha poured into the ground. The dead were placed in caves, rock niches, and chullpas at the boundary between the surface and the inner world. During designated festivals, families visited their ancestors' graves and performed ceremonies that renewed the bond between living and deceased. The dead were fed, spoken to, sometimes carried out of their resting places to join the festivities.

The Colonial Devil

Spanish missionaries needed a devil. Supay, as lord of the underworld and a figure associated with death and darkness, became their candidate. The conversion was systematic. Dictionaries translated "diablo" as "supay." Catechisms taught converts to reject Supay as the enemy of God. Colonial art gave him horns, a tail, cloven hooves, and a pitchfork. The underworld he governed was recast as hell. The act of feeding the dead became "devil worship" in colonial rhetoric, providing justification for the destruction of burial sites and the confiscation of ancestor mummies.

The Extirpation Campaigns

Campaigns against idolatry in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries targeted the practices associated with Supay's domain. Pablo José de Arriaga, in his 1621 manual for the extirpation of idolatry, described the destruction of mallqui (ancestor mummies), the sealing of sacred caves, and the punishment of ritual specialists who maintained communication with the dead. Priests and colonial officials searched burial sites, confiscating preserved bodies and burning them publicly.

Indigenous peoples responded by hiding their mallqui in increasingly remote locations, moving sacred objects from accessible shrines to caves and crevices that colonial authorities could not find.

El Tío of the Mines

The most striking survival of the transformed Supay emerged in the mining towns of colonial Bolivia, particularly in the great silver mountain of Potosí. Indigenous and mestizo miners, forced into brutal labor under the mita system, developed a religious practice centered on "El Tío" (The Uncle), a figure combining pre-Columbian underground spirits with the colonial devil. The mines were understood as entries into Ukhu Pacha, where Pachamama's mineral wealth lay waiting.

Statues of El Tío stand in niches throughout active mines to this day: seated figures with horns, staring eyes, and an open mouth, often with an erect phallus symbolizing the generative power of the underground. Miners place offerings of coca leaves, pure alcohol, and lit cigarettes in his mouth and at his feet before beginning their shift, asking for protection against cave-ins, for rich veins of ore, for safe return from the darkness.

The Diablada of Oruro

In the Bolivian city of Oruro, the annual carnival features the Diablada, the Dance of the Devils, in which dancers in spectacular horned costumes and grotesque masks fill the streets in choreographed performances. The tradition began as colonial missionary morality plays in which angels defeated devils. But the indigenous and mestizo communities who performed the dances transformed them.

The devils became the protagonists. Their costumes, elaborate constructions of embroidery, mirrors, jewels, and towering horns, became the focus of artistic pride and extraordinary investment. The miners of Oruro, whose livelihoods depended on the underground, recognized in the dance's devils their own El Tío and, behind him, the ancient Supay.