In agricultural communities, devotions to the pre-Columbian nature spirits remain an important part of ritual life, but the spirit of the hills has risen to a conspicuous position in the devotional lives of the mining communities of the region. Like the other spirits, Supay was originally a highly ambivalent entity, capable of bringing good as well as bad fortune. Sacrificial offerings to him ensured his good disposition and helped to maintain equilibrium in the forces that governed his domain. With the increased disturbance of those forces caused by mining activities, the spirit of the hills began to change in nature, becoming more malevolent in character and more vengeful in his actions. One myth from Oruro, translated by June Nash from Beltrán Herédia, sets the stage for this transition
The community of Uru Uru [pre-Hispanic name for Oruro] was one of fishermen and pastoralists devoted to the worship of the Sun. Every day Huari [the spirit of the hills] was awakened by the first-born daughter of the Sun, Ñusta. He fell in love with her and pursued her with arms of smoke and volcanic fire. The father came to her aid and hid her in the caves. Huari swore that he would bring vengeance against the town by turning it against the true religion. He became the apostle of a new religion and preached against Pachamac and his religious and social work. He thundered against Inti, the Sun God, and the old social hierarchy. He exalted in the superiority of material goods over spiritual, and of the labor of the mines over that of the field. The Urus resisted, but when Huari showed them gold and silver, they rebelled against their old beliefs and sacred authorities. Desirous of riches, they abandoned the daily hard but healthy work in their fields. They stopped praying to Inti and turned to wild drinking and midnight revels with chichi, a liquor unknown before then. In their drunken state there came forth serpents, toads, lizards, and ants who, in the acts of the witches' Sabbath, overwhelmed them. The inhabitants of the neighboring towns and even their friends and parents appropriated their goods. The people, abject with vice, were transformed into apathetic, silent and loveless beings.
The town would have disappeared because of internal fights had not Ñusta appeared on a rainbow one day after a heavy storm. Accompanying her were the chiefs and priests who had been exiled from the town when the people were perverted from their old ways. Little by little, men returned to what had been. They revived their traditions, customs, religion, and social order. They imposed Quechua on the Uru dialect. The fields would have recovered and even surpassed their fertility if Huari, in vengeance, had not sent four plagues on the repentant town: a serpent, a toad, a lizard, and ants. The monstrous serpent moved from the mountains of the south and devoured their fields and flocks. The Urus saw him and fled in terror, when suddenly someone shouted for Ñusta, and the monster was divided in two by a sword. The other three plagues, advancing from the other compass points, were also killed by the intervention of Ñusta, who overwhelmed the vengeful Huari. Today a chapel stands on the hill where the giant lizard was killed. It is said that the lake [near Cala Cala] still turns red at dawn from the blood of the lizard that flowed into it. The ants were turned into sand dunes that can still be seen on the southern borders of the town. Peace returned to the town.
Colonial administrators instituted the mita system in 1605, requiring indigenous men to perform two to four months of forced labor in the mines or factories owned by Spanish colonials. The lord of the hills took on many of the characteristics that the miners must have perceived in the extortionate owners and administrators of the mines.
Huari's outward character was also influenced by religious ideology that the Iberian colonizers brought with them from Europe. Catholic priests regarded much of the indigenous religion as idolatry and were enthusiastic in their attempts to reshape indigenous beliefs by re-articulating native spirits as figures from the Christian pantheon. Within indigenous mining communities, Ñusta became the Virgin of the Mineshaft and the spirit of the hills became the Devil, his images reworked to satisfy the priests' descriptions.
Even after the Tío first took on his devilish appearance, his role in the lives of the miners who offer sacrifices to him has taken on different meanings depending on changing social, political and labor contexts. Prior to the nationalization of the mines in 1952, miners were organized into work groups and paid according to the amount and quality of the ore that they were able to extract from the mine. These workgroups would perform the rites to the Tío as a way to reinforce group solidarity and to gain an edge over rival workgroups by winning the Tío's favor. Those who went into the mines alone were suspected of making deals with the Tío for their personal gain; it is said that those who sell their souls to the Tío for riches die within 30 days.
Following the nationalization of the mines and the military coup of 1965, the miners' relationship with the spirit of the hills changed: "The same beliefs and rituals in honor of the Tio that served to lessen hostility between workers and owners in the time of the tin barons became transformed into the focus for rebellious feelings during the military dictatorship of Barrientos.
Workers were now paid standard wages rather than by their production rates so supplications to the Tío for increased productivity were no longer necessary. Such rites were also suppressed by the mining administrators, as were other indigenous rituals throughout the country. Despite these pressures, the ch'alla and the k'araku continued to be practiced clandestinely and helped to give rise to a new political identity. Heraclio Bonilla writes, "The miners' cult of the Tio constructs an identity, fortifies a solidarity, and at the same time by its very ambiguity in representing good and evil protects them and serves as a powerful ally against outsiders.
Sacrifices to the Tío continue today, and though they are not suppressed in the way they once were, their role as a basis for political organization has been frustrating to mainstream political organizers because they represent "a struggle for a type of development different from and opposed to the standard Western model."
Re-privitization of Bolivia's mines in 1985 and the lay off of many thousands of miners helped to produce yet another new context in which the Tío appears. By 1998, displaced highlanders had already begun to invoke the Tío during rituals in places like Urkupiña (near the city of Cochabamba), where he was not invoked previously. "Perhaps this represents a migration of symbols as well," suggests Robert Albro.
The Tío's role in such new contexts is necessarily different, however. Libations are offered to him at Urkupiña in expectation that he will reciprocate with riches, as they are in the highlands mines, but devotees are usually strangers to each other rather than members of a close community. Nor is the separation between the Catholic realm of the surface and the Tío's underground realm that is so important in Oruro observed very strictly at Urkupiña.
Thus, if symbols are migrating with people, the meaning of those symbols is shifting at the same time.
