Aymara-Quechua Flags

When I participated as just another spectator, back in December 2006, in the Brotherhood Festival in Honor of Immigrants, I missed the presentation of the first dance group, as I started watching them once they were already dancing, and then I heard them being named, along with the two groups that followed. All three represented the Indigenous Communities.

What caught my attention were two flags they carried; one was held directly by a woman with her hands, and the other was held by another woman with a spear.

Apparently, now that I look more clearly at the photos showing the entire stage, you can see that there were two more flags. And now it makes sense when, searching the internet, I found those flags.

I'm going to start with the first one, the multicolored one.
I am copying verbatim some paragraphs that I found on this website http://www.quechuanetwork.org/unancha_1.cfm?lang=s, which concisely explains the flag:

We must emphasize that the ancestral homeland of the Qhishwa-Aymaras counts among its most important emblems the sacred WIPHALA, composed of the seven colors of the rainbow and those of four colors corresponding to the four SUYU, and we can define from the Andean perspective, the Aymara-Qhishwa historically know the WIPHALA as the national emblem of the Pusintsuyu or Tawantinsuyu.

That is why the WIPHALA is the symbol of National and Cultural identity of the Amazonian Andes; it is the emblem of the collectivist and harmonious Nation.
It is the representation of the daily activities of the Andean man in time and space.
Apparently, the flag belongs to the Aymaras and Quechuas.
In the following link, there is a very simple and very good explanation of each of the colors of the flag: http://katari.org/wiphala/colores.htm and something more to complement the first links: http://katari.org/wiphala/unidad.htm

Now an image that makes me understand that there was indeed more than one flag on that stage, and what each flag represented, which, from what can be observed, have the colors in a different order.

The following website http://katari.org/wiphala/emblema.htm also gives us information, in this case about the emblems, and it is precisely a topic that leads us to the next flag.

The next flag was very hard for me to find; I didn't know what it was about, what it represented, what it meant, I didn't know how to search for it, I wrote a few emails and got no response, but finally I found it, and then with the exact name it was very easy to know what flag it was.

The flag in question, apparently, is called Chakana; the cardinal points would be represented at each of its points, and Cuzco in the center. It is the continental emblem of Awyalala, which would be what Latin America is today.

I will leave some links, which are where I read about this second flag: http://katari.org/wiphala/emblema.htm http://pueblosoriginarios.com/sur/andina/inca/chakana.html http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chacana http://home.arcor.de/yanaoca/Andenkreuz.htm

(Originally published on 14-12-2006)