The Aymara and Quechua people of the Andean highlands are only superficially Roman Catholic by religion: they retain beliefs and rituals which date back to pre-Inca times. Their worldview contains "liberation theology" in its original, indigenous form.
For the Aymara and Quechua highlanders, who live by tilling the soil and shepherding animals, faith is closely tied to agriculture. Everything is related: land, birth, death, the mountains, and the seasons. Nothing is absolute or complete in itself; there is a broad mutual need that links all things: supernatural beings, humanity, and nature. Harmony and balance are fundamental conditions of life.
The Andean belief structure flows from this sense of the relatedness of all things. Carnpesinos, the hill peasants, have a vague sense of a father god who is or dwells behind the sun and germinates life. But this god is remote. More central to the awareness of the Andean people is their veneration for Pachamama, the earth mother.
"The earth is the source of life; she is where we are born and buried. We do not want to abandon the earth, although at times it appears to abandon us. The earth is like a mother who nurses us and from whom we nourish ourselves. Were it not Tor the home, we would not exist," explains one Aymara leader.