amuletsEkekoIqiqu

said eh-KEH-ko

also: Iqiqu · Ekhako · Eqaqo · Ekhekho

A short, moustached man in Andean dress, above all a poncho, loaded to the shoulders with everything a household could want: bags and baskets of grain, food, pots, tools, banknotes. Most are cast plaster now; the colonial ones were clay. Modern figures have a hole in the mouth sized for a lit cigarette. Small versions go on key rings and necklaces.

cited

Aymara Ekhako or Eqaqo, popularised as Ekhekho — the name of the god of fortune and prosperity in Qullasuyu; contemporary Aymara spelling Iqiqu
The cited source says the Ekhako was invoked when a disgrace disturbed a household. cited

When

1781 to now, on the colonial figure; older claims are named and not dated here still carried cited

Period	colonial La Paz to the present
How the date is known	textual — a dated text describes it
Note	1781 is the siege of La Paz, after which Sebastián Segurola moved the fair to 24 January and the Ekeko appeared modelled in clay. Cavour, Ponce Sanginés, Paredes Candia and Posnansky each argue for pre-Columbian antecedents; this project reports those arguments and does not date them.

Years are stored astronomically — 1 CE is 1, 1 BCE is 0, 500 BCE is −499 — and printed the way a reader says them. How these dates are made.

The thing itself

Form	Figurine
Made of	Fired clay · Paper · A coin
Goes	At the hearth · At the neck · In a pocket or a bag · At the till
Made by	Alasitas artisans and plaster casters; anyone may own one, and one given as a gift is the usual route
Colour	white · red · green
Retired	no — it is kept
Note	Modern figures are cast in plaster, which has no key in this project's materials list; the colonial ones were clay. Banknotes clipped to the figure are part of the object as it stands in a house.

What its carriers say it stops

Reported, attributed, not tested here. Each row below is somebody's claim, with their name on it.

Poverty citedsaid by the figure's owners
Ekeko brings monetary wealth to its worshippers. An offering is generally required before he provides his services.
Attracting custom, luck or love — the charm that pulls rather than blocks citedsaid by Alasitas buyers, who give a miniature so the recipient gets the real thing within the year
Harm to a house or a field citedsaid by Aymara households; the cited source says the Ekhako was invoked when a disgrace disturbed the home

The story

The Ekeko is the Tiwanakan god of abundance and prosperity in the folklore of the Altiplano, and in Bolivia he is the figure the Alasitas fair is built around. That fair opens on 24 January in La Paz and runs for a month; in Peru the main festival is 3 May, in Puno, on the Machallata hill. Elsewhere the Ekeko's festival falls in October under the name Calvario.

Four named scholars argue about what he was before the colony. Ernesto Cavour, in his book Alasitas, points to anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figures in stone, mud and gold found in the Bolivian departments of La Paz, Oruro and Potosí, made from basalt out of the pre-Columbian mines on the shores of Lake Poopó and andesite from the Copacabana peninsula. Carlos Ponce Sanginés works on humped, phallic figures he places in the Inca period and reads as the colonial Ekeko's predecessors. Antonio Paredes Candia takes them for the remains of summer-solstice festivals. Arthur Posnansky observed that around 22 December the Tiwanaku population offered miniatures of what they wanted to their gods.

The story Bolivians tell puts him in 1781, during the siege of La Paz. As Antonio Díaz Villamil narrates it, Paulita Tintaya, an Indigenous girl working for Doña Josefa Ursula de Rojas Foronda, had been given a small Ekeko by Isidoro Choquehuanca before she left the hacienda where they grew up. Isidoro, serving in the Indigenous army besieging the city, left food by the statue outside the house each week without saying so. Paulita and her employer survived the siege on it. Tradition holds — La Paz tells that story as the origin of the Ekeko's power to provide.

What the figure is offered is specific. Banknotes are clipped to him. Grain is given for good harvests. Statuettes with the mouth opening are given a lit cigarette — in the most recent form of the practice, once a year, to secure a full year of prosperity.

cited

How it is made and carried

Cast in plaster, painted, then loaded. The Ekeko goes in a place of honour in the house and is added to rather than replaced: more miniatures, more banknotes, a cigarette on the day. Miniatures bought at Alasitas can be blessed by the men and, less often, women working the fair as shamans, and at midday on 24 January the Catholic Church blesses the gifts at the main cathedral in La Paz. Small Ekekos ride on key rings and necklaces and are not offered anything.

cited

Now

Sold across western Bolivia and southern Peru, and central to a fair that fills streets and parks across central La Paz every January. In March 2011 Elizabeth Salguero, Bolivia's Minister of Cultures, nominated Alasitas along with two other Bolivian festivals to UNESCO for recognition as intangible cultural heritage. In 2016 the Feast of Alasita and the miniatures of the Altiplano of Puno were declared Cultural Heritage of the Nation of Peru.

cited

Recognised by

A national heritage register — the Feast of Alasita and the miniatures of the Altiplano of Puno declared Cultural Heritage of the Nation of Peru (2016)

What this is near

traditionIlla practicethe tradition this figure is the public face of — a miniature is a claim on the full-size thing kinIllathe older Andean miniature, kept by herders for their animals rather than by households for their money placeEl Mercado de las Brujasthe La Paz market where he is sold year-round, not only in January parallelManeki-nekothe other figure in this atlas that sits at a till and is expected to pull custom in practiceFeeding the charmthe practice this record turns on: banknotes clipped on, grain offered, a cigarette lit once a year practiceBlessing at a shrinewhat happens to the miniatures at midday on 24 January, at the cathedral in La Paz practiceBuying one in a markethow one is got — and at Alasitas, buying is the rite orgUNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritagethe body Bolivia nominated Alasitas to in March 2011

What names this one

Each in its own words, from its own page.

parallelDarumaanother figure a household buys and asks a year's worth of gain from kinIllathe household descendant of the same idea — a small loaded figure standing in for the full-size abundance parallelManeki-nekothe Andean household figure loaded with goods and asked for more of them — the same job, a hemisphere away carriesIlla practiceits public face: a figure loaded with everything you could want, fed banknotes, grain and a lit cigarette carried-byBlessing at a shrinewhere both directions land on one day — blessed at the fair, and blessed again at the cathedral at midday on 24 January carried-byBuying one in a marketthe case where buying is not the preliminary to the rite but the rite carried-byFeeding the charmthe figure that smokes one cigarette a year and wears banknotes the rest of it carriesEl Mercado de las Brujasthe god of abundance whose fair, Alasitas, runs from 24 January in the same streets

Where this came from

Ekeko — Wikipedia read 2026-09-16
Alasitas — Wikipedia read 2026-09-16

Elsewhere

Record updated 2026-09-16. This record as JSON. Every field carries its own provenance; the tier chips above say which.

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