November 1 – Puno Jubilee Week

Posted on November 1, 2015

In Puno, Peru, people are celebrating their founding in 1668 by the Spaniards. And they are doing so, in part, by re-enacting something that was supposed to have happened centuries and centuries before!!

The legendary founders of the Inca empire, Manco Capac and Mama Ocllo, are said to have risen out of Lake Titicaca (near where Puno is located) with instructions from the gods to create an empire by uniting all the various peoples living in the region. 

It is this birth-from-the-lake that is enacted at the beginning of the week-long Puno festival.



Some other festival activities include folkloric dancing and music and the display and sale of crafts.





Learn more about Puno:

You can get an idea of life in Puno from this video


Learn about Lake Titicaca:

The highest navigable lake in the world, Lake Titicaca is located between Bolivia and Peru, high up in the Andes Mountains, at 12,500 feet (3,812 m). (Navigable means that the lake can be crossed with ships and boats.)

One of the special things about the lake is that it is dotted with “islands” that were created by people! During ancient times, the Uros did not want to be taken over by the Inca, so they used reeds to build floating islands so that they could live out on the lake. The strategy worked: the Incas left the Uros alone.


To this day, people continue to live on the floating islands. They make houses and boats and tools and fishing nets and watchtowers and even souvenirs to sell to tourists out of the same totora reeds that the islands are made of!



Check out this short video about the Uros' islands.



Learn about the Incan Empire:

The Inca centered their empire in Peru but spread north and south along the Andes mountains and the western part of South America. 

Find out about their lifestyle, their inventions, and their culture by checking out these websites:



Also on this date:

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