Las Limpias

 

To all those that are reading this, you are now reading the words of a soul sin malos energias. You may not realize how lucky you are, so let me explain…

Before the Spanish came to the Americas, Ecuador was inhabited by the Incas. Similar to what we know about the Native Americans in North America, the Incas had many spiritual traditions in which they connected nature and the gods. Even though much of the more developed cities of Ecuador are now made up of mestizos (people who are part indigenous and part Spaniard) many of the Incan traditions remain. One of these traditions is called Las Limpias. Three times a week the indigenous women from mountainous villages around the city, travel to Cuenca with dozens of bags of flowers and special oils. They set up in the market, and perform cleansings all day for the people in the city. The purpose is to cleanse the person of their bad energies. Let me tell you from experience though, it takes a lot to get these bad energies out!

First they take a large bunch of their flowers and hit you all over your entire body. Simultaneously they say “cleanse you” and “out” (to the bad energy) in their native language Ketchua??. Next they take an egg and rub it over your entire body. The egg is meant to capture all of the bad energy that they just beat out of you, and when I mean over your entire body, I mean under your shirt, all over your face and everywhere. Finally they take aromatic oils and pour them on your hands and your head, and then drink one of the liquids and spit it all over you. To finish the cleansing they take ashes and make a cross on both your forehead and your wrist.

As a very catholic country, the tradition has an interesting mix of both their indigenous traditions and Catholicism. These women perform Las Limpias every week of the year and people visit multiple times a year. My homestay mother even keeps her egg in a glass in the kitchen to make sure the bad energies stay contained in that glass. One of the most common reasons to visit is called malos ojos. Many Ecuadorians believe that when your baby will not stop crying but is neither sick nor hurt, the cause must be from a person with bad energy staring at the baby. The only way to stop the crying is to take the baby to the market and have these women perform a cleansing to rid the child of the bad energies.

So this is what my fellow interns and I spent out Friday afternoon doing. We took to the streets, and invaded the market (which is incredibly accurate if you have ever seen 20 gringos going anywhere in Ecuador) to rid ourselves of our bad energy. I don’t know if someone gave me a lot of bad energy recently or something, but my cleansing seemed to take a lot longer than my classmates. But… don’t worry I am super clean now (so if you have any bad energy please look away)!

Lots of love from Ecuador,

Jen