Homage to my Teachers: Don Policarpio Flores Apaza

Don Policarpio Flores Apaza: Amauta (High priest) of Tiwanaku. By Miguel A. Kavlin

Blessed was the Day that saw you pass onto the other side...Rainbows were on the sky, hail upon the earth, Thunder rang in our Ears and we knew the Angels were there to greet you!!!

Don Policarpio Flores Apaza was a tiny man with a hughe heart where everybody found warmth, solace, friendship and wisdom.
A orphan, Don policarpio shed countless tears as a child, adolescent and young man, wondering from place to place barely able to earn his sustenance with the hardest labours imaginable, such as working the tin mines.

Eventually he married Dona Martina and settled in the lands of her people: Tiwanaku, the Mosta Sacred place of the Aymara people, where its High Priests dwell up to today, and even though Don policarpio was
from another village, he was eventually recognized and trained and welcomed as a High Priest himself, perhaps one of the most respected and well loved in recent history.

When he met beautiful Painted Arrow and me for the first time, he recognized us, and stated he had been dreaming of us for a Long Time.
We had come to ask for his permission and blessings to conduct the First bolivian Sun-Moon dance, the encounter of the Condor and the Eagle.

Not only did he grant us Permission and Blessings, but accompanied us during the Dance for every remaining year of his life, together with his Wife, Dona martina and some of his children.
It is thanks to him, his recognition and support of our work that we have been able to grow longstanding roots on the land and the people, and bring together the different traduitions that make our river strong and life affirming.

His memory and love lives on with us allways