Don Policarpio Flores Apaza
Description
Blessed was the day you crossed to the other side… Rainbows filled the sky, hail touched the earth, thunder echoed in our ears, and we knew the Angels had come to welcome you.
Bio
Don Policarpio Flores Apaza was a small man with an immense heart, offering warmth, comfort, friendship, and wisdom to everyone he met. Orphaned at an early age, he wept many tears as a child, adolescent, and young man, moving from place to place and struggling to survive through the hardest labor imaginable, including work in the tin mines.
Later, he married Doña Martina and made his home in the lands of her people, Tiwanaku, the most sacred place of the Aymara people, where the High Priests dwell to this day. Though he came from another village, he was eventually recognized, trained, and welcomed as a High Priest himself, becoming one of the most respected and beloved figures of recent history.
When he first met Beautiful Painted Arrow and me, he said he had been dreaming of us for a long time.
We had come to ask for his blessing and permission to hold the first Bolivian Sun-Moon Dance, the meeting of the Condor and the Eagle.
Not only did he grant us his blessing, but he also walked beside us through the dance for every remaining year of his life, together with his wife, Doña Martina, and some of his children.
It is thanks to him, his recognition, and his support of our work that we have been able to build lasting roots in the land and among the people, bringing together the different traditions that make our river strong and life-affirming.
His memory and love live on with us always.