David Barreda

Indigenous faithful sit and stand for Sunday Mass in the market town of Pisaq, Peru. Here Mass is conducted in Spanish and Quechua so that the local population can receive the word of God. Missionaries in other parts of Latin America forced the indigenous population to learn Spanish before proselytizing them. In the Andes, Christianity was spread through the Quechua, the language used by the Inca. Some believe that helped preserve the older traditions as the European customs were being adopted.Today fewer and fewer of the younger generation speak Quechua.