{"id":3305,"date":"2013-02-10T02:14:11","date_gmt":"2013-02-09T20:14:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/memmott.us\/blog\/?p=3305"},"modified":"2013-02-12T07:03:37","modified_gmt":"2013-02-12T01:03:37","slug":"la-capilla-de-sepulturas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/memmott.us\/blog\/2013\/02\/10\/la-capilla-de-sepulturas\/","title":{"rendered":"La Capilla de Sepulturas"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Side<\/a>

Side View Showing Bell Tower to the Left and Santa Barbara’s Tower to the Right<\/p><\/div>\n

The Church of Sepulturas, officially \u201cSe\u00f1or de San Salvador de Sepulturas,\u201d makes a nice stop on the road from Oruro to Cala Cala.\u00a0 The town is named for the chullpas (Incan and pre-Incan tombs) which were common in the area, but which are pretty much gone now.\u00a0 It is now probably best known for the chapel, which was declared a national monument in 1967.<\/p>\n

In Iglesias Rurales<\/em><\/a>, Ambassador Philipp Schauer states that the church dates from 1785, which date is on the side portal.\u00a0 Ambassador Schauer is probably right, though the caretaker of the church claimed it was built about 100 years earlier.<\/p>\n

\"Front<\/a>

Front View<\/p><\/div>\n

The church is built mostly of adobe, with walls about three feet thick and takes the form of a Latin Cross.\u00a0 The roof is thatched, and according to the caretaker, is double.\u00a0 The large, square bell tower stands to the right side of the main entryway.\u00a0 At the right-rear corner of the wall surrounding the church stands another tower, unique to this church, and connected to the patron saint of the town (see below).<\/p>\n

\"Pulpit\"<\/a>

Pulpit<\/p><\/div>\n

This church is quite deteriorated.\u00a0 In 2006, the company Complejo Metal\u00fargico Vinto S. A., which operates a tin smelter nearby and was then owned by Swiss multinational Glencore through its Bolivian subsidiary Sinchi Wayra, agreed to finance the full restoration of the church.\u00a0 Unfortunately for the church and the community, the smelter was nationalized in 2007, and only the repair of the roof was completed.\u00a0 The community continues to seek a sponsor to help with completion of the restoration.<\/p>\n

One unique feature of this chapel is its permanent inhabitant.\u00a0 You will likely see the owl resting on a rafter in a daytime visit.<\/p>\n

\"_MG_1001\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A gate in that right wall leads to a large processional square, surrounded by its own wall and with small chapels in the corners and another small structure, apparently a \u201ccapilla miserere\u201d in the center.\u00a0 Also near the center is a large pillar.\u00a0 While the local corregidor suggested that the pillar may have had other purposes, Ambassador Schauer reports that it was a \u201crollo,\u201d used for binding criminals as a way of shaming them publicly.<\/p>\n

\"Santa<\/a>

Santa Barbara (without her sword and tower)<\/p><\/div>\n

Inside is a statue of Santa Barbara, the patron saint of Sepulturas.\u00a0 Two major, original silver pieces belong with the statue, but are generally kept safe elsewhere.\u00a0 One is a sword, which she holds in her right hand, pointing up at heaven.\u00a0 The other is a tower, which she holds in her left.\u00a0 Together with a small tower outside the church, these two items hark back to the story of the Saint.<\/p>\n

Santa Barbara was supposed to have lived in Nicodemia, present-day Turkey, in the third century.\u00a0 She was the daughter of a a rich pagan, who shut her up in a tower to protect her from the world.\u00a0 She was converted to Christianity and, after a series of miraculously failed attempts to kill her for her conversion, finally her father was successful in beheading her.\u00a0 As punishment, he was struck by lighting on the road home after the beheading, and his body was consumed by fire.\u00a0 According to the chapel caretakers, the sword held by the statue symbolizes the lighting which struck her father.\u00a0 From the lightning story, Santa Barbara has become the patron saint for people working with explosives and fire, such as miners and artillerymen.\u00a0 Her connection to mining and fire is likely the reason for her to have been chosen the patroness of Sepulturas, a mining and smelting town.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>

The “rollo”<\/p><\/div>\n

Santa Barbara has fallen out of favor with the Catholic Church in recent years (though she remains very popular with Orthodox Christians).\u00a0 In 1969, Pope Paul VI ordered the traditional date of Santa Barbara\u2019s martyrdom removed from the liturgical calendar on the grounds that there was little reason to believe that the story of her life and martyrdom had any basis in history.\u00a0 That has had little impact on the faithful of Sepulturas, who continue to celebrate the Saint\u2019s day as their most important local holiday, holding their \u201cGran Feria,\u201d including a running of the bulls, every year on December 4.<\/p>\n

Sepulturas is less than 10 miles from Oruro, on the road to Calacala.\u00a0 Directions and a .gdb file for the whole trip, including the turnoff to Sepulturas, are covered in the post on the Rock Art at Calacala<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Church of Sepulturas, officially \u201cSe\u00f1or de San Salvador de Sepulturas,\u201d makes a nice stop on the road from Oruro to Cala Cala.\u00a0 The town is named for the chullpas (Incan and pre-Incan tombs) which were common in the area, but which are pretty much gone now.\u00a0 It is now probably best known for the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[101,92,102,61,107,91,59],"tags":[190,187,104,172,170],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/memmott.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3305"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/memmott.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/memmott.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/memmott.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/memmott.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3305"}],"version-history":[{"count":47,"href":"http:\/\/memmott.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3305\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3412,"href":"http:\/\/memmott.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3305\/revisions\/3412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/memmott.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/memmott.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/memmott.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}