Ekeko

Sources present Ekeko as a figure with roots in pre‑Columbian Tiwanaku/Pucara material culture: scholars link modern Ekeko iconography and domestic cultic role to anthropomorphic and zoomorphic small figures excavated across the high plateau (Tiwanaku, Pucara contexts). Modern descriptions frame this connection as scholarly interpretation of continuity and transformation rather than an uncontested, uninterrupted institutional lineage; the name is reported to derive from earlier forms (Ekhako/Eqaqo) identified in colonial and popular accounts as an ancient god of fortune in the Qullasuyu.

Ekeko is commonly depicted as a mustachioed anthropomorphic male wearing traditional Andean clothing (notably a poncho) and loaded with miniature sacks, baskets of grain, household objects, and symbolic items representing desired goods (money, houses, food, tools). Contemporary statuettes are typically small, portable figures; some modern examples include a circular mouth opening to receive a cigarette offered and lit during ritual. Archaeological predecessors mentioned in sources are small stone, mud, or metal (including gold) anthropomorphic figures from Tiwanaku/Pucara sites housed in museums.

In popular belief and practice Ekeko is credited with mediating material abundance and household provision: devotees present offerings and symbolic tokens in the hope of receiving real goods, better harvests, or monetary well‑being. Offerings recorded in the sources include banknotes clipped to the figurine, grain offerings for harvest blessing, and cigarettes inserted into and lit in the mouths of some statuettes (a modern popular ritual of making the Ekeko 'smoke' once a year). Ekeko’s efficacy is framed as reciprocal: offerings and the purchase/exchange of miniatures at the Alasitas market are acts intended to bind desire and request provision rather than documented literal guarantees of outcomes.