Myth, globalization, and mestizaje in new age Andean religion: The Intic Churincuna (Children of the Sun) of Urubamba, Peru

This paper examines the religiously syncretic and culturally hybrid phenomenon of New Age spirituality among urban mestizos in the Cusco region of Peru, primarily through ethnographic analysis of the Urubamba-based Intic Churincuna (Children of the Sun) religious group, along with its rituals and texts. Similar to many New Age Andean contexts, the group's cosmology combines an emphasis on the primordial nature of the Andes with an account of benign settlement and colonization. While arguably repressing the trauma of conquest and perpetuating racialized hegemonies, New Age Andean cosmology constructs a mythic-historical, nationalist narrative and a postcolonial subjectivity that allows urban Andean mestizos to ground their identities in indigeneity and colonization simultaneously as well as position themselves relative to contemporary contexts of globalization.