To understand the Baroque movement in the churches of Puno, one has to diferentiate between European Baroque style and the universal baroque spirit. The Baroque trends lavished on the churches of the highland plains represented a great melting pot of the cultural and architectural needs of Augustines, Dominicans and Jesuits with the aesthetic feeling of the ancient Inca. Pucará and Tiahuanaco artists creating an entirely novel concept of Baroque architecture in the history of culture.

But all these architectural styles cannot nor should not be piled together. Churches built in the mid sixteenth century, like those in Chucuito -both the Ascension, which was built for the Indians, as well as Santo Domingo which was reserved for whites -are extremely simple in conception, even when Spanish royal inspector Gari Diez de San Miguel found them "unnecessarily luxurious", as both undoubtedly obeyed the urgent need for massive-scale missionary work.

The Chucuito churches were finished were finished in eighteenth century, fitted with plateresque decorations and superb gold-leaf altarpieces which reflected the aspirations of the merchant classes who turned Chucuito into one of the most important cities of the Buenos Aires Viceregency.

The church of the Ascension in Yunguyo is a similar case. Its slightly beveled stone structure and its modest façade do not stand out; but inside, its imposing gateway is important: eight immense slabs of semi-cushioned stone fitted together in the Cusco style support a stone lintel to form a slightly trapezoidal doorway. This brings us back inside the church to see it in a different light; its walls feature stonework that speaks of the other architectural styles, from an earlier temple, encrusted unabashedly to worship another god. History shows that the ancient Yunguyo was part of the pre Colombian religious complex of the Temple of the Sun, one of the Inca empire's most important shrines. The gateway is angled with precision towards the Kapia volcano, like a picture frame.It could be said that it is a pre-Colombian huaca or temple with a Christian church built on the top.

The church of San Juan (Saint John), which was built for the Indians, as well as the Cathedral, which was reserved for the Spaniards and the Creoles, is also believed to rest on an ancient temple that was dedicated to the worship of the moon deity.

During the uprising headed by indigenous leader Tupac Amaru (1781), many of these churches were turned into fortresses, where the Spaniards held out until the bitter end. However, the rebellion left the religious images and symbols untouched. A century later; the Chileans rather less piously burned Chucuito to the ground and looted all the god and silver they came across. Tales of tapados (buried treasure), troves of jewels of virgins and saints date back to this era.

THE PUNO CATHEDRAL
Peruvian architect Hector Velarde described the architectural complex of the highland plains as "small isolated towns that make up a unity (that) are an open chain whose center was the mining town of Puno". Even while there are older towns in Peru, Puno was where missionaries, miners and architects came up with an early version on mestiza (mixed-blood) artistic expression.

The Puno cathedral is possibly the only one in Peru and Bolivia to feature four walls that are entirely free-standing, and completely carved. Damian Bayon an expert on Latin American baroque architecture, states that the cathedral takes the shape of a flattened pyramid to dominate the city and Lake Titicaca. The slope on which it is located put its builders to the test to place these stone blocks on a single plain. Its topographical contours, both lateral and behind, like the shadow of a building, are distributed in gradual declines that run from the left to right and vice-verse, which allows the torrential highland rainfall to gently fall down its many canals, a complementary addition to its stone gargoyles.

The cathedral, like a great temple, faces the rising sun. Thus, the first light of the day that breaks over the lake, after guilding the mountaintops, lights up the cathedral`s twin towers and its façade, which the sun light reveals as if it were a roll of film.

At the foot of the lower receses, which house images of San Marcos (Saint Mark) and San Mateo (Saint Mathew), rests a puma. This led many to claim the Indian workmen dedicated the cathedral to Wiracocha, the Andean deity who is symbolized by the mountain lion.

To the side of the main upper central recess, which lies empty, hang the haut-relief sculptures of Saint Peter and Saint Paul and the Immaculate Virgin, who was to inspire the construction of Puno's first church, on top of which the faithful were to build the Cathedral.

The middle of the engravings on the door itself stands Saint Michael the Archangel who is casting sand at a dragon. The one inside, and slightly above it, two Indian mermaids play their charangos. These mermaids are also painted in the same posture on the inner arches of the church in Azangaro.

Two small pumas frame the stonework in the upper part, to the far side of the gateway. The pumas are portrayed exhaling their inner ectoplasm. These creative breaths teems with plants and animals, while birds and grapevines climb like ribbons several meters up the high wall until they fade out of sight. This Andean parable was possibly taken inspired by the church of La Compañia in Arequipa.

The lord of the church should have been San Carlos Borromeo, the patron saint of Puno, but there is no sign of him. Instead, the star of the show is the Christ of the bullet, a two meter-high mannered image brought over from Spain in 1661 by the Salcedo brothers. Legend has it that during one of the red sunsets over the highland tundra, Basques and Andalucians got into a fight over the rights of the Lakayota mine. One of the Salcedo's followers fired his arquebus point-blank at Spanish councilor. Peredo, who had taken refuge in the Franciscan chapel, but the bullet, instead of hitting Peredo, impacted in the right shoulderblade of the Lord of Agony, who started to bleed miraculously. Word of the Miracle soon got about it, and ever since then, the faithful have born the image of Christ aloft during processions every Tuesday during Eastern Week.

THE MOST BEAUTIFUL CHURCHES
For centuries, the best-known churches were those of Juli, a town once called the "Little Rome of the Americas", the Jesuit church of Santa Cruz, probably home of the finest architectural finishings inside; and those of san Juan, San Pedro and the Asuncion (Ascension) which house extremely valuable paitings, including the most important collection by Bitti, the master who was the pre-date contemporary paintings. The paintings featured long, affected figures with quaternary colors crafted with a sweet touch. However there are so many that it will take too long to list them.

The church of Nuestra Señora de Altagracia (Our Lady of High Grace) in Ayaviri is one of the finest in Peru and houses spectacular paintings by Isidoro Moncada, from the Cusco School of painters. The church of San Jeronimo de Asillo, which was crved from reddish and yellow stone, could be considered a well-done architectural model of the Puno cathedral, despite being home to many more recesses, columns and medallions, which are kept to a minimum in the Cathedral.

Inside the red church of Pomata, the stone work is lineal, carved and worthy of fair interpretation and evaluation. The carved stone churches of Santiago in Lampa; San Pedro in Zepita, or San Cristobal (Saint Christopher) in Cabana, has its own differentiated mystery even when they belong to the same family. What also stands out is the church of Oro in Azangaro, which features a superb white stone façade and a modest mud-brick structure.

There are also countless smaller churches scattered through the towns of highland plains. On festival days their colors light up, and for a moment, seem to return to their glory days. To pay a visit one only needs to start with one of them.