Worshipped throughout the Andes, Pachamamma is one of the most powerful and beloved deities in Bolivian culture. A fertility goddess in Incan mythology, after the Spanish conquest, Pachamamma was fused with the Virgin Mary and continues to be worshipped by both Christians and pachamamistas today. Being as she’s in charge of planting and the harvest, you definitely want to be on Pachamamma’s good side, hence why people toast her on the regular, often by spilling a few drops of chicha in a ritual called challa.

And the people of Bolivia truly do have Pachamamma’s back; in 2010 the country passed a law called the Ley de Derechos de la Madre Tierra, or, the Law of the Rights of Mother Earth, which establishes Mother Earth as “a collective subject of public interest” with rights of her own. Considered “the first instance of environmental law that gives legal personhood to the natural system,” the Ley de Derechos de la Madre Tierra is truly groundbreaking, and hopefully something that will catch on in countries like our own.