[2] The increase in population makes Quillacollo the second fastest growing city in Bolivia after El Alto in La Paz.

Quillacollo is linked to the city of Cochabamba through the Avenida Blanco Galindo, a particularly busy stretch on the main national highway.

It is officially dubbed the "Festival of National Integration" and sees a host of different activities, ranging from an extended folkloric spectacle, over a central Mass, generally attended by the Bolivian president and other authorities, to a huge popular pilgrimage in the course of which people profess their Catholic faith, but also engage in rituals which are commonly seen as standing in an uneasy relationship with Catholic orthodoxy at best, or being outright pagan.

A curious rite held on this festivity is extracting rocks from a hill near the sanctuary of the Virgin, whether the rock is big or small, it has to be taken home with the people who cracked the rocky hill to get it, who must return it the next year, as a symbolic act to ask the Virgin to lend them something (like health, money, luck etc.).

[4] The Urqupiña festival is annually attended by hundreds of thousands of faithful and national and international tourists, and it is one of the biggest events of popular religiosity in South America.