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People of the Andes: Challenges Facing the People of the Altiplano
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10531 |
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CULTURE
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| Issue
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2 / 1986 |
3,965 Words |
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Thomas Molnar
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In the background of the news from South America - liberation theology, Castro's propaganda, revolutions, and changes of regimes - there is a mysterious people living on the high peaks and plateaus of the Andes. They are mysterious perhaps because they were isolated and lived under the colonial conditions and conquests for almost a thousand years. Organized first by the Inca rulers of a vast empire on the Pacific coast, then colonized and Christianized by the Spaniards they finally became independent in the first quarter of the nineteenth century.
But what does independence mean to the Aymara and Quechua tribal-linguistic groups, the historical inhabitants of the Andes, people still very different from the white and mestizo descendants of the Spaniards? Very often, the people of the altiplano in Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador, do not even speak Spanish, except for the few words that their household heads must know in order to communicate with government and municipal officials.
Do they know that they are counted as "Peruvians" and "Bolivians"? There is no sure answer since their family and clan structure is self-sufficient, going back to time immemorial. It seems that the white man's labels do not quite affect their thinking. At any rate, a majority still live up in the mountains, having its own economic base. Only a minority, although in a steady stream, come down to the towns and cities, to La Paz and Lima, a situation which creates particular problems.
The life of altiplano "Indians" explains and illustrates the vast differences still existing in South America, between whites and nonwhites, rural population and city folk, the educated and the illiterate. Their main subsistence foods are the many varieties of potatoes, corn and dried meat. Vegetables and fruit are cultivated not for home consumption but for the market, for city people.
You can see Aymara peasants sitting in Peruvian or Bolivian marketplaces, keeping a strange and uncomfortable silence, the women in their derby hats, always several steps behind the men, carrying produce to be sold or a few purchases for the home. Among the objects they sell are pieces of apparel made from Ilama fur, and dried Ilama embryos which they obtain by feeding Ilamas with certain herbs to make them abort. Not far from a couple offering their products for sale will be the witch doctor, prepared for any event. Their physical proximity reflects the tight organization of the village.
The village consists of a few adobe houses, or homes made of heavy rocks hurled down from the mountains by wild winds. The only brick buildings are the church and the local barracks or government outpost. Not much communication passes between these signs of "civilization" and the peasant, who may not even be aware that they are "Peruvians" now and have been for centuries. Their memories, their entire beings seems to have been fixed in some yet older century, perhaps not even in Inca times.
Work in the fields is adapted to the environment and to the often abysmal poverty. The fields are really terraces cut out of the mountainside, like those in similarly unproductive terrain in Asia and Africa. Modern agricultural machinery is practically unknown and would probably be useless on the narrow terraces. There are no funds to buy such equipment anyway, even though the government has sent expert
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