Today I spent my time at about 13,700 feet. I spent my time with colleagues and a group of local native people, "Cuyuni"--Inca is probably not the right word, but they certainly were descendants of the Incas who lived here when the Spanish arrived in the 16th century. I watched a local shaman make an offering to his gods--the sky, the mountain, the earth--and I listened to his earnest pleas for peace, safety, and tranquility. Though his words were mostly Quechua, I could pick out a few others which made me feel included and a part of his prayers. I listened to the drummers and flautists who accompanied him, us. I watched as one of the women cut peat moss that would later be used as fuel. I took pictures of her llamas that would carry the peat back to her small village. I walked through a rain storm, tramped through mud and water, ate an excellent meal of locally prepared foods, ate a baked potato off of a blanket in the middle of field above the tree line--14,000 feet--top of the world. I don't know what to make of these people--hard working, earnest, happy. I fear that if I come back here in twenty years they will be gone, replaced by modernity, but I also fear that that I am idealizing them all out of proportion. Their lives are tough, filled with long days of work dedicated entirely to their farming experience--animals, plants, the seasons, the mountains, tilling, building, without a day’s rest. Everything is always ideal in the pastoral experience, Beatus Ille, but the truth is that living in these rugged mountains is a lot of hard work, heart break, rain, cold, wind, earthquakes. Yet, one also detects a gentle stoicism about the hard work and rough life. These ancestors of the Incas are a hardy group, resilient, survivors, who take the hard breaks with a grain of salt and move on. The animals are here to serve them, but they also honor the work of those animals. The sacred valley of the Inca is a strange place filled with a river, terraces, mountains that shoot straight up, lots of brown mud, plants galore, and a hard-working people who will just never give up. The cognitive dissonance I feel in staying at a wonderful hotel is contrasted sharply by the hard life I know these people lead who live in adobe brick buildings, barely have water and lights, do not have good sanitation or good climate control--none in fact. Some dwellings do not have glass windows just 17 degrees south of the Equator. I first learned about the Equator and the Southern Cross over forty-five years ago in a civics and culture class that was a part of my fourth grade experience. Who knew that it would take me this long to actually travel below the Equator and meet such interesting people. Curiously, they were like a mirror. I could see in their efforts that the things they wanted--a house, a family, children, a job, a few possessions, were only the things we all want. They are driven by their beliefs, their culture, their desires which are only an ongoing negotiation of their cultural discourses regarding faith, religion, ethics, values. They had no cars, but they had "motocars" a kind of three-wheeled taxi vehicle which shuttles them around their towns. They are worried about the education of their children. They worry about who they are going to marry. They worry about whether their stock will increase. I worry that these people will not be here in forty years, and I am thinking the world will be a poorer place without them.
Sunday, March 24, 2013
Under the Southern Cross
Today I spent my time at about 13,700 feet. I spent my time with colleagues and a group of local native people, "Cuyuni"--Inca is probably not the right word, but they certainly were descendants of the Incas who lived here when the Spanish arrived in the 16th century. I watched a local shaman make an offering to his gods--the sky, the mountain, the earth--and I listened to his earnest pleas for peace, safety, and tranquility. Though his words were mostly Quechua, I could pick out a few others which made me feel included and a part of his prayers. I listened to the drummers and flautists who accompanied him, us. I watched as one of the women cut peat moss that would later be used as fuel. I took pictures of her llamas that would carry the peat back to her small village. I walked through a rain storm, tramped through mud and water, ate an excellent meal of locally prepared foods, ate a baked potato off of a blanket in the middle of field above the tree line--14,000 feet--top of the world. I don't know what to make of these people--hard working, earnest, happy. I fear that if I come back here in twenty years they will be gone, replaced by modernity, but I also fear that that I am idealizing them all out of proportion. Their lives are tough, filled with long days of work dedicated entirely to their farming experience--animals, plants, the seasons, the mountains, tilling, building, without a day’s rest. Everything is always ideal in the pastoral experience, Beatus Ille, but the truth is that living in these rugged mountains is a lot of hard work, heart break, rain, cold, wind, earthquakes. Yet, one also detects a gentle stoicism about the hard work and rough life. These ancestors of the Incas are a hardy group, resilient, survivors, who take the hard breaks with a grain of salt and move on. The animals are here to serve them, but they also honor the work of those animals. The sacred valley of the Inca is a strange place filled with a river, terraces, mountains that shoot straight up, lots of brown mud, plants galore, and a hard-working people who will just never give up. The cognitive dissonance I feel in staying at a wonderful hotel is contrasted sharply by the hard life I know these people lead who live in adobe brick buildings, barely have water and lights, do not have good sanitation or good climate control--none in fact. Some dwellings do not have glass windows just 17 degrees south of the Equator. I first learned about the Equator and the Southern Cross over forty-five years ago in a civics and culture class that was a part of my fourth grade experience. Who knew that it would take me this long to actually travel below the Equator and meet such interesting people. Curiously, they were like a mirror. I could see in their efforts that the things they wanted--a house, a family, children, a job, a few possessions, were only the things we all want. They are driven by their beliefs, their culture, their desires which are only an ongoing negotiation of their cultural discourses regarding faith, religion, ethics, values. They had no cars, but they had "motocars" a kind of three-wheeled taxi vehicle which shuttles them around their towns. They are worried about the education of their children. They worry about who they are going to marry. They worry about whether their stock will increase. I worry that these people will not be here in forty years, and I am thinking the world will be a poorer place without them.
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