Most Relaxed Border Crossing: La Balsa

• Example: On the Peruvian side of the border the officer lent us the keys to his home so we could change into our bathing suits and kill some time by swimming in the river that divides the border crossing. On the Ecuadorian side we had to interrupt a volleyball game to ask the officer to stamp our passports. We were the only foreigners to cross the border that day. 

Most Hectic Border Crossing: Huayquillas- Aguas Verdes

• If Sodom and Gomorrah existed today, this would be it. Its full of con-artists and thieves and it’s just plain overwhelming! Not to mention horribly unorganized. Why are the migration offices not within walking distance?
  

Friendliest People: Santiago, Chile

• Example: When I was walking with all of my luggage to a bus station a woman stopped me to let me know that my shoe laces were untied. Then she told me not to try to bend over with my big backpack and she bent down and tied my shoe laces for me.

Best Accent: Chilean, sípo!

Best Chicha: the region of Cusco, Peru for chicha de jora and Tupiza, Bolivia for chicha de quinoa.

Best National Gastronomy: Peru

Worst National Gastronomy: Bolivia

• Some of us can’t eat meat three times a day. Especially in the morning.

(and yes, those are flowers coming out of the guinea pig’s ears and  a carrot is portraying the tongue…yum yum)

Most Expensive: Uruguay

Least Expensive: Bolivia

Prettiest Traditional Indigenous Clothing: the Cusco Region, Peru or Huaraz, Peru

Best Indigenous Jewelry: Saraguro, Ecuador

Most Modern and Developed City: Santiago, Chile

• The subway system is cleaner and more organized than NYC and probably on par with the DC metro system.
  

Most Touristic Place Visited: Aguas Calientes

• Well when a town is developed at the base of a World Wonder like Machu Picchu it’s inevitable.
  

Least Touristic Place Visited: Urcos, Peru

• On Sundays I went to the market in Urcos, just to walk around. I was the only gringita there I can tell you that! In fact, one Sunday a little hunched-over, old lady came over to me, pointed her index finger up at me and grinned ear to ear. Her teeth were hidden by all the greenish-brown chewed up coca leaves in her mouth. “You’re a gringita! (a little white girl!)” I could tell by the tone in her voice that she used the word “gringita” in an affectionate way. Although many foreigners interpret the word “gringo” with a negative connotation, it often is just used as a way to refer to a foreigner and not necessarily an American or a white person.

Ugliest City: Piura, Peru

Prettiest City: Cusco, Peru

Prettiest Village: Chavín de Huantar

• The bus ride there was a little scary, but it was without a doubt the most scenic road trip I’ve ever taken.
  

Coldest Place Visited: Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia

• I slept in my hat and coat, wore spandex under my pants and wore 3 pairs of woolen socks…but I was still freezing.

I just re-uploaded the videos from the US, so the images and sounds are higher quality, much clearer!

Please check out the documentary I edited about The Q’ewar Project and Pass it on.

ANDAHUAYLILLAS, PERU- The chacra, or small family farm, is a grueling but vital component of life in rural Andean communities. I recently had the opportunity to get my hands dirty and experience how many indigenous Peruvians make their livelihood.

Background

Most Andean families either make a living by sowing and harvesting corn or potatoes, supplement a more stable income by selling the bulk of what their crop yields or grow their own food.

Few families are without a charca due to the agrarian reforms of the 1970s, which expropriated the land owned by the rich landowners designated by the Spanish-influenced latifundio system and delved out parcels of land to each community. The community councils then divided the land among the local families. The only families in Andahuaylillas without a chacra are those that moved to the town after the agrarian reform took place or sold their parcel of land (which is frowned upon).

The chacra is rarely located next to the owner’s home. The chacras were sporadically assigned and generally are located on the outskirts of town. The walk between the home and the chacra is often between 30 minutes to an hour.

My Experience

I woke up at 6 a.m. Sunday morning, quickly dressed in layers and ate breakfast. Then I walked to the home of the mother of Theresa, one of the women working with the Q’ewar Project.

Theresa is 9 months pregnant and technically should not work in the chacra, so of course I did not hesitate to agree when she asked me to help her family plant corn.

I entered into her mother’s house and sat down on a wooden bench while Theresa and the family gathered all of the supplies needed in the field.

The house consisted of a single room divided by a bright blue plastic tarp separating the sleeping area from the common room. A separate open-air kitchen stood in the backyard.

The home was dark. The only sources of light were the daylight streaming in from the back door and the colored, flickering light emitted by the tiny television set resting in a square, window-like indentation in the adobe walls.

Damp clothing hung from a laundry line strung up between the two twin beds. Thick blankets rested on the beds to protect their inhabitants from the chill of Andean nights; there are no heating systems here. Two dogs darted in and out of the front door and two hens wandered around the bedroom, pecking at the cement and mud floor. Pictures of Saints and the free posters given out to advertise festivals were tacked up all over the walls.

I looked out the back door toward the kitchen. The women were busily preparing a hot soup for the men to eat for breakfast. I watched as Theresa’s mother, a woman in her early fifties, but who appears years beyond her age, fixed her hair in front of a mirror hanging up outside on the wall of the kitchen. Then Gabrielito came over and kneeled down in front of me with two kittens in his arms. I noted the familiar hole in his pants, the same worn blue sweatpants he’d worn to the daycare center every day that week.

Then Theresa told us it was time for us to walk to the chacra. The men would meet us there with the cows and she and her mother would arrive around noon with lunch.

Gabrielito led the way as we walked away from the town center towards the seemingly endless fields of corn and wheat. About 30 minutes later we arrived at the family’s chacra. The men began the process ceremoniously by drinking chicha. Chicha is a beverage made with ground corn that takes two weeks to prepare. In the morning it is a juice however it ferments during the day and by mid-afternoon becomes an alcoholic drink. The men also took shots of rum mixed with anis tea and chewed coca leaves.

Then we went to work. The men yoked the cows and began turning the soil. Meanwhile, I pulled all the old corn stalks from the ground and formed piles every few feet or so to burn. Pulling the old corn stalks from the ground is a delicate process. Theresa’s husband, Gabriel, explained to me that if I pulled the corn stalks too hard or too quickly, the taut fibers would cut my hands. It was too late though. I looked down at my hands and was shocked to find a fusion of crimson blood and dirt. I poured water on my grimy hands, but there was no soap available. I continued pulling the corn stalks and their roots from the ground.

I lathered on the sunscreen to protect my skin from the strong afternoon sunrays, but sunscreen didn’t prevent me from acquiring a darker complexion. The dust and dirt of the chacra clung to my oily skin. I drank more chicha just to mask the taste of dust and sunscreen in my mouth.

Then Theresa and her mother arrived with all of the food. And what a meal it was! Trout, potatoes, homemade chile, beat salad, and corn. No one washed their hands before eating, everyone just dug in. Then Andean people are not afraid of a little dirt. The potatoes, cooked underground in a mud oven, were covered with dirt. The people here simply brush it off and eat. Everyone passed around cups of chica and beer. The two cups were smudged with muddy fingerprints, but I accepted and drank the chicha anyways.

Then the men set to work with the cows preparing rows in the ground to plant the corn seeds. The children carried bags of guinea pig droppings, which is said to be one of the best fertilizers. Theresa and her mom followed the men across the field with beer and chicha for the men to enjoy during their breaks and helped collect the old roots.

I looked at all of the chacras as I walked home just before dusk and appreciated all of the hard work that goes into growing crops. I thought about all the times I had eaten corn on the cob during barbeques without giving a second thought about the hard labor and time that goes into growing corn, especially of the organic variety without the use of chemicals and pesticides. I now truly understand why organic fruits and vegetables are more expensive. I will be much more grateful at the dinner table from now on.

Herbal remedies and alternative medical practices pervade Andean communities. I witnessed the ancient wisdom in practice one day during a visit to a hanging bridge made of sticks, straws and plants with a few of the community’s young mothers and their children. The six-year-old son of one of the women was running along a rock wall when he tripped and fell and cut his head open on the rocks below. One of the other women quickly turned to one of her sons and asked him to urinate into her hand. She poured the urine onto the wound. The blood stopped flowing immediately. The woman explained to me that fresh urine stops bleeding and works as an antiseptic.

As we continued to walk I noticed one of the women collecting dried cow dung. The dried cow dung, she told me, not only functions as fuel for her kitchen stove, but also as a rheumatoid cream. She beats the cow dung into a past and mixes in herbs from her garden and uses the cream to alleviate pain in her knees and lower back.

The locals are aware of the nature that surrounds them. Most of the locals can tell you how cold it is going to be just by looking at the sky. The absence of clouds, they say, means that it is going to be cold and windy. They can predict rainfall. They know all of the local fruits and vegetables and they know the medicinal purposes of all of the herbs.

Mysticism and ancient spiritual beliefs continue to hold prevalence in Andean communities. A few days after the boy’s fall the mother and her son returned to the site of the incident to perform an ancient ritual to request the release of the child’s spirit, believed to be held captive by the Earth. They buried coca leaves and salt on the spot as an offering or payment to the Earth in exchange for the release of the boy’s spirit. The mother explained to me that in the days following the incident he woke up startled and frightened in the night and that the ritual was necessary in order for him to sleep peacefully.

Mysticism also comes into play during the planting and harvesting seasons. Many of the campesinos buy magical herbal mixtures to ensure a good harvest. Magical herbal potions to ward off all types of misfortune or attract positive spirits can be found in the local markets. Also noticeable are the two clay bulls that sit on top of the roofs of many of the houses. The bulls are good luck and fortify the house.

Many of the Andean people are Catholics. They celebrate their Patron Saints, the children attend catechism and are baptized. But they have not abandoned ancient Incan beliefs. Rather a dual spirituality has resulted, that is both Catholic and pagan, that believes in Jesus Christ but also worships the Pachamama.

The reason for this juxtaposition seems to be grounded on the historic and contemporary dependence of the Andean people on the land. Even in the 21^st century, the people are dependent on their family chacras, or small farms. Therefore a spiritual correlation is drawn to the earth as a result of their appreciation, or reverence, for the Pachamama and her earthly divinities.

However, Dilmer’s house is not a mansion, nor a quixotic storybook cottage. It looks more like archaic pre-Inca ruins. The walls, constructed of stones and mud, look ready to cave in. The wooden door is warped with age and the cold sierra nights. Cactuses grow along the low stonewall surrounding the house. Clothing hangs on a laundry line in the front yard.

The stark contrast between natural geographical wealth and impoverished living conditions is striking.

Poverty was listed as one of the three most pressing issues President Alan García should address in his final year in office, according to a survey published by El Comercio. President García’s approval rating is just 30 percent nationwide. It is even lower here in southern Peru at just 19 percent, and that is actually a 4 percent improvement from earlier in the year. Poverty, unemployment, poor management of the economy and corruption are the leading reasons Peruvians in Andean towns like Andahuyalillas say they disapprove of the García administration.

The complexity of poverty reduction is apparent when you visit Dilmer’s house.

Dilmer is five years old. He attends the local Waldorf school Wawa Munakuy for children from disadvantaged households. He is shy and has yet to say a word to the other children in the kindergarten. His nose is always running and he always has a cough. His cheeks are dry and raw and his hands are rough and cracked.

Dilmer is one of six children born to campesino (rural farmer) parents. His mother and father are both in their early thirties. They grow potatoes and corn in their chacra (small farm). The work is seasonal, because of course there are months were there are no crops to sow or harvest or years when heavy rains and freezing temperatures harm the crops. The mother and father are both native Quechua-speakers, but both have learned sufficient castellaño to carry on a conversation.

There is a large age gap between the children. The oldest daughter has her own child now and lives with the father of her baby. The youngest is just eight-months-old. Only four of the siblings currently live in the small home overlooking the town (one lives with relatives). It’s a good thing that no more live in the house, because the one-room-house is hardly fit for six people, let alone eight.

I recently visited the house to deliver winter blankets purchased with the money donated by an NGO based in Vermont. The Wawa Munakuy kindergarten bought four think blankets with the donation, one for each child, to help combat the frigid winter nights in the Andes Mountains.

My heavy breathing and footsteps were the only audible sounds as I walked uphill on the dirt road that leading to Dilmer’s house. Dilmer’s mother walked alongside me carrying her baby in a qepi, a large colorful blanket used by the Andean women to carry small loads. Dilmer’s mother dresses in the traditional campesino woolen skirt and sweater with her long black hair in neat braids and topped with a bowler hat.

When I arrived at the house, Dilmer’s father was waiting outside for us with a flashlight. We walked in the front door and what I saw caused a lump to form in my throat and initiated a spike of adrenaline that made my mind spin. The house does not have electricity. The house was dark with the exception of a little moonlight that came in through the open door and the beam of light omitted by the flashlight. Despite limited vision, I saw enough to comprehend the living situation.

The house has a dirt floor. There is little furniture, only the bare essentials. There is only one bed for all to share covered by thin blankets. The windows are square holes cut into the wall with fabric draped over them to block the night air. The house was uncomfortably cold.

Dilmer’s family is not the poorest in the village. There are families living in harsher conditions. The more you ascend the mountain and farther away you walk from the village center, the more dilapidated the homes and the more arduous the lifestyles of the campesinos become.

After I visited Dilmer’s home I spoke with women in the village about the paucity of living essentials in the Andes and how the government could begin alleviating poverty in the region. The women explained to me that the first step is to educate women like Dilmer’s mother about sex and birth control. She pointed out that Dilmer’s mother is only 33 and already has six children and could easily continue to have children for ten more years. With their limited income, it is impossible for the parents to provide for their children. The children are malnourished and do poorly in school because they cannot concentrate. The children end up dropping out of school to work just so that they can eat properly. Most wind up working in chacras or similar menial labor jobs. They have children young or with multiple partners and the situation continues and exasperates.

Dilmer’s case exemplifies the complexity of poverty reduction in the Andes. In his final year in office, President García can improve existing social programs or perhaps create a few simple educational campaigns, but it will be impossible to create a multidimensional plan of attack to reduce poverty. Charity, educational campaigns, accessible and affordable health facilities, social programs, microfinance organizations, social initiatives, internal price regulation, and international trade agreements all influence the poverty rate in the Peruvian Andes. Poverty reduction will be the greatest challenge for the subsequent president. Voters, in the mountains, along the coasts, in Cusco, in the Amazon and in Lima, should keep this in mind in October when they head to the polls. Equitable development is key to sustainable development. Peru is currently teetering on the fine tightrope between being a first world nation and a third world country. Reducing the socio-economic gap will be crucial in determining on which side of the line Peru falls.

Before TV shows like Friends and even before the hippie communes of the 1970s, lovers during the Inca Empire moved in together before marriage. It was a common practice intended to test the potency of the relationship. The practice never disappeared from Andean culture, despite the arrival of the Spanish Catholics (perhaps the puritans would have been more successful but I can’t imagine the local women trading in their vibrantly colored traditional clothes for solid black, ankle length dresses.)

If you talk to the women of Andahuaylillas and the surrounding rural communities about the man they live with, most of them will refer to their significant other as their husband. However, when you ask when the wedding was, most will respond that they aren’t married yet. Many of the women have multiple children with their “husband.” It is not viewed as scandalous to have children outside of marriage, but rather as part of the courting process.

The tradition, although seemingly contemporary and gender neutral, has left many women in what appears to be inescapable quandaries.

Of the women I have spoken with, very few have spouses…or partners. Many of their husbands or partners cheated on them and left them with one or multiple children. Without a legal or religious bind holding the man to the woman, it is fairly easy for the man to leave and avoid legal responsibility for their child. The men will sometimes send a little money to help the woman raise the child, but it is more often than not, mere pocket change that does little to compensate for the burden of raising a child single-handed and working full time.

In addition to full-time jobs, many of these women get up early to work on their own small farms before the workday even starts. On top of that, these women do not have luxurious, modern household appliances. They do not have washing machines, blenders, microwaves or George Foreman Grills. Therefore, household chores are really a second fulltime job. The women wash all of their clothes by hand, hang the clothes to dry, use mortars and pestles, and prepare all the food on the stovetop. The 9 to 5 workday doesn’t apply here.

But the real question is…are the women who do manage to hold onto their partner better off? Of course, there is no horizontal answer that applies to the love life of every woman in the Andean region. I will use the stories of three women I have come to know to represent trends I have noticed. To protect their identities and evade publishing the intimate details of their lives, I will not use their real names.

A friend of mine, we’ll call her Michelle, has been with her partner for years. He treats her well and works hard. They have two children and will be married in August. Michelle is very happy.

Another woman I know, let´s call her Sarah, is married to the father of her child. She works fulltime to buy food and pay the bills. Meanwhile, her husband does not work, nor does he do “feminine” household chores. But he does not hesitate to use the money she earns on alcohol. How does he repay her? He beats her, sometimes to the point where she is noticeably black and blue and swollen. She once began the process to leave her husband; she moved out and even began the legal paperwork. However, one day she decided to move back. Her spouse continues to beat her and has yet to find a job. Why did she go back to an abusive husband? She is dependent on him, although she herself is financially independent, perhaps because of the social merit that having a husband and maintaining a family provides. Sara is timid and fearful. She lacks confidence and blames herself for her dysfunctional relationship.

drunk guy passed out a the fair grounds in the afternoon

Then there is Eva. In her early twenties she moved in with a man who aggressively pursued her. For years she unsuccessfully tried to get pregnant. Finally, she visited a health clinic where she was told that she was incapable of bearing children. This strained the relationship with her partner. Eventually, Eva decided to adopt the son of relatives who was incapable of caring for their child.

Eva is an intelligent woman and works hard. Every day she gets up at dawn to work on her small farm, then returns home to prepare breakfast and lunch for her son. Finally, she goes to her fulltime job. After a full workday, she returns home to prepare dinner, do household chores, finish any of the work she didn’t complete at her job and if she has time, she exercises and reads.

Eva maintained this schedule for years. Meanwhile her husband only found temporary work here and there. Eventually, Eva made enough money to be financially independent. Now Eva was the one making the financial decisions. This only enraged her partner, because it altered the power dynamic. He became physically and psychologically abusive. However, Eva kept quiet about the abusive relationship. Eva was supposed to marry her partner this summer, however, he left her and took their child with him. The event was psychologically draining for Eva. So, she found time in her schedule to visit a local psychiatrist. Eventually, her son moved back home. She was so happy to have her son back and visibly was growing more confident and independent.

That’s when her ex came back. One morning when Eva went to her chacra, or small farm, her ex was waiting for her. He attacked her and even threw a rock at her. Eva arrived for work with coagulated blood on her hand, a bruise on her chest where the rock hit her, a swollen purple knee and a pain in her lower back and hip.

Eva was not quiet this time. She immediately went to a medical examiner, filed a police report and found a lawyer. Then I helped take pictures of her injuries for the police and the lawyer. Although Eva has enough on her plate as it is, she is not going to let her ex get away with his abusive behavior this time. It is going to be difficult for her to win this case however, because her ex is friends with the local police and is friends with some of the local politicians. His name even appears on a list of potential political appointees for one of the candidates running in the upcoming October municipal election.

The Inca custom boxes many Andean women into a corner, where even financial independence makes it difficult to escape abusive relationships. Why are instances of domestic violence and psychological abuse so rampant? Perhaps, because of alcoholism, the chauvinistic culture, lack of education, poverty and unemployment rates or maybe genetics (many of the local women will tell you these characteristics run down family lines).

In order to tackle the poverty rate, the Andean region needs to help the women who are caught in this predicament become financially independent. In order to battle the poverty rate in the long term, it needs to find the means to reduce the number of impoverished single mothers raising multiple children. In order to reduce the number of fatherless families, the culture needs to be scrutinized to pinpoint why there are so many instances of infidelity and abuse. The region needs to plant the seeds that give equal rights and opportunities to women. But first, the region needs to uproot the Inca custom that has ensnared so many women and permitted the dilemma of the Andean to grow like a weed.

¨It’s a part of the culture that goes back to the Incas,¨ Julio Herrera, the director of the Qéwar Project explained.

Everyday the women of the Q’ewar Project take a morning and afternoon snack break. The women gather outside of their workshops and pass around plastic bags of toasted corn kernels, popcorn and small local fruits, break their bread into thirds, split their bananas in half and hand out little plastic tubes of gelatin. The women always bring enough to share with the other women in their workshop.

The women always invite me to partake in their snack break and do not accept no as an answer, no matter how it is worded.

When I first arrived in Andahuaylillas I was unaware of this practice and I did not buy snacks for the work breaks. Seeing as how I eat my meals with the directors I never have a reason to go to the markets or convenience stores.

At first I thought they were offering me snacks as a sign of welcoming and acceptance and to introduce me to the local foods. When the women continued to offer me snacks after we had already established friendly relationships, I felt guilty accepting. Why should these hard-working women, who not only work eight-hour days at the project but often care for animals, maintain their own small plots of land where they grow herbs, fruits and vegetables and raise children single-handed, offer me, an American who was lucky enough to attend college and have the opportunity to travel abroad, snacks, sweets and teas?

I decided to politely refuse their offers. So when the women offered me an orange, banana and bread one morning, I smiled and said, “Oh no thank you. I’m alright. I’m not very hungry.”

“Eat it, eat it,” the chorus of women responded.

“You don’t like oranges?” one woman asked.

“The bread is integral, so it’s healthy,” another woman said.

“Lunch is not for a few hours,” another woman said.

“Oh no, I just feel bad because I didn’t bring anything to share,” I responded honestly.

“We’re accustomed to sharing,” a young woman explained to me.

I accepted the food and then decided to avoid the snack breaks by going to my room during the breaks. So the next day I excused myself and started to make my way to my room, however, a gaggle of women sitting by the steps leading to my room called out my name. I could not ignore them. Sure enough as soon as I sat day beside them they all extended their arms with bags of maize, nuts, breads and fruits.

“Señiorita, tomalo,” they all cooed.

The roots of this tradition are planted in children when they are young. My second day in Andahuaylillas, I attended a local fair with the children who attend the kindergarten sponsored by the project. I saw the children eating what looked like gigantic white popcorn, so I asked one five-year-old named David what he was eating.

David immediately poured the white popped kernels into his hand and extended his hand.

“Oh no thank you David. It’s yours. I was just wondering,” I replied.

David dropped the large white bulbous snack into my hand and turned away to look at a passing alpaca. Soon after all the other children surrounding me and pushed fistfuls of the snack into my hand.

“Oh no, no, kids you don’t have to share with me,” I exclaimed.

But they had already learned from their mothers.

“Comelo, comelo!” they said.

The snack was mana, a sweet, honey flavored, large-kernel popcorn, from an Andean variety.

So I finally realized what I had to do. I went to the corner store that afternoon and bought a few bags of mana. Later while I was working in the store I put the mana on table. The women thanked me and gratefully enjoyed munching on it while we drank coca tea.

The next day I offered each of the women in the sewing workshop I was stationed in for the moment a square of the bar of 88 percent dark chocolate that I had brought with me from the United States. I had been hording the dark chocolate in my room because it was of excellent quality and something I had not planned on sharing. For several of the women it was the first time they had eaten a piece of dark chocolate. Seeing the women slowly nibble and savor the dark brown squares was as bitter-sweet as if I’d eaten the whole bar myself.

ANDAHUAYLILLAS, PERU- On Tuesday, June 29, the people of Andahuaylillas celebrated the Festival of the Patron Saint, San Pedro, and the designation of Andahuaylillas as a national cultural heritage site.

The festivities began Monday night with a special church service in the Iglesia de San Pedro, christened the Sistine Chapel of the Americas, and a fireworks display that would have been illegal in the United States. The fireworks were set off in the town plaza in front of the church. However, the proximity of the on-lookers and the occasional rocket that fell into the crowd was not the only reason the display would not have been permissible in the U.S. While older children were responsible for setting off the fireworks, the younger children played a game that entailed running under the waterfalls of sparks. Near the end, one young boy put the frame of a bull over his head. The sparklers in the bull’s mouth were ignited and the boy ran around and aimed the streams of silver sparks at the crowd. Not exactly the July 4 fireworks over the Boston Harbor that I grew up watching.

A short documentary about the Iglesia de San Pedro was also projected onto the white wall of the church-run community center. I walked closer to see the subtitles on the screen because it was impossible to hear the movie over the voices of all of the excited children. I saw that the subtitles were in French and when I listened closely to the voices I realized that the documentary was indeed in French. Why then were all of the locals standing around in the freezing cold and watching a movie that they could not understand? Some of the people in Andahuaylillas and the surrounding towns don’t even speak Spanish, only their native Quechua, let alone French. I asked Enrique, a teacher at the local school Fe y Alegria.

“Many of these people have never seen a movie,” Enrique said. “Plus they can seen their town, their houses, their friends or maybe even themselves on screen.”

That really was a novel concept for me; that movies were a novelty for the townspeople. I’ve spoken with many of the locals about movies and many of them can name every movie they have ever seen on one hand.

The following day’s festivities included a procession of 47 saints, a chiriuchu cooking competition and traditional dances in the town-square. Chiriuchu is basically a platter of traditional Andean foods; including, guinea pig, fish eggs, toasted corn kernels, cheese and pig.

Hundreds of dancers participated in the traditional dances, which were at times more like mini-plays or comedies. One dance lasted for over a half hour and included clowns that represented the Andean indigenous people whipping the actors dressed as the Chileans. Tension has existed between the Peruvians and Chileans for decades and the locals were greatly amused by the slapstick comedy routine which at one point included setting off a firecracker under the top hat on the head of the “Chileans”. Other dances were about the production and harvest of the coca leaf, malaria, the Incas or colonial rule.

The festival was originally supposed to wrap up with a large general fiesta in the plaza. However, not many people attended. The reason? Alcohol…or the prohibition of it. The priest of Iglesia de San Pedro, Padre Oscar, asked that the municipal government not permit the stands in the plaza to sell alcohol seeing as it was a religious holiday and in past years the festival has concluded with lots of drunks on the steps of the church at 3 a.m., which here is about an hour and a half before most people start their morning. For the locals, no alcohol meant less dancing and less music, so many people did not stay around for the general fiesta.

What struck me as most interesting about the festival was a poster that was posted on a bulletin board in the town plaza by the Municipal government. It showed Andahuaylillas’s most well known landmarks surrounded by skyscrapers and modern transportation. The ominous warning, “If we don’t take care of it…,” was stationed on colored construction paper next to the computer enhanced photos of a modern Andahuaylillas The municipal government posted more information on the bulletin board explaining why it is important for Andahuaylillas to maintain its traditional appearance and guard its cultural heritage.

This lends itself to a polemic debate: should Andahuaylillas and similar villages modernize or should they guard antiquity? By maintaining the status quo are the leaders depriving the locals from advancing or preventing them from enjoying the standard of living of people in more developed regions?  How can Andahuaylillas and the surrounding villages eliminate poverty and improve the standard of living of its citizens while simultaneously safeguarding the village’s cultural heritage. How important is maintaining the traditional culture to the Andean indigenous identity? How important is recognize identity in the contemporary globalized society.

In his 96 years, Terrazas has accomplished quite a bit…including wooing flocks of women with his poetry. Although his hearing is waning (you need to shout when you talk to him) and his memory is foggy (four times he has told me that he often does not recognize his friends when he passes them on the street), his mind, his tongue and his pencil are still sharp. In fact, the week of his 96^th birthday, which we are celebrating on Sunday, June 27, he plans on writing another article he hopes to publish about the country’s upcoming election. I met Terrazas through his daughter Lucy Terrazas, one of the directors of the Q’ewar Project.

Terrazas loves to write and recite quixotic verses in both Spanish and Quechua, his native tongue, and enjoys writing acrostic poems about the people he meets. I am to have one such poem written about myself and I thought I would share it with my readers.

Terrazas says Quechua is much more beautiful and expressive than Spanish, which he says is much more emotive than English. His lovely prose role off the tongue in Spanish and I must agree that the English translation does not do this poem justice.

El CUSCO- Fragua histróica, legendaria y racial-centinela del Ande.-Patria Inmortal del cóndor y la vicuña te saluda y te canta así:

Cusco- a historical, legendary and racial forge. Sentry of the Andes- Immortal    homeland of the condor and the vicuña (an Andean animal that looks like a little             deer) greets you and sings to you as thus:

GABRIELLE

Alma noble, generosa y humana

Noble spirit, generous and humane

Bella luz estelar de la Galaxia

Beautiful waking light of the Galaxy.

Rutilante estrella de Estados Unidos.

Brilliant star from the United States

Imagen divina de belleza y encanto.

The divine Image of beauty and charm

Eres el amor de los amores, el cantar de los cantares.

You are the love of lovers, the song of the singers.

LLanto de amor de las Golondrinas mañaneras.

Full of the love of the morning swallows

Eres luz y sombra de Machu Picchu Inmortal.

You are light and shadows of the immortal Machu Picchu

Gorder

Oh, tu mirar escribe versos en el infinito.

Oh, your glance writes verses in the infinity

Ramillete de virtudes nobles y humanas.

Branches of noble and humane virtues

Dulce y encantadora flor de alba.

Sweet and enchanting bloom of dawn

Eres alma, vida y corazón de tu dulce Hogar.

You the spirit, life and heart of your sweet home.

Reyna única de belleza de Hanover.

The only queen of beauty of Hanover.