Our work in the Colca Valley lasted four years, from 1985–8, because we felt that in-depth ethnographic studies call for long-term fieldwork. As mentioned earlier, we were also members of the first DESCO team in the area and, as such, lived and worked there determined to develop the local population’s standard of living. So we coupled our academic research with a ‘philosophy of commitment’
to achieve short- and medium-term development objectives. When we arrived, we set up home in Chivay, the provincial capital, and made an initial tour of the entire valley in order to produce a diagnosis to serve as a starting point for the Programa Rural Valle del Colca, making first contact with the inhabitants of Yanque Urinsaya. After that first visit, we went back at weekends to take part in farming work, festivals and rituals alongside local families, and soon started to develop ties of friendship and compadrazgo [co-parenthood] with several of them, always trying to ensure that such relationships were as two-sided as possible. The community’s nuclear families formed part of large, extended, but close-knit, families whose members helped each other out with farming and handiwork. This made being accepted easier for us and helped us get to know the people.
The fact that we were a family consisting of a mother, father and two small children allowed us to forge deeper personal relationships because it provided a source of affinity between us and the local families, making stronger bonds with some of them possible.8 As father and head of the family, the husband could take part in ‘male activities’, and the wife could engage in ‘female activities’.
Meanwhile the children could join in and make friends with other young people. Besides, being parents was well looked upon socially because it was associated with the productive and not the qollo [barren]. Being a non-local mestizo couple also played to our advantage because the local families were interested in getting to know us and in forging ties of kinship – as godparents, co-parents or co-sponsors – through religious celebrations and ritual practices.
As a result, we served as sponsors for weddings, baptisms, first communions and first haircuts both in Yanque and other communities in the valley, and, as a couple, took part in rituals to do with irrigation water, Pachamama (Mother Earth), the apus [mountain spirits] and the sowing of maize. Speaking Quechua also aided our integration a great deal because it meant we shared the same mother tongue and cultural codes as the local families, who opened the doors of their homes and culture to us.
8 For us, it was quite normal to conduct fieldwork as a family, as we had seen others do in the 1970s: Billie Jean Isbell in the community of Chuschi (Ayacucho) with her husband, daughter and mother, or John Earls in Cuzco with his wife, who was also an anthropologist.
We also knew Norman Long, who had taken his wife and two small children with him to do fieldwork in Africa.
In terms of methodology, our fieldwork in Yanque Urinsaya was based on living with the community members in order to gain their confidence, sharing many of the activities they performed, dangers they faced and endeavours they undertook. The rapport so established paved the way for a year of participant observation tracking the local farming cycle, including journeys to trade products and livestock. At the same time, we observed the cycle of rituals, focusing principally on water-related rites. We managed to complete our observation of the annual cycle in the second year. The third year consisted of writing up our results and filling in gaps with additional interviews and further research. When interviewing community members, we took a range of criteria, such as gender, age and level of education, into account. Other factors we bore in mind, in order to discover and collect data on the richness of their society, included the interviewees’ economic situation, the degree of consolidation of both the household unit and the unit of production to which they belonged, and their knowledge of and opinions concerning local culture and history. In the fourth year, we concluded our research.
Agricultural cycles differ according to climatic factors such as El Niño and La Niña, which occur every eight years or so and vary in terms of intensity, including periods of heavy rainfall and drought, in which complex rituals are performed. So one advantage of long-term fieldwork of this kind in the highlands is that it makes studying such longer cycles possible.
From the outset, we recognised the great importance of comprehending the kinship ties which united families in order to understand the alliances and agreements between them. We learnt, for example, that it was possible to differentiate between three social groups in the community on the basis of the amount of land and livestock owned: the comparatively rich, those of average wealth and the poor. We also tried to identify the history of each family group and its own particular customs and traditions within the general framework of the broader community’s customs and traditions. Regarding irrigation practices, for instance, we discovered that the members of the Checca family were in charge of performing all the rituals related to the spring known as Mama Umahala. It was a family tradition for its members to organise and cover the costs of these rituals. A male member of the family acted as the officiant, or yana, while another made the ritual offerings, the family in its entirety taking part in all the other activities involved. This earned them the respect of the other families in the community. And so we realised that ritual responsibilities of this kind had a bearing on the status of the families in that village and the esteem in which they were held, which depended not only on the quantity of land or money they possessed, but also on the traditions they upheld and the roles they played in them.
The case of the descendants of the old hereditary aristocracy, the kurakas, was also unique. Although they were no longer called kurakas and did not enjoy any particular privileges as a result of their lineage, they continued to hold certain civic-religious posts and positions of authority. They also performed specific duties, such as putting up and feeding the community’s guests, there being no restaurants or places for visitors to stay at the time.
We studied the annual cycle of irrigation and water-related ritual practices performed by the comuneros of Yanque as participant observers for three years, from 1985–7, interviewing key community members so they could explain them to us. We also searched for written information on these practices in colonial documents and studies already conducted on similar rites. We asked the interviewees what they knew about the history of the rituals they performed, which aspects of them were the oldest and what had changed and why. Experts on the subject gave us specific explanations, also providing us with other more general information on their worldview, local myths and oral traditions:
legends about supernatural beings and mythical stories about mountains and irrigation canals, or the origin of maize and its ties with the Incas.9
Between 1985 and 1988, we also studied the trade circuits used by herders from the area.10 We examined how the journeys made by herders from Sibayo, Tisco, Callalli and other pastoralist societies in Caylloma province worked.
They transported fresh meat, jerky, rope and sacks to the Colca Valley’s maize-producing communities to trade them for maize, beans and oats. They also went on other trading journeys to get dried figs, chilli peppers and salt, venturing as far as the Quispicanchis province, in the Cuzco region, for potatoes and ch’uño [dried potatoes].
We also carried out other research and work in the area for development and cooperation purposes, meaning that our relationship with the local comuneros encompassed research, action and participation. As part of the DESCO advocacy team, we ran workshops to identify the chief problems in the area, analyse them in depth and seek or suggest solutions. These workshops were coordinated through communal assemblies, at which we reached agreements on how they should be performed and found out how widespread
9 We later published some of this information in a book on the mythology of the Colca Valley (1997).
10 In the Colca Valley, as in other places in the Andes, circuits pre-dating the advent of colonisation exist for the non-monetary exchange of products. These routes of economic organisation are used by herders who trade products from different ecological zones, transporting them on llamas from the puna [higher-altitude Andean areas] to the valleys, particularly maize-producing parts. Here they exchange them for local commodities and take them back to the puna, using ancient tracks which join up all the different ecological zones and niches of production. These routes of trade and territorial articulation are not only economic and geographical, but also entail social, political, cultural, environmental and ritual aspects, including the exchange of knowledge and ways of thinking as well as the coordination of a variety of common interests.
interest was regarding certain proposals. We also came up with outlines for development projects on subjects like irrigation and education, mainly with the aid of communal authorities and using resources such as brainstorming, and strength and weakness analysis. A multidisciplinary team would then write up the outlines and the projects themselves, bearing in mind national and international policies and organisations which could fund them or collaborate in their implementation and management. We used gender-based, generational and ecological approaches for these projects, and then applied the same foci to our ethnographic research and fieldwork in the community.
One of DESCO’s main strands of work centred on training and instructing the communities’ members in technical matters and regulations, offering, for example, specific courses for crop farmers (for instance on pest control) and herders (such as herd and pasture management and care, the training of veterinary advocates, how to improve and market fibre), and continuous training for peasant promoters. This advocacy and training work proved extremely useful for our research as it allowed us to get to know – and work with – the local herders, who opened their culture up to us.
Our fieldwork experiences in Yanque and the Colca Valley also affected us a great deal on a personal level. The people there taught us to appreciate nature and live in it distinctly. We learnt to take delight in the rain, when water gushed along the main irrigation canal filling the reservoir to the brim; or when the shoots of maize ruptured the soil, creating a contrast of green on brown which filled our hearts with joy; or the mere fact that we had two healthy children, laughing and playing with the local youngsters.