Presentation
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s I share this book with readers I enter a geographic space where Peru, Bolivia and Chile meet at a highly significant time for the entire world, the 16th to the 18th centuries. The scene is “the silver road” and three places that define it: Potosí, Huancavelica and Arica. Indians traveled along it driving llamas –and later mules-, to load mercury at Huancavelica and carry it to Potosí. Mercury is essential to extract the silver that “springs” from the famous hill, and the same silver sails from Arica towards Spain, by way of Callao and Panama. The technology employed, the bureaucratic apparatus that controlled it and the lives spent in that endeavor have left us a painful memory that prevents us from seeing the brightness of that feat. The eyes of history are often indifferent to feelings; history deals with data and numbers, it feels neither the heat nor the cold, we cannot see the gilded interior of the churches as the caravans see them when they call a halt for prayer, and we wish to see the road with the reeds rustling in the wind, the blue cloudless sky, the huts, the peasants, the herds of vicuña in the distance, and the exotic portals carved in stone. Now a photographer makes us feel, if only for an instant, that landscape of men and stone. The long road from Huancavelica to Potosí is the same road along which the mitayos came to the mine each year, numbering 13 500, to work by turns in the tunnels, the sugar mills, and in the upkeep of the “lakes” that originated an artificial stream to turn the millwheels for grinding. After working for four months in shifts, the mitayos returned to their communities.
The silver roads
Everything is past and all we have left is the wind, the mountains, the images, the statue of Our Lady of Copacabana in her Sanctuary, the canvases of Caquiaviri with the cacique being borne to heaven by an angel. The Puno cathedral remains, with its enigmatic mermaids on the portal, mermaids that look at us again in Lampa and Asillo. It is the sea present on the dusty puna.
The silver road is one and many roads. The metal that for some time concentrated worldwide interest, causing a flow in all directions of men, ideas, goods, and products, including silver, passing through this area and branching off -coming and going- to and from the four corners of the world.
When the caravans, laden with silver, leave Potosí to make their way to Arica, they pass close to Parinacota, decorated with wall paintings similar to those at Curahuara de Carangas. It is the route that led from the altiplano to the Pacific coast when the native peoples organized their geography on the basis of control of ecological levels. These routes were covered during the Colonial period and with astonishment we discover them today.
The pre-Hispanic roads
Only pictures can give us an idea of this great stage where so many lives, so many hopes, and so many despairs ran their course. Max Donoso shows it to us when he captures with his camera the wind, the hard features of the present inhabitants, and the light of the candles speaking to us of unextinguished faith. The Introduction to this book is contributed by Pedro Querejazu, from Bolivia; the description of the Peruvian section is written by architect Roberto Samanez, who for many years has explored these roads and worked to recover the art of his native land. A young researcher, Lucía Querejazu, tells the tale of Bolivia, while Amaya Irarrázaval describes the Chilean road that takes us from the Andes to the sea. Teresa Gisbert
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In Abya Yala, the pre-Hispanic roads of the Andean region gradually took shape with the early migrations of human occupation in this vast continent, then with the migration of the primitive inhabitants of the region, who followed the seasonal flows of the large animals on which they fed and which they used and eventually domesticated. Such seasonal flows became permanent and have continued to this day among cattle-breeding groups like the llama drovers of Carangas, who carry blocks of salt from the Uyuni salar to the lower country and who fetch and carry the items used and required by the Callahuaya wise men and physicians. In time, such flows gradually formed the pre-Hispanic system of “vertical control” over the various ecological levels, and the “archipelago system”, which involved partial, semi-permanent movements of members of the various ethnic groups to obtain and access diverse products from regions other than their own. As a result, networks of roads and stable routes were gradually formed.
weapons, textiles and fine ceramic ware, and transporting food products from the flood terraces and ridges under controlled irrigation. They, who had domesticated the potato on the highlands, improved it first then planted it in other regions, together with the technology for dehydrating it by freezing and keeping it as dry food for prolonged periods in the form of what we know as chuñu and tunta. In the vast region of the altiplano, grains were domesticated including quinoa, which was eventually disseminated to all the altiplano and other highlands. The Tiahuanacotas also propagated many of the myths of origin of the region, and the notion and worship of Huiracocha, the Andean creator god, who is represented on the Puerta del Sol or Door of the Sun, at Calasasaya. Along these roads, in the reverse direction, travelled the worship of Pachacámac, god of the earth and earthquakes, from his templemountain in Lima to Lake Titicaca and the Cerro de Potosi, on the summit of which an altar was erected to worship him. Along these winding roads between the altiplano and the rugged valleys, some peoples conquered others and there was an exchange of products, technologies, customs, and world views. Along this road the Spondylus shells from the coast of what today is Ecuador reached the Caribbean as well as the altiplano and Lake Titicaca, as far as the high valleys of the land of the Charcas. Jewels and necklaces were made from them and the whole shells are still blown like horns, and they may be heard summoning Indians to meetings on the heights of Potosi, Chuquisaca, and Cochabamba.
Along these roads the Huancarani cattlebreeders of the southern altiplano exported their copper to other regions. Sometime later, the Tiahuanacotas expanded their highland culture to the inter-Andean valleys and the coast of the Pacific Ocean, taking with them Later, the Incas, bellicose conquering warriors the technology of bronze tools, utensils, and and practical rulers and administrators, built up
the most extensive imperial domain in South America, Abya Yala, before the Europeans came. They perfected the system of road construction and speedy communication with chasquis and tambos. Thus the Inca, at his table in Cusco, could eat fresh fish from the Pacific or fruit from the Amazon River. The roads were generally paved with stone and frequently had side walls of mud or mud bricks. The steeper sections had steps. Loads and products were carried on men´s shoulders or by droves of llamas, usually in large numbers, for these animals, natives of the region and domesticated, do not carry more than 50 kilos’ weight at a time. They built the main road, the Cápac Ñan, which is the trunk road, the backbone of a road system that covers more than 60,000 kilometers over widely diverse and varied territories and topographies, astonishing and mostly hostile. The system of roads and routes connects the Pacific from west to east with the sierra and the valleys and forests of the River Amazon basin. Longitudinally, it runs parallel to the Pacific coast and the Andes. The coast route, going north from Cusco, passed by Palpa, Ica, Nazca, Pachacámac, Lima, Huarmey, Chan-Chán, Los Tallanes (Piura), Ayavaca, and Tumbes. Going south from Cusco: Tambo Colorado, Catorpe, Copiapó, to the River Maule. The sierra road, north, from Cusco: Vilcashuamán, Huari, Jauja, Tarma, Huánuco, Cajamarca, Chachapoyas, Tumibamba, Loja, Quito, Inga-Pirca y Pasto, on the River Ancasmayu. To the south: Piquillajta, Rajche, Jatun Colla, Pucara, Puno, Chucuito, Tiahuanaco, Chuquiabo (La Paz), Paria, Tupiza, Tilcara, Pampas de Tucumán. These roads bordered Lake Titicaca also on the east, by Lampa and Pucara, by Escoma, Carabuco, Ancoraimes, Achacachi, Huarina, 305