An Ethnographic and Photographic Perspective
Edmundo Morales
It is a relatively well-known information that the territory of the Inca Empire covered the western part of South American continent, and a section of the central range of the Andes; that is, the area that today includes Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador. Archeological material proves that the Incas emerged from somewhere where that today is southeastern Peru and Bolivia. After founding Cuzco as the seat of the Empire. The Incas expanded their dominion every direction, except East. They may have feared deceases such as leishmaniasis for which they did not have a cure. The Incas limited their presence no farther than Machu Picchu major area where they planted the mystical coca leaf for ceremonial and religious use. Around 1525, the last legitimate Inca Huayna Capac conquered the ethnic groups of what is Ecuador today. Thus, consolidating the Empire in four suyos (something like provinces). When Huayna Capac annexed the northern part of the Empire (Ecuador), the Spaniards were already in Panama exploring contact with a rich civilization somewhere East of the Pacific Ocean then known as Mar del Sur (Southern Sea). Thus, Latin America as well as Spain the “mother country,” as they are today are the result of the exchange of two continents that Columbus had started with his second voyage to the Indies(Western Hemisphere.)
As good luck would have it, gunpowder that, supposedly came to Europe by way of the silk road helped the handful of Spaniards to subdue a population of about fifteen million people that were facing their worst political crisis. Two half-brothers were in a war of succession. Two hundred years after the invasion, the native population had been reduced to approximately three million. It may not be too farfetched to argue that the Spaniards’ superiority in warfare technology may be one of the roots of the perception of superiority natives had of the Western civilization. Thus, natives became the base of the social pyramid in which proximity to European blood was a valued identity of social differentiation. Spanish values and institutions were imposed and, slowly but surely, the native population embraced either of their own volition or against their will. Today Andeans as well as the rest of Latin Americans are hybrids that have traces of every race and culture.
However cruel the invading agents may have been, foreign elements were existential contributions to every texture and color of the Latin American social and cultural weft. Focusing this short analysis on the Andes, other than gold and silver mining, the region was relatively poor in resources. Andeans sustained for centuries on potatoes and other tubers, quinoa, and tarwi (Lupinus mutabilis); and the four Andean camelids (llama, alpaca, huanaco, and vicuña). Then the guinea pig, a food delicacy that is burgeoning in the region and beyond was not widely used. The Incas did not have feed that would satisfy the voracious eating habit of this rodent. Guinea pigs do not sleep, they only rest, and they eat 24 hours. Thus, converting feed into energy faster than any other animal. Alfalfa (Medicago sativa) that came from Europe was, and is, the feed par excellence for this animal. To name few elements, wheat, barley, a range of fruits; animals like sheep, pigs, cows, horses, donkeys, goat; and new knowledge and technology came from other parts of the world through Europeans.
Cocaine: White Gold Rush in Peru (1989)
Much is known about the damage done by this drug; yet not much is actually known of its effect at its source. Though most processed cocaine comes from Colombia, coca paste from which the drug is made originates in the vast jungle cloud forest slopes shared by Bolivia and Peru. People in the Andes have chewed coca leaves for centuries, but only over the last fifty years has coca become a major cash crop. Now it supports local economies, feeds inflation, and affects the social behavior of people both in the source and consumer countries. Based on empirical and ethnographic research in the underground economy the book shows how cocaine has changed the social, cultural, economic, and political climate in most Latin American countries.
The Guinea Pig: Healing, Food, and Ritual in the Andes (1995)
The guinea pig pervades nearly every aspect of Andean life. Traditionally important in folk medicine, native believes, and as a food source guinea pig use continues to proliferate. Once a woman’s and children’s domestic chore, raising guinea pigs today is a profitable commercial endeavor in the three Andean countries. Once believed to be a gift from Mother Nature animal is now exploited as a source of cash income. As the drive to integrate indigenous peoples into the modern global market economy becomes a priority with the governments in Andean countries, the implementation of new economic policies regulating guinea pig husbandry is aggressively changing traditions and values in the Andes.
Indigenous Andean Hats and Headdresses: Tradition, Identity, and Symbolism (2013)
This book documents traditional, indigenous hats and headdresses in Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru that may be extinct in a few decades, for the aggressiveness of the modern world and the inclination of the indigenous people to embrace foreign cultural elements are precipitating deep changes. Although the headgears that Andean natives wear today are not the same as they were during colonial times, changes to this cultural feature have ramifications on traditional practices that lasted for over five centuries. Using ethno-historic documentation and ethnographic data, this work provides factual information on the symbolism of indigenous hats and headdresses from the pre-Inca to Inca ways of regional differentiation to the imposition of the European dress to contemporary ethnic, regional meaning of headdresses. For readers who may not be familiar with the modern political and physical geography of the Andean region, both the text and images need little or no knowledge to grasp its cultural and historical significance. The ethnohistorical chapter of the book places hats and headdresses in the traditional culture and succinctly. It presents information that comes from careful research of the Andean social history before and after conquest. The body of the work is broken up into three country-specific chapters: Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru in that order.
Ritualized Games in the Andes: Symbolic Blood Offerings to Mother Nature (2021)
This photographic documentary presents the concept of binary territory and complementing units hanan and urin (upper and lower) that some indigenous communities still have is omnipresent in the culture. This binary notion can also be marked as male-female, left-right, or the names of two neighborhoods, two sections of a town or village. Although it suggests opposition, contrast, rivalry, or competition hanan-urin complement each other, or are parts of a whole where one cannot exist without the other. In regional mythology this concept probably dates to Pre-Inca times. In ritualized games men from the two complementing groups (hanan-urin) face off on set dates and locations and become one to bring about the fertility of the Andean cosmos by shedding blood. In some communities, these war-like games persist. In others, they reveal the changes the culture is experiencing.
Andean Traditional Knowledge: Tools and Ways of Subsistence (2021)
Indigenous knowledge is the practical application of technology to support the subsistence of specific people both as human beings and as members of a society; and it is transmitted from generation to generation. In agrarian societies, indigenous knowledge and technology always encompass first and foremost the satisfaction of basic and immediate needs: shelter, food, and health care. Unlike in the modern western scientific knowledge and technology, traditional knowledge and technology are not formally transferred to new generations. Therefore, efficiency and cost effectiveness of modern devices, added to the changing needs and wants of people, are driving the traditional know-how to obsolescence. Although natives in many communities still resort to and depend on old ways of survival, in general some tools and practices that wove communities together are either extinct or have become obsolete.
Edmundo Morales was born and raised in the northeastern Andes of Peru. He moved to the capital city of Lima at the age of 14 where he completed his elementary and secondary education. He studied at the Universidad Nacional San Marcos for four years, came to America in 1972 where he completed college at Richmond College (now College of Staten Island) in 1977. He received his M.A. in sociology from New York University in 1979, and earned his Ph.D. from The Graduate Center of The City University of New York in 1983. His doctoral dissertation led him to pursue an extended ethnographic research on the intricacies of coca/cocaine production in Peru. Material of this research was published in his first book Cocaine: White Gold Rush in Peru and it was published in 1989 by the University of Arizona Press. He was awarded two Fulbright Research Fellowships. He was a member of the faculty of the West Chester University of Pennsylvania. He is a self-taught serious photographer and speaks fluently his native languages Quechua and Spanish.