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Photo of the Day: Alpacas Grazing in Upis, Peru
An alpaca lifts his head while grazing on ichu grass, near Mount Ausangate; photo c. Barbara Drake 2008 Anthropologist Inge Bolin comments on the deep bond between traditional people in the high Andes and their animals: “People talk about their llamas and alpacas with great emotion. ‘They are our brothers and sisters,’ the people of Chillihuani often comment. ‘We owe our lives to these animals and they owe theirs to us.’ High-altitude herders have also called llams and alpacas ‘our ancestors.’ In the Andes, humans and their alpacas are part of the same empirical and spiritual world. They are believed to arise from the same source and to be governed…
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Woman Spinning Wool, Ausangate
photo by Barbara Drake Time for an Andean reality check. Too much Paris Hilton bikini nonsense. I met this woman last month while trekking around Mount Ausangate, in southern Peru. Her name is Vicentina Chuchicari Mamani, and like most people in the area, she spins her wool and makes her own clothes. People have been crafting their textiles in this way for more than a thousand years. Vicentina is 48 years old. She has spent every day of her life sitting in the lap of Ausangate, spinning wool from her herd of llamas and alpacas. She likes to be busy, she says. When I tried to take a photo of her at rest,…
