Chuquibamba rediscovered

A Rumbos team travelled to the village of Chuquibamba and explored the surroundings - from the Inca ruins of Cochabamba to the lakes of Atuen, the agricultural laboratory of La Boveda and the extraordinary tombs of La Petaca. Although Chuquibamba has much more to offer, the following will serve as its first public introduction.

Written  by: Álvaro Rocha Revilla
Photos: Walter Hupiu

The atmosphere was mysterious. The ruins were clearly from the Inca imperial phase: the stones large and finely-carved. Forested hills surrounded the archaeological site. But we were not in Cusco, looking at some ruins in the vicinity of Machu Picchu, but rather in Amazonas, a thousand kilometres from "the navel of the Earth".

It could be said that Cochabamba traps one, enveloping the visitor in its special atmosphere as soon as one sets foot on its streets. After a two-hour descent on the back of a mule from Chuquibamba, the village appeared before us with its open spaces, smallholdings breaking up the urban design, tiled roofs and flowers in the patios. It was a little marvel.

Inca past
It was impossible to imagine what awaited us. Our guide Romulo Ocampo led us to a perfect trapezoidal Inca doorway carved from red sandstone and then showed us the ceremonial baths (or "tubs" as the locals call them). Afterwards he took us to see another "tub" that was part of the back of a house, and also a smallholding where in the middle of rows of potatoes there stood an impressively large lintel. Finally, he showed us the base of the church doorway, which was built entirely from Inca masonry.

Little by little, then, the strange atmosphere we had felt gave way to a sense of genuine amazement. In fact, we were walking through a village built on the ruins of the Incas. Throughout Cochabamba the remains of its Inca past could be seen. Collapsed doorways appeared, one of them ruined by the 1968

Moyobamba earthquake and others by the hand of man. The remains of streets and walls could also be seen, there blocks gone to form the walls built by the peasants.

According to Romulo, most of the Inca citadel is still underground, particularly the sector that faces the Challuacancha gorge, which would have been the only route by which the Inca settlement could have been attacked. According to the late Vlidaslao Rojas, legend has it that beneath the village's main square there lies buried the finest of the stone "tubs": a mystery that perhaps time will unveil. Just a day after arriving in Chuquibamba I was already stunned by all that this little community, lost in the Amazonas region of Peru, had to offer. As often happens in Peru, I found myself in a different universe by virtue of getting off the beaten track.

Road to Paradise
Indeed, it had not been an easy journey to Chuquibamba: Three days before I had boarded a sleeper bus that took me as far as Cajamarca without mishap. The city appeared extinguished, somehow, under a grey blanket, but as we headed for Celendin the sun shone for the first time and the green fields gleamed and the true colours of everything could be seen. Three hours later, I sighted the sea of roof tiles that is Celendin.

The celebrated countryside around Celendin remains unspoilt: the square with its sky blue towers still stands, as does the enormous coliseum that completely destroys the small-town feel of the place. The adults wander around wearing straw hats on their heads. We did not linger for long in Celendin, and that same day we found ourselves climbing a slope, at the top of which we entered a cloud as big drops of rain struck the umbrellas. A truck appeared out of nowhere. We first saw it when it was ten metres away, just in time to get out of its path, and although we didn't know it at the time, the driver knew perfectly well that all that separated us from the Marañon River was a drop of two thousand metres.

In some sections the road was very narrow. We descended and descended and there was so much fog that the river could only be distinguished by its faint sound, which grew louder with every turn in the road. A stream followed the same course as the road. It is incredible that in an era when we are building Inter-Oceanic highways, the poor state of these roads impedes agricultural development and tourism in one of the most important regions in the country.

The fog began to clear and the river appeared, brown and wide. We crossed the river at the bridge that marks the border between the departments of Cajamarca and Amazonas. The village of Balsas came into view, and a billboard that read "Welcome to the Land of the Chachapoyas", and later we followed the river through plantations of papaya and mango and big palm trees. The heat was intense, and for a moment I thought of the Caribbean.

The driver was used to transporting miners in Cajamarca and didn't know the area, and he passed San Vicente, a town situated in La Libertad and the point where there is a turn-off to Chuquibamba. The road had still not been finished, but it took us to within an hour of the village. Trucks only go on Mondays, when there is a fair in Chuquibamba. The rest of the week the village's isolation is almost total. The driver wound down his window in Llongote, on the road to Bolivar, and asked directions. But he was unwilling to take the turn-off to Chuquibamba and I had to spend the night in San Vicente.

Men and Names of Chuquibamba
The morning unfolded amazingly peacefully. The night before I had called Chuquibamba and been told that they would send the "cavalry" to save me. But that morning nothing but the wind ran up the wide streets of San Vicente. Suddenly, a cloud of dust heralded the arrival of a mule driver. His name was Masdeu and he had two mules. I tried to speak with Masdeu, but the communication was not fluent: he would just nod his head. I told him that I could help by holding the reins while he loaded the mules, and he gave them to me. I pulled on the reins and the mule resisted me, so I cried "Come on, ass!" just as a villager form San Vicente passed by. "You'll have

to speak louder, he can't hear you", said the villager. For a second I thought he was referring to the mule, but I soon realised that my mute guide Masdeu was almost completely deaf.

We left San Vicente at one in the afternoon. We passed Pusac and climbed among forests - first dry with cactus and then humid along the canyon of the Chaccahuayco River. It rained as we entered Chuquibamba at five that afternoon. I asked for the house of Pedro Epiquien Caman, a lively 83 year-old who kindly took me into his home. That night he treated us to an extraordinary elderberry pie while his son Reymel told us a common-place story in this part of the world: the almost non-existent education that the specialist Leon Trahtenberg has described as "a public swindle". Reymel told us sarcastically about a teacher known as "the Wednesday teacher", because he would never turn up on Mondays or Tuesdays.

One can trace the history of Chuquibamba through local surnames. The Añasco and Bardales migrated from nearby Chachapoyas; the Diaz and the Epiquien came from Pataz and Bolivar, both in La Libertad; from Celendin came the Chavez, the Zamora and the Silva families; the Rojas came up from Balsas and the Ocampo, it is said, are descended from a priest who passed through Rodrigo de Mendoza and made local history.

The most traditional surnames, such as Chancahuana and Chuquiruna, (although the latter is rare now) are Quechua in origin, whereas the other names are clearly Spanish. In other words, through its

names one can deduce that Chuquibamba's origins go way back. Chuquiruna means "man of Chuqui" - presumably a name imposed by the Incas to refer to the region's original local inhabitants and members of the Chachapoyas ethnic group. The Spanish surnames indicate that much later Chuquibamba was chosen by migrants from northern Peru: from Cajamarca, La Libertad and other parts of Amazonas. This suggests that the original local population - for some reason - declined considerably and people from other regions were eventually attracted to the area. Perhaps it was the smallpox epidemic which according to researchers, including Keith Muscutt, arrived before the Spanish did and decimated the population of Peru.

The Guamanes of the Conquest
After that first night in Chuquibamba I left at dawn in search of Cochabamba, but you already know that, and of my surprise as I found myself walking through the remains of an Inca city. What you probably don't know, however, is that Guaman lived in Cochabamba. He was the Chachapoyas leader selected by Atahuallpa who after the Inca's capture joined the Spanish, eventually being baptised Francisco Pizarro Guaman.

According to Keith Muscutt it was probably during the incursion of Hernando de Soto into the territory of the Chachapoyas in 1532 that the conquistador tried to convince him to join the Spanish. What is certain is that soon after Hernando de Soto's return to Cajamarca, Guaman arrived in that city and sealed a pact with Pizarro. When, in 1535, Alonso de Alvarado occupied Cochabamba he met little resistance: he needed just four horsemen and three infantrymen. Guaman was of decisive importance during the Spanish invasion. Just before the Spanish arrived in Peru, Atahuallpa had ordered the deportation of a large number of Chachapoya adolescents, which understandably made him very unpopular in the region.

Because the initial booty had been considerable Alonso de Alvarado returned to Cochabamba in 1536. However, the rebellion of Manco Inca in the southern Andes interrupted his plans. But Alvarado went back to Cochabamba in 1538 in command of 250 seasoned troops and founded the town of

San Juan de la Frontera de los Chachapoyas - an act almost certainly witnessed by Guaman. What is certain is that the Spaniard's treatment of Guaman was less than honourable, although they did allow him to maintain his social status. Guaman, described by Muscutt as either an unprincipled opportunist or a brilliant pragmatist, died in 1551, and was the last important leader of the Chachapoyas.

The Fall of Masdeu
Only Spanish is spoken in Chuquibamba and people cannot even remember when Quechua was last spoken. Don Pedro Epiquien told me that his parents did not speak the indigenous language, and that accounts for 150 years of history. However, locals do chew the coca leaf with enthusiasm, and they maintain a bartering system for the exchange of wheat and corn for the purple potatoes of Atuen and the fruit of Pusac and Balsas. But, although they maintain their customs, the people of Chuquibamba want integration with the rest of the country. They have been isolated for too many centuries - hence the road.

"The authorities of the city of Chachapoyas marginalise us", Lenin Portal, the mayor of Chu

quibamba, told me. "Because they say we are not part of the Utcubamba valley". The ancient Chachapoyas would have viewed such a policy as short-sighted, for the geographical limit of this ethnic group was the Marañon River itself. What is more, if there existed any degree of environmental consciousness there would be no discussion on the subject, for Chuquibamba controls the headwaters of the Utcubamba river valley, which means its role within the context of the valley's economy is an important one. But try telling that to the bureaucrats.

We dedicated our last minutes in Chuquibamba to saying goodbye to the friends we had made there. It was a misty day. Before we reached The Edge (which is how the locals refer to the region's canyons) it began to rain. The wind, the cold and the damp combined to make life difficult for us. But we could still not help laughing when Masdeu fell flat on his face when his horse stumbled. We arrived at Tajopampa covered in mud, surrounded by ghostly cows. In this lonely place nobody cares who is president of the International Club, or the owner of the television company, or who will win the next elections. As a mule driver told me, "Here nobody is interested in politicians - they just make problems for us and put up the prices".

Macabre Personalities
Six of us slept in the kitchen, and dawn saw the sky clear somewhat, with a weak light bathing the prairie. Just five minutes from Tajopampa is La Petaca, which in the opinion of Keith Muscutt (the author of "The Warriors in the Clouds" and the foremost scholar of the tombs found here), "is one of the most important archaeological sites in the Americas".

Unveiled by Henry and Paule Reichlen in 1950, La Petaca and the adjacent Diablo Huasi were built by Chachapoyas architects. Ahead of us, high up on the cliffs, two red-painted figures carrying a trophy head can be seen - an icon repeated often in the art of the Mochica and other pre-Hispanic cultures.

We were also impressed by La Boveda - a series of conical-shaped terraces sunken into the ground and similar to the Inca agricultural research station of Moray, near Cusco. La Boveda may also have been a laboratory, or perhaps it was designed to make the best use of the land available for crops. Surrounding the circular terraces, the remains of plazas, temples and walls can be distinguished. We also came across a rock that must have once been some kind of oracle. The mist closing in on us spurred us on to Leimebamba, and we left La Boveda and its deafening silence. It was a superb site, extraordinary, but at the same time neglected, forgotten. In fact, it stands as an indication of how we treat our ancestors (and ourselves really).

<< Back