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A Peruvian Alpaca Shepherdess
Demetria Ccacho
Demetria Ccacho is a young alpaca shepherdess who lives in the high plateau of Peru. She's 26 years old, she is married, and has 3 children: two boys aged 2 and 5 years, and a girl, 3 years old. She lives with her family in Ipukate, a district of Santa Lucia, Lampa province, in the Quechua area of the department of Puno. Following the millenary Andean pattern, their community is divided in two areas: the upper part (which reaches 4,800 meters above sea level) and the lower part (at approximately 4,100 masl). Theirs is a land of imposing landscapes, almost always with a perfectly pure sky, and extremely cold weather, which only the warm midday sun placates.
Like the other dwellers of this area, Demetria lives in a small hut, apart from the others. She breeds alpacas because the ecology of this area does not allow the growth of plants and crops. Demetria and her husband fully share the tasks that ensure their family's survival.
Besides alpacas, Demetria's family also owns some llamas, sheep and hens, and a dog and a cat as pets. In the area where she lives, there are wild animals like the taruka, a small deer, and the delicate vicuña, which cannot be bred by man.
Peruvian women in general, and Andean women in particular, are extremely hard-working, their hands always busy spinning alpaca fibre into yarn whenever they take their animals to eat their hands. Alpaca yarn provides Demetria's family main income.
A normal day in Demetria's life starts very early: she wakes up at around 4 a.m., when stars are still glittering in the sky, and she makes the most important meal of the day: milk with roast corn, a soup of quinua or chuño (indigenous cereals of Peru), with dried meat of alpaca or llama, and potatoes. She also prepares the cold meal that her family will take, at noon, up in the mountains. This meal usually includes canchita (roast corn), with cañihua or cebada meal, or other andean root-crop such as the oca. They drink chicha (a beverage made of corn or quinua).
Demetria told us that each animal eats from a particular type of pasture, therefore her family must go to different altitudes where these grasses grow. There are no veterinarians in the area, therefore they must take care of their animals by themselves. They cure them with various traditional medicines, mostly plants. For instance, to cure sarna1 - depending on the origin of the disease - they use alpaca sebo2 and some other special plants.
In the high plateaux, alpaca shepherds must be permanently on guard against their great foes: during the day it is the condor, and its partner, the fox; at night it's the canny fox and abigeos3. The shepherds protect their animals using slings, sticks, arrows and stones.
From the ages of 5 or 6 years old, children accompany their parents in these pasture-seeking journeys, and in their games they begin practising their elders' skills.
They go back home in the afternoon, nearly 12 hours after they woke up, and Demetria cleans the house, sees to her children, and makes the last meal of the day, a light dinner, with only soup with meat or rice, and a beverage of cebada. By 8 p.m. they are all asleep.
Alpaca meat can be cooked in a stew with potatoes and chuño; it can also be fried in tasty chicharrones4; or else can be dried and called "charqui" that is later served with soups. They also eat trout from nearby lakes or ponds.
Demetria's family supplements their diet with dairy products, from the milk of their own animals, and with produce they obtain through bartering (or "Chsala"): the wool and meat of their animals against fruits and legumes from the lower lands. Chsala usually requires that the men undertake long and hard journeys which, when they go to important cities like Cusco trying to obtain better prices or bartering conditions, may take them away from home for up to 15 days.
The money they get from selling alpaca yarn and their handicrafts helps them to buy sugar, salt and rice, or industrial products such as oil and matches, in the village of Santa Lucia.
Their lives are quite rudimentary, and extremely hard. Besides shepherding their animals in a hostile environment, they must build water channels and roads, usually made by men, and produce handicrafts, generally made by women.
To improve the quality and the quantity of her products, Demetria goes twice a week to training sessions organised by Minka in Ipukate's community hall. To attend the workshop she walks for one and a half hours. Going to Santa Lucia takes her three hours.
The Fiesta of the Alpacas, in February, is the only moment of collective entertainment in the year.
1 sarna - scabies
2 sebo - tallow
3 chicharrones are over roasted pieces of meat
4 abigeos - cattle rustlers
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