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mburnamfink 's review for:
The Hold Life Has: Coca and Cultural Identity in an Andean Community
by Catherine J. Allen
The Hold Life Has is an absolute classic of ethnography. Allen traveled to the remote Andean village of Sonqo (possibly now rendered as Soncco), north east of Cuzco, and lived there for quite a while in 1975. The updated Second Edition describes changes that Allen observed returning in the 1990s and 2000s.
The altiplano around Sonqo is a harsh environment, and Allen works through the cosmology and rituals that sustain life in this place. There is a hierarchy of spirits, embodied by features on the landscape from great peaks to local hills and gullies, and the spirits must be appeased with offerings of coca. Life is based on reciprocity, flows of energy, and interdependent binaries. There are great stories here, about ritual, conflict, and the importance of the living ayullu community.
And there's also tragedy in the poverty and the suffering. About the only thing that grows well on the altiplano are potatoes, and potato farming and herding doesn't bring in much cash. The people of Sonqo survived the conquest of the Inca, centuries of colonial domination by haciendas, and various land reform policies, but they couldn't maintain their way of life in the face of consumer goods and development aid. Fertilizer and homes more lavish than one room huts destroyed the traditional farming practices of the people. Children fled to bigger cities, to live as misti (mestizos) rather than runa (Indians). The war on drugs made coca leaves scarce, and the social forms of chewing the ritual offerings of k'intu hard to maintain.
I've spent some time in Peru, most of it on the tourist trails and in a small city in the south. The Peru I know is a lot like anywhere else, with the most notable difference being that the plumbing isn't up to first world standards. But there's this vision that one day, the Inca will return, and those who they recognize as living like they did will be saved, and the rest of the mistis destroyed. I think few Peruvians would survive this apocalypse. But the word 'Sonqo' translates as heart, and the altiplano will always be the heart of Peru. This classic ethnography is a great glimpse of that heart.
The altiplano around Sonqo is a harsh environment, and Allen works through the cosmology and rituals that sustain life in this place. There is a hierarchy of spirits, embodied by features on the landscape from great peaks to local hills and gullies, and the spirits must be appeased with offerings of coca. Life is based on reciprocity, flows of energy, and interdependent binaries. There are great stories here, about ritual, conflict, and the importance of the living ayullu community.
And there's also tragedy in the poverty and the suffering. About the only thing that grows well on the altiplano are potatoes, and potato farming and herding doesn't bring in much cash. The people of Sonqo survived the conquest of the Inca, centuries of colonial domination by haciendas, and various land reform policies, but they couldn't maintain their way of life in the face of consumer goods and development aid. Fertilizer and homes more lavish than one room huts destroyed the traditional farming practices of the people. Children fled to bigger cities, to live as misti (mestizos) rather than runa (Indians). The war on drugs made coca leaves scarce, and the social forms of chewing the ritual offerings of k'intu hard to maintain.
I've spent some time in Peru, most of it on the tourist trails and in a small city in the south. The Peru I know is a lot like anywhere else, with the most notable difference being that the plumbing isn't up to first world standards. But there's this vision that one day, the Inca will return, and those who they recognize as living like they did will be saved, and the rest of the mistis destroyed. I think few Peruvians would survive this apocalypse. But the word 'Sonqo' translates as heart, and the altiplano will always be the heart of Peru. This classic ethnography is a great glimpse of that heart.