Although some Andeans have moved to large urban
centers, such as La Paz, Bolivia, and Lima, Peru, the majority
live in small communities (from twenty to five hundred fam-
ilies) scattered throughout the Andes, with a population den-
sity of three hundred persons per square kilometer of habit-
able and arable land. Indians live in rectangular, single-
family, adobe huts with thatched gable or hip roofs. The
Aymara group their huts in extended-family compounds sur-
rounded by a wall with a central patio. For both Aymara and
Quechua, marriage is monogamous, with trial marriages last-
ing several years. Residence is patrilocal, with bilateral inheri-
tance among the Quechua and patrilateral inheritance
among the Aymara.
Andeans practice intensive agriculture using crop rota-
tion, irrigation, dung fertilization, and terracing of fields.
They cultivate more than fifty species of domesticated plants,
in a number of ecological niches: Potatoes, quinoa, and oca
are grown at the highest levels of cultivatable land; corn
(maize) at lower levels; and beans, squash, sweet manioc, pea-
nuts, peppers, fruit trees, and cotton in the deep valleys and
along the coast. Herders graze alpacas, llamas, and sheep on
fallow fields and in high, nonarable tundra regions (14,000–
17,000 ft.). Although Andeans live dispersed over wide areas,
resource exchange unifies the people of different communi-
ties. The ecological band narrows as the altitude increases,
so that there are many distinct communities, each utilizing
the natural resources characteristic of its altitude. Because of
ecological specialization, exchange of resources is very impor-
tant. Andean civilization arose through these efforts to utilize
many vegetational zones to furnish communities with a vari-
ety of resources.
Andeans have also adapted to this mountainous region
by means of a religion that is essentially a system of ecological
symbols. They use their ecological setting as an explanatory
model for understanding and expressing themselves in my-
thology and ritual. Andeans are very close to their animals,
plants, and land. Their origin myths tell how in times past
llamas herded humans; in present times humans herd llamas
only because of a linguistic error when llamas misplaced a
suffix in Quechua, saying “Humans will eat us” instead of
“We will eat humans.” Andeans consider coca (Erythoxylum
coca) a divine plant: “The leaves are like God. They have wis-
dom.” Diviners learn about nature by chewing coca and
reading its leaves. Andeans see themselves as part of nature,
intrinsically affected by its processes and intimately linked
with plants and animals. Moreover, Andeans believe they
originated in the earth and will return to it.
PACHAMAMA AND ACHACHILAS. Earth and mountains pro-
vide two principal Andean symbols, Pachamama and the ac-
hachilas. Pachamama means “mother earth,” but pacha also
refers to time, space, and a universe that is divided into heav-
en, earth, and a netherworld. For Andeans, time is encapsu-
lated in space. Pacha is an earth that produces, covers, and
contains historical events, and Pachamama symbolizes the
fertile nature of the earth, which provides life. Pachamama
is a universal deity, referring to all the earth and the universe
because she represents the principle of nature that recycles
life from death, and death from life. Pachamama is unlike
the achachilas, the mountain spirits who represent certain
peaks.
Ritually, Andeans libate Pachamama with drops of li-
quor before drinking and present her with three coca leaves
before chewing coca. The husband places coca leaves daily
into the male family members’ earth shrine, an indentation
within the adobe bench surrounding the inside of the patio,
and the wife puts leaves under her household shrine, a table
within the cooking house, so that Pachamama will provide
the family with food. Diviners also offer ritual meals (mesas)
to Pachamama during August, before Andeans begin plant-
ing. Andeans believe that the earth is open at that time and
needs to be given food and drink.
Roman Catholic missioners attempted to replace Pacha-
mama with the Blessed Mother, but this resulted in beliefs
that associate the Blessed Mother with the bountifulness of
the earth. For example, two major pilgrimage sites in the Bo-
livian Andes are La Virgen de Copacabana and La Virgen de
Urkupiña. Nominally, these shrines refer to the Blessed
Mother, but Andeans associate them with Pachamama and
the earth (Urkupiña means “rock hill”). People travel to these
shrines in August to feed Mother Earth and thus ensure an
abundant harvest and an increase in flocks, offspring, or,
more recently, money. This illustrates how Catholicism be-
came syncretized with the ecological symbols of the Andean
religion.
Achachilas are mountain spirits, indistinct from the
mountains themselves, who are the masculine protectors of
the earth and ancestors of the community. Diviners feed ac-
hachilas with ritual meals. Every Andean community has cer-
tain bordering mountains that are considered sacred: For ex-
ample, the achachilas of La Paz, Bolivia, are the snow-crested
mountains (16,000–20,000 ft.) of Illimani (“elder brother”),
Mururata (“headless one”), and Wayna Potosi (“youth-
Potosi”). A more traditional Aymara community, Cacacha-
qa, near Oruro, Bolivia, has eleven achachilas that together
encircle it and separate it from neighboring communities.
Each peak symbolizes an aspect of nature—a mineral, plant,
animal, bird, or person—that is suggested by its shape and
its particular resources and natural environment. Condo, a
neighboring community north of Cacachaqa, shares with
Cacachaqa two achachilas, which shows how neighboring
communities are united by achachilas.
Throughout the Andes, there are hierarchical relation-
ships among the achachilas. Ancestral achachilas are related
to tutelary peaks of the community, the community’s tute-
lary peaks to the region’s, and the region’s to the nation’s.
Traditionally, the metaphor for this relationship is a kinship
pyramid: At the apex is the chief of the clan, followed by the
heads of the major lineages and then the leaders of the local
lineages. Although clans are no longer found in the Andes,
lineages are important, and Andeans refer to achachilas inSOUTH AMERICAN INDIANS: INDIANS OF THE MODERN ANDES 8615