Q'ero History
For more than 50 years a great friendship has existed between Juan Murillo´s family and the people of Q´ero Totorani and Hatun Q´ero. Dr. Oscar Nuñez del Prado, Juano´s father-in-law, was able to free the Q´eros from their slave-like existence under the Peruvian hacienda-system in the 1960´s and ´70´s. Juano and his family are proud of this history, but they also know the truth of Dr. Oscar´s words : the work on behalf of the Q´ero must continue and we must take care that this important people does not lose its cultural identity.
It is important to keep in mind the repercussions of any type of scientific or humanistic intervention in an indigenous group. At the beginning of the 21st century, the Q´eros represent a community of ´living witnesses´ to an ancient culture, which makes it possible for us to know many details about the glorious past of Peru. Today, thanks to the research of Dr. Jorge Flores Ochoa, Juan Nuñez del Prado, Manuel Castillo Farfán and others, we know much about the “last Inca community”; we also know that “protectionist” interventions in other indigenous communities not only froze their culture, but made it disappear, leaving nothing more than a small shadow of their former essence.
This knowledge must lead us to step carefully where Q´ero is concerned.
It is thanks to the Q´eros themselves and those who studied them that we are now able to explain how the Incas produced food resources for everyone, using the archipelago system, small farming islands at different ecological levels. The Q´eros have been doing exactly that, for hundreds of years now, in the lower parts of their land, where they grow corn, sweet potatoes, peppers, etc., but still as high up as 12,000 feet above sea level.
Unfortunately, the Q´ero Nation still does not have title to that part of their land due to the fact that during the Agrarian Reform, only those parcels which the former Hacienda-owner declared as belonging to the Q´eros, were titled in their name. The lower area escaped that process and is now registered as “freely disposable”, even though it has been farmed by the Q´eros since long before the Agrarian Reform. The Project directors and many others are now working at full speed to insure that the Q´ero Nation becomes the legitimate and official owner of these hectares.
We do not believe that it is ethical to prevent the Q´eros, and others like them, from pursuing their rightful claims, under the pretext of wanting to “conserve their culture”. Like all of us, they are entitled to a better quality of life with benefits such as electricity, which will make greater economic and educational development, and in the end survivability, possible
All the communities inside the Q´ero Nation have contributed considerably, through their customs, social organization, work-management, music and their basic religious beliefs and rituals, to our ability today to understand what happened in previous centuries and was almost lost : the Inka Culture. All Peruvians and the rest of the world have to be thankful for this great legacy.
But what compensation have the various governments given to people like the Q´eros over time? The answer is easy to see : those who for centuries made great contributions to the history and culture of South America now are submerged in extreme poverty. We believe that their aspirations to a solid quality of life in modern times are legitimate.
Electrification and education are nothing more than an component of sustainability and a life lived with dignity. They do not have to change their culture; on the contrary, they can be the impetus for remembering and reinforcing aspects of a cultural tradition which had been all but lost.