(Many
pictures and some articles by the same author are available at http://briefcase.yahoo.com/lautaro)
(arica@bigfoot.com)
Although Arica belongs to
the Republic of Chile since 1929, it is geologically isolated from the country
by hundreds of miles of the most barren desert of the world, and, most of all,
by a deep cultural misalignment. Therefore, in order to understand the city
itself, its valleys, sierra, altiplano and its people, one must go beyond
actual boundaries and integrate them with the events of their cultural center:
the area around lake Titicaca. In no other place along the Chilean territory
the word "Andean" has such a strong meaning as in Arica and its
surrounding territory.
Ten thousand years before present (BP), at the beginning of the Holocene (the
last geological period of our planet) hunters-gatherers arrived to the
altiplano following their prey: big mastodons, megaterium, sable-toothed tigers
and american horses. The climate was changing, becoming drier, and those
animals eventually extinguished, leaving humans with no other prey but hunting
the ancestors of today's auchenids: guanacos, llamas, vicuñas and alpacas.
These animals show seasonal migrations from higher to lower altitudes, and
humans re-designed their way of life to follow their prey, which was eventually
domesticated more than 4,000 years BP, when a semi-nomadic way of life had
already been adopted.
Although agriculture was
introduced much latter, at altitudes above 3.800m it is limited to a few
species such as potato, quinua (a grain rich in protein, with leaves that can
be eaten if cooked), haba (a bean) and barley, but following the auchenids to
lower altitudes during winter allowed the primitive Andean humans to enrich
their supply of agricultural products from the upper valleys, mainly corn and
species of squash. Humans were thus "domesticated" by auchenids, taught
a new way of living while auchenids became protected, cared for, fed and
respected by humans. That is called symbiosis. That peculiar symbiosis defined
the customs, ethics, religion and cosmovision of this new breed of human being:
the Andean Man.
Other groups, which we will
identify as yungas (people from low altitude places), to simplify a complex
ethnic spectrum, occupied the coast and made a living out of the abundant sea
resources, forming small communities that became sedentary 8,000 years BP,
5,000 years before learning to take advantage of agriculture. The most
conspicuous of those groups, forming the chinchorro cultural complex, lived in
the beaches of Arica and began mummifying their dead 3,000 years before the
Egyptians.
When agriculture was
adopted, beginning with species of squash, the lower valleys were gradually
occupied and a rich and pacific interaction was eventually established with the
expanding altiplanic ethnic groups.
The cultural center of the
many ethnic groups occupying this multilevel territory with so many different
ecological niches was the Titicaca lake, whose surrounding lands, at an
altitude above 4,000m, offered ample space and many facilities to keep herds of
auchenids, with the additional advantage of a limited supply of fresh-water
fish. The subsequent increase of the human and auchenid population lead to a
more elaborated social organization and encouraged the exploration of other
areas, including the lower valleys, where the Andean man interacted pacifically
with the yungas, establishing geographically isolated "colonies"
exploited by people from the altiplano instead the usual western style of
conquering and forcing the locals to work for them. For the intensive
transportation to and from the altiplano, llama caravans were used until they
were very recently replaced by trucks.
Their semi-nomadic
background (induced and at the same time made possible by llamas) and the
peculiar geographic conditions, led the circumtiticaca Andeans to avoid
big urban centers and kept them from having to conquest their neighbors to make
them work for the dominant group. Instead, the many altiplanic nuclei cared for
their animals and grew potatoes and quinua in the highlands, while some of its
people grew maize, squash, chili pepper and other vegetables in their
island-like possessions in the lowlands at both sides of the Andes, where they
traded their products for sea fish and any other goods the western coastal and
the eastern Amazonian people could offer.
About 1700 years ago, while Rome was being pillaged and Attila plundered much
of the western, the Tiwanaku people gained control of the circum-Titicaca
territory. They pacifically expanded their influence and culture, defining what
we -citizens of Arica beyond any “official” citizenship we may have- could call
"our country", giving a strong impulse to the development of the
"provinces" of Arica and San Pedro de Atacama, while dealing in
many ways with the centralized, urbanized and despotic Wari empire in northern
Perú.
The great pre-incaic
cultures of central and northern Perú developed from the Wari, retaining the
urban style of organization. On the contrary, circumtiticaca people (including
Arica) maintained the multi-ethnic, multi-ecological niche, multi-geological
level of economy and bland domination we described previously, even after the
Tiwanaku rule collapsed and even when the Inca dominated the collasuyo (the
Inca name for our "country").
The Tiwanaku collapsed 4
centuries before the Incas conquered and reunited our "country".
During that time, our "yunga provinces" organized itself in the form
of local landlords that confederated to resist the attempts of the various
altiplanic kingdoms that replaced the Tiwanaku hegemony. They needed our
products and we yungas needed theirs and both sides were willing to trade with
the other, but we built fortified villages (pukaras) along hundreds of miles to
keep their power away from our lands.
The Inca domination turned
local attempts towards independency back into an integrated socio-economical
system. When the first Spaniards were given unfair rights (“encomiendas”) upon
local indians and their possessions, they found a complex territorial system
based on neighboring fragmented territories in the form of overlapping
archipelagoes, obeying local landlords that were tributaries of bigger lords
living in the high valleys, which in turn obeyed the authority of a
central, altiplano-centered ethnic group, once tributary to the Inca Empire.
The Andean people had a very special way of understanding the world, a paradigm
often referred to as "cosmovision", that may be very hard to
understand for people raised in the individuality and profit-oriented western
culture. It may be described as the ethics of opposing complements: nothing is
good or bad, because the opposing concepts must interact if a state of
equilibrium is to be reached. Thus, in order to allow for the existence of a
real world, all things are both good and bad. The Andean man is the
manifestation of that equilibrium and must obey its rules, such as giving to
others only what is correct to ask others for. Unbelievable as it may seem to
“civilized” people, no one would have wanted, much less be allowed to sublimate
above its destiny by becoming an angel or becoming much wealthier that its
peers by some lucky event such as winning the lottery prize. An angel would
have been viewed as an idle, weak, selfish and useless individual, and a wealthy
commoner would have disturbed the system on which depended the survival of the
community under the extremely adverse conditions of the Andes.
The arrival of the
Spaniards produced a major and cruel catastrophe, the last pachacuti (a
reality-changing event occurring every 500 years and produced by the inversion
of the polarity of the world), a "big fire" (Pablo Neruda) that
destroyed the Andean Civilization.
The ruthless behavior and
hypocrite ethics of the new owners of the only world known to the Andean
people, and the dull and infamous attempts to christianize the indians, caused
millions of deaths, destroyed their social organization and the pride of many
of them. Faced to the abuse, ruthlessness and falseness of the Spaniards, the
Andean people obeyed one of their maxims "it is not good to lie, but you
may do it if that gives happiness to another" also phrased as "it is
not good to lie, but it may be safer to hide the truth". As an ethnic
group, they have never been really converted to Christianity: they just adopted
the imposed God as yet another God among their many others.
The last rebellion, a
bloody disturb lead by José Gabriel Condorcanqui (Tupac Amaru II) in 1790,
spread all over the central Andes and lasted for 3 years. After that, all
signs of indian resistance had apparently disappeared. Yet 3 years after
Condorcanqui's execution, the Viceroy of Perú, don Agustín de Jáuregui,
received a gift of cherries, a fruit that he much liked. After eating a couple
of them, he dropped dead. As Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda wrote, "the dead
Kingdom is alive". Right now, radical groups in Bolivia prepare themselves
for the coming pachacuti that will bring back the Inca from the underworld to
let him finish his hegemonic task. It will soon be 500 years since the
Spaniards turned the Andean World upside-down by executing Atahualpa.
Although there were Spaniards living in Arica since 1536, the city was founded
in 1541. In 1545, the most generous silver deposit ever known was found in the
Andes (Potosí), and for 150 years the Arica Region became part of one of the
mayor financial enterprises of the pre-industrial world, serving as a gate
towards the Potosí silver and as a provider of food, wine, alfalfa, olive oil
and other goods to Potosí, a thriving city which housed 160.000 souls by 1611,
the biggest and richest city of the New World at that time.
Initially, the cargo was
carried by means of caravans of llamas, eventually replaced by mules. By 1700,
there were about 200,000 mules in service to or from Arica. At that time, the
mine's production decreased, there was a prolonged drought, malaria became a
mayor sanitary problem in Arica and the silver embarkment moved east, to
the Atlantic Ocean. Eventually, the peruvian administration left Arica to its
fate and a long period of decadence ensued, which lasted until 1850.
The Independence of Bolivia
after the final defeat of Spanish troops in 1825, brought a new prosperity to
the altiplano. Water was abundant again in Arica, and malaria morbidity had
decreased. The railroad from Arica to Tacna was built and caravan traffic
towards Bolivia was intense. The catastrophic earthquake and destructive
tsunami of 1868 destroyed a beautiful and prosperous Arica The city
recovered soon, only to be struck by another big earthquake and tsunami 9 years
later, in 1877.
Arica had belonged to Peru since it's foundation. But in 1879, war began
between Chile and the allied forces of Perú and Bolivia. Arica was invaded by
the Chileans in 1880. The war ended with Chile transitorily keeping Tacna and
Arica until a definitive agreement could be reached, but in 1929 Tacna was
returned to Perú.
A major crisis ensued as a consequence
of the new nationality of Arica. The city was abruptly severed from its sierra
highlands, which were literally abandoned, until the need to create a sense of
being Chilean in our population became important for the centralized Republic
of Chile. Priests serving the rural regions of Arica were expelled from the
country in 1910 since they were all Peruvians, and there has never again been a
stable priest living in the surroundings of Arica.
In 1917, less than 30% of
the population of Arica was Chilean. A major effort to impose the sense of
being Chilean upon the aymaras was made by the government and the Military
Vicarship, which partially succeeded thanks to the installation of schools and
the effects of mandatory military conscription.
Ever since, Arica has tried
hard to be Chilean, although knowing that its roots are elsewhere. Despite
strong chauvinism in all non-aymara social strata, there remains a feeling
similar to that of a war orphan adopted by a conqueror:
Where is the rest of the
family?