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The Indigenous Andean Concept of Kawsay , the Politics of Knowledge and Development, and the Borderlands of Environmental Sustainability in Latin America

2012; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 127; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1632/pmla.2012.127.3.600

1938-1530

Karl S. Zimmerer,

Latin American history and culture

Kawsay in Colonial and Postcolonial Borderlands The personage of Huatya Curi, the “Baked Potato Gleaner,” figured prominently in an early colonial account of the landscape and religious mythology of the Andean people of Huarochirí, a province in the mountainous interior of Lima in the Viceroyalty of Peru. The Huarochirí manuscript, a sixteenth-century Quechua document, introduces Huatya Curi with these words: “Chay pacha cay huatya curi ñisca huacchalla micuspapas huatya cuspalla causaptinsi sutiachircan huatya curim ñispa …” ‘At that time Huatya Curi, a poor potato eater, was accustomed to living from gleaning baked potatoes, and for that reason people named him Huatya Curi …‘ (Salomon and Urioste 163; my trans.; see also Taylor 32–33). While poor, Huatya Curi was powerful; in the same passage he goes on to vanquish a mighty Andean lord, Tamta Ñamca. The demise of Tamta Ñamca sets the stage for the ascendance of Paria Caca, Huatya Curi's father, who emerges as the chief Andean deity. Huatya Curi's existence is earthly yet linked to his supernatural lineage.