Cultivate Trilce

UYWAY: THE PRINCIPLE OF MUTUAL NURTURING

Definition:
Uyway is a Quechua voice that is poorly translated as "Mi criía" (Uywa = Breeding + the possessive suffix and adjective mi) or as the infinitive form of the verb "Criar".[1] However, more than a noun, possessive adjective or verb, it is a fundamental Andean principle of coexistence with life in its totality. Life nurtures us through its various manifestations and we nurture it in the same way. In this sense, we emphasise, according to this principle, we human beings are raised by everything and at the same time we raise everything: We raise human beings, living and dead; plants, animals, the heavens, divine entities, the forces of nature; what our eyes perceive, as well as what our eyes do not perceive. For the farming people of these mountains, the fact that we do not see, touch or can prove or explain the existence of everything around us, does not prevent it from existing. Máximo Huaracca, a farmer leader and musician from the community of Kamawara, district of San Salvador, Department of Cusco, says, "We don't know everything, but it exists:

Not everything we know, but it exists, not everything we touch but it is there, not everything speaks, but it speaks..., It sings. Everything is music at last... Chrrrrr!.... As when the wings of flies sound... We raise everything. Everything breeds us... You can't breed if you don't love what you breed... If you don't, the worm gets into your corn, the potato rots, or it grows beautifully but doesn't feed you, it's no good to you, you get sick faster...[2][3] From this principle other principles are derived, such as the principle of the "love of the corn".

Others derive from this principle, such as the one referred to by José Luis Castro García, an intellectual from Cusco, the son of a Quechua-speaking mother from the province of Paucartambo, in the department of Cusco:

Nothing is wasted of what you raise and what you raise. Nothing is hoarded that comes into contact with you because you did not create it, it is only up to you to raise and let yourself be raised; to enjoy the fact, to respect the act of raising each other, to prevent our relationship with each and every one of the beings that come into contact with us from getting sick. If you boot or hoard, you become unbalanced and everything around you becomes unbalanced.[3] The principle of the Uyway has generated a new generation of people.

The principle of the Uyway has generated during its hundreds, and who knows thousands of years of existence, rituals such as the T'inkasqa, the earth is enamoured before it is sown. It is asked for permission; it and the spirit of the mountains, life in its subtlest forms; it is asked for abundant sustenance for the benefit of all creatures. The Uyway principle has generated techniques that are currently employed during the cultivation, harvesting and processing of the potato into other forms such as moraya and chuño, processes in which the potato is dehydrated for longer life and better long-term storage. "Nothing is thrown away, otherwise we will be in misery... We have to save for times when there is a shortage", explains Máximo Huaraca. The principle of the Uyway has led to a thorough and meticulous observation of the Andean sky in connection with the potato process. The star Sirius, for us Willka Wara (Sacred award)[4] appears over the Andean sky at the beginning of sowing time and disappears from it when the potato harvest, the selection, exchange and storage of the best potato seeds of different species, according to the ecological levels in which they have been sown, and the dehydration of part of the harvest, have been completed.

Uyway: To be grateful for what we have received in order to raise, to thank those who raise us:
In the current calendar, August is destined to say "Thank you to the earth", the Pachamama, our Mother Earth. During this month, offerings are prepared in which we include coca leaves, grouped in sets of three or five that we call "k'intu". On each group of leaves we leave our breath, our "Samay", our vital energy. We give thanks for what we have received and we suggest what we would like to receive. We accompany these leaves with red and white carnations, the former for the earth, the latter for the mountains; we add selected seeds of coca, quinoa, aromatic herbs; we also feed her processed food that we, the children of the earth, have created from the ingredients that she has so generously offered us. It is a requirement that what we offer her has to be to our liking, from chocolates, sweets, biscuits, etc. We also put cotton wool to represent the nines and the rains that we ask for, threads like the rainbow, golden and silver threads, corn to represent the abundance of money, candies in the shape of houses, couples, cars, to be specific with our wishes. We have to give it to them chewed. The offering is burnt, only in front of the eyes of a kanaquq or person in charge of incinerating the offering.

The Time of the Chakarunas: The Bridge Men:
It is evident that the strength, depth and usefulness of the principle have made it withstand many adverse historical processes that could well have extinguished it. Currently, the official state education system in Peru does not consider the inclusion of native cosmovisions and techniques as part of its official curricula: "scientific methods and techniques" are understood as those coming from the anthropocentric conception of Earth=Resource, typical of the mercantilist vision. In which the professional is considered to be the one who generates the greatest productivity of the resource for his or her own economic benefit. This situation, added to other more or less profound causes, is being complicit in the erosion of concepts and uses that, apart from their socio-cultural value for Peru, in our view, constitute an alternative option for transcending the world's current ethical and operational food problems. Some time ago the grandparents already announced: This is the time of the bridge men, the Chakarunas who would expand their own usefulness to the children of the planet and bring from the world what they harvest from it, for the same purpose. It is time to raise consciously, to enforce the most sustainable agricultural (and all other) practices, those that generate diversity, those that ensure the balanced relationship of man and nature, no matter where they have been gestated. This is our faith.

Tania Castro Gonzales




[1] I learned this conjugation from my father, from my grandmother, and I corroborated it with every offering master with whom I came into contact in this life, for example: Cayetano Canahuire (lifetime offering master of the construction ceremony of the Qeswachaka bridge, recently named World Heritage by UNESCO); Hipólito Peralta Ccama (offering master and regional coordinator of the Intercultural Bilingual Education Programme).
[2] Interview conducted on 7 June 2015, during a burial offering of a nephew's placenta on the third day after birth.
[3] The interview with my father, José Luis Castro, was conducted in the early hours of 21 June 2015 during a solstice ceremony.
[4] I obtained the information about the star Willka Wara from the book Astronomía Inka by the Cusquenian astronomer ERWIN SALAZAR, Scientific Director of the Cusco Planetarium.