Quinoa in the Tiwanaku Valley, 1996
Early morning light illuminates this colorful crop of quinoa, one
of the most nutritious foods in the Andes. Archaeological records
show that the Tiwanaku valley, known as the heartland of the Aymara
speaking people, has been inhabited since 200 BC. Local people continue
to live in adobe houses and subsist on the land their ancestors cultivated
for hundreds of years before them. As in times past, rural people
have depended upon their family members and neighbors (their community)
to run the farms and provide for each other in times of need. Within
the past fifty years the rural ways of life have increasingly become
more dependent upon market prices for their produce in the city. Today
there is not enough cultivable land to support everyone who lives
in the countryside (campo), and in order to find work and sustenance,
people are drawn to the many opportunities provided by the city experience.
The capital city of Bolivia, La Paz, is close to these rural valleys,
and has become the home to many Aymara speaking people who have migrated
there in the past few decades to find a new life.
