Introduction: ¡Allillanchu!

*Orqokuna Andaguapi (Andagua Mountains).* Andagua, Perú. (2022). Courtesy of A.B. Bejar.

¡Haykuykamuy! The Latin American, Caribbean, and European Division (LAC&E) at the Library of Congress welcomes you to Interconnecting Worlds: Weaving Community Narratives, Andean Histories & the Library’s Collections. In this guide, with resources in English, Spanish and Quechua, we seek to facilitate research about Andean peoples, cultures, and knowledges through the themes of language, storytelling and literature, visual arts, and music.

The Andean region encompasses the geographic areas in Ecuador, Colombia, Bolivia, Perú, and parts of Argentina, Chile, and Venezuela. While Andean communities are distinct, they also share a history of both resistance and resilience. This guide aims to reflect this shared history by weaving relevant materials from the Library with interviews from Andean and Quechua visual artists, musicians, scholars, educators, poets, and community members.

From discussions about textiles and music to poetry readings and more, our Narratives from the Ayllu (family and community) Interview Series serve to preserve and share diverse community perspectives.

Narratives from the Ayllu

This interview series begins with Dr. Elizabeth Sumida Huaman and Luisa Castellon, both of whom contribute to a strong foundation for this guide. For Dr. Sumida Huaman, a key quality of ancestral systems of knowing is their adaptability. From her personal and academic experience, she views Quechua and Andean communities as strong, beautiful, and intellectually brilliant.

For Luisa Castellon, the shared values of Indigenous Andean communities are extremely important to understand their cultures. Her experiences growing up around the Quechua language shaped the way she interacts with these cultures and her conceptions of unity, family, and community.

Learn more about Dr. Elizabeth Sumida Huaman’s work with Indigenous communities External

Elizabeth Sumida Huaman
Luisa Castellon

Pachamama of the Andes

Underwood & Underwood, publisher. How Oroya R. R. follows Rimac river to its source in the Andes, gorge near Cacray, Peru. 1906.Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Colombia. Comisión Corográfica Sponsor.Paz, Manuel María, 1820-1902 Artist. View of the Village of Puracé, Painted from the Pesares Highlands, Popayán Province. 1853. Library of Congress.

Keystone View Co., publisher. Charming Inca Lake (Laguna del Inca), nestling in the Chilean Andes, So. Am. 1914. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Young, J. H. (James Hamilton), cartographer, engraver. Grigg & Elliot. Brazil, Bolivia & Peru 1829. Library of Congress.

Keystone View Co., publisher. Along the Mendoza in the Andean Foothills, Argentina, So. Am. Argentina. 1914. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Rancagua. [Low aerial of mining town in Andes Mt. valley, Chile. ca. 1915]. 1915. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Underwood & Underwood, publishers. Quito, the city of the equator, 9350 feet above the sea among the Andean volcanoes, Ecuador. 1907. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Scheeler, I. F., copyright claimant. [Cochabamba, Bolivia] 1915. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Underwood & Underwood, publisher. San Bartolome town and terraced fields, on a shelf on the Andes, 5,000 feet above sea--Peru. 1907. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

From the Library: Introductory Materials

This selection of books and StoryMap introduce the people, culture, geography, and region of the Andes for general audiences and researchers. Each title offers a glimpse into the traditions, rites, iconography, history, and culture of Indigenous peoples in across this broad and diverse area. Staff in the Hispanic Reading Room can provide access to the materials located at the Library of Congress. If you cannot visit us in person send us a message through Ask a Librarian to further assist you.

Cultural Exchanges in Quechua Dictionaries, a history of encounters told through lexicons

This StoryMap narrates the Spanish encounter with the Incan Empire and how the subsequent colonization of South America brought on a series of substantial changes for both Indigenous and Spanish populations. Among these changes were the introduction of Christianity to the local population, and the need for missionaries to learn Quechua to proselytize effectively. Learn more about this historical period by visiting this StoryMap created by Pamela Padilla, 2022 Summer participant in the Library of Congress Internship (LOCI) program with the Latin American, Caribbean, and European Division.

Ayllu : el altiplano boliviano = Ayllu : the Bolivian highlands by fotografías, Peter McFarren ; texto, Yolanda Bedregal
Call Number: F3341.A5 M34 1984
Published/Created: 1984
Emanating from a colloquium in pre-Columbian art and archaeology held at the University of Chile in Santiago, Images in Action presents interpretations of a large corpus of art and iconography from the Southern and South-Central Andes, bringing together some of the most esteemed scholars in the field. More than thirty authors, all with extensive experience in the Southern Andes, examine artifacts, artworks, textiles, archaeology and architecture to develop creative new insights on the cultural interactions between people in prehistoric western South America.
Ceremonias en carnaval : La Bajada by fotografias : Carolina Franco ; textos : Jorgelina Balut.
ISBN: 9789878827582
Published/Created: 2022
The rite is renewed through its celebration, the Andean identity is immortalized in the ceremony. The descent of the devils gives us that moment when the eye stops the gaze and registers the breath of a people. The representation chooses the natural and sacred space to show the relationship with the earth, Pacha. The clothing combines masks, images, embroidery, inlays and colors that signify carnival, a foreign custom, which over time acquired its own nuances and became an expression of our indigenous, Spanish and Creole people. Likewise, the shadows that complete the image place us in the ancestral, understood as that communal past that watches over from above, symbolizing the sacred. In this way, photography introduces us to the very rite that brings together history and current affairs. "In this part of the Andes, time and space coincide in a tinkuy, which in the Quechua language means a meeting of forces and tensions. Carnival Ceremonies go through various textualities revealing a contemporary Andean world, in which heterogeneous elements of an indigenous and colonial historical tempo coexist in a present identity."
Fiesta en los Andes : ritos, musica y danzas del Perú by Raúl R. Romero
Call Number: GT4839.A2 F54 2008
ISBN: 9789972428715
Published/Created: 2008
Edición de lujo que ofrece un viaje por la extraordinaria diversidad y riqueza cultural del Perú, incluyendo celebraciones folklóricas y religiosas de los pobladores andinos y bellas fotografías a color. Se divide en 6 capítulos: Uso del espacio y el tiempo en la fiesta andina; Identidad y memoria; Nuevas generaciones y continuidad ritual; Celebrando el trabajo; Danzas, fiestas y género; Instrumentos musicales andinos. Deluxe edition that offers a journey through the extraordinary diversity and cultural richness of Peru, including folk and religious celebrations of the Andean people and beautiful color photographs. It is divided into 6 chapters: Use of space and time in the Andean festival; Identity and memory; New generations and ritual continuity; Celebrating work; Dances, festivals and gender; Andean musical instruments.
Historia del pueblo kechua by Ileana Almeida.
Call Number: F2230.2.K4 A46 1999
ISBN: 997861091X
Published/Created: 1999
A history of the Quechua people in the Andean region.
Más allá de la ciudad letrada: letramientos indígenas en los Andes by Joanne Rappaport, Tom Cummins, Translator: Mercedes López Rodríguez
Call Number: Online resource
ISBN: 9789587387650
Published/Created: 10/21/ 2016
In this book, Joanne Rappaport and historian Tom Cummins study the colonial imposition of alphabetical and visual lettering on indigenous groups in the northern Andes. The authors analyze in depth how the Andean peoples received and maintained the conventions of the lettering of Spain and subverted them, often combining them with their own traditions.The indigenous communities of the Andes neither used a pictorial narrative representation nor had an alphabetic or hieroglyphic script before the arrival of the Spaniards. To assimilate the conventions of Spanish literacy they had to commit to European symbol systems. In doing so, the worldview and daily life were altered, making alphabetical and visual literacy the primary tools of colonial rule.
Revelaciones de la pachamama by Wanka Willka, Kusi Killa.
Call Number: MLCS 97/10060 (F) FT MEADE
Published/Created: 1996
An introductory book regarding the significance of Pachamama (Mother Earth) to those who live in the Andean region.
Revolución en los Andes : la era de Túpac Amaru by Sergio Serulnikov
Call Number: F3444 .S475 2010 OVERFLOWJ34
ISBN: 9789500732215
Published/Created: 2010
Revolution in the Andes is an in-depth history of the Túpac Amaru insurrection, the largest and most threatening indigenous challenge to Spanish rule in the Andean world after the Conquest. Between 1780 and 1782, insurgent armies were organized throughout the Andean region. Some of the oldest and most populous cities in this region—including Cusco, La Paz, Puno, and Oruro—were besieged, assaulted, or occupied. Huge swaths of the countryside fell under control of the rebel forces. While essentially an indigenous movement, the rebellion sometimes attracted mestizo and Creole support for ousting the Spanish and restoring rule of the Andes to the land's ancestral owners. Sergio Serulnikov chronicles the uprisings and the ensuing war between rebel forces and royalist armies, emphasizing that the insurrection was comprised of several regional movements with varied ideological outlooks, social makeup, leadership structures, and expectations of change.
Sociología de la imagen: miradas ch'ixi desde la historia andina by Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui
Call Number: F2212 .R58 2015 CABIN BRANCH
ISBN: 9789873687105
Published/Created: 2015
From the author: "I show here the details, the events and even the numerical calculations to reproduce the tajine – the sarnaqawi – that takes me from oral history to the sociology of the image. Visualization alludes to a form of memory that condenses other senses. However, the mediation of language and the overinterpretation of the data provided by the gaze, causes the other senses – touch, smell, taste, movement, hearing – to be diminished or erased in memory. The decolonization of the gaze would consist in freeing the visualization from the bonds of language, and in updating the memory of experience as an indissoluble whole, in which the bodily and mental senses merge. It inspires me that the sociology of the image is a kind of "art of doing", a theoretical, aesthetic and ethical practice that does not recognize boundaries between artistic creation and conceptual and political reflection."

Interconnecting Worlds: Weaving Community Narratives, Andean Histories & the Library’s Collections

Caribbean, Iberian & Latin American Studies: Ask a Librarian

Introduction: ¡Allillanchu!

Narratives from the Ayllu

Pachamama of the Andes

From the Library: Introductory Materials