Circular terraces of Moray, the "laboratory" of Inca agriculture (Personal Archive)

"Plants are raised in the chacras by humans, and reciprocally, plants raise humans; they provide us with daily food, medicines, and shelter. Similarly, the Apus tutelares (sacred mountains) nurture wild flora and fauna, which can be used by humans with permission from these deities"[1]

How can we perceive our territory sensorially through food? What human-nature relationships develop around cultivation and gathering? How can we reciprocate this exchange of knowledge?

With these questions swirling in my palate, I visited the laboratories of MATER and Moray during the dry season of the Sacred Valley in 2022. But my immersion in the chacra and the botanical route of the heights would begin a few floors below, at the wholesale market of Urubamba on a Wednesday at 6:00 am. Manuel Contreras, researcher of MIL beverages, tells me that in market dialogues with caseras and hierberas, the word sacha not only means wild or uncultivated but also domesticated. In the exercise of gathering, several peasant communities identified, cultivated, and finally domesticated various fruit plants of the Cusco region in their chacras. Thus, we find sachatomate and sachapapaya, two fruits that, when tasting their fresh and sweet acidity, one appreciates all the meanings of sacha: a wild mountain flavor, rounded by domestication.

Medicinal plants gathered at the Urubamba Wholesale Market – dry season
(Field herbarium - Personal Archive)

Venturing further into the market, Manuel introduces me to Mrs. Hilda, his casera and master hierbera. I am immediately impressed by the display of medicinal plants that she offers us, their different shapes, sizes, and colors. She and Manuel are knowledgeable about the common names (usually in Quechua) of each plant, and they discuss their provenance, properties, and preparation. It is clear that, to recognize such a tremendous variety of beings, they have both cultivated the skill of botanical gathering in a daily relationship with the wild nature of the Valley.

For me, this practice is called foraging, an English word that describes the act of searching for edible plants and fruits in their wild state. I began this activity during the pandemic of 2020, with a small community of gatherers in Germany, in the forests of the Biosphärenreservat Mittelelbe. Each season marks a possibility of relationship with my natural edible environment, as well as a recipe or method of preservation. Today in Switzerland, both during my walks in Landschaftspark Wiese and gardening in the Gemeinschaftsgarten Landhof, I practice to recognize at least ten "unkraut" (German for weed) medicinal plants per season.

What I have learned in both territories is that the transcendence of foraging or wild gathering is the collective enjoyment of the plants. The story that these beings tell us over dinner, the knowledge that the gatherer shares through a ferment or a pesto.

Looking for a Quechua term that gets me closer to this practice situated in the Sacred Valley, Manuel presents me the word sallqa, which means wild or primal. But due to the plurality and beauty of Quechua, this word encompasses other meanings according to its use. Sallqa is also an ecoregion of Peru, referred to by Javier Pulgar Vidal as Suni (3,500 to 4,000 meters above sea level). Moreover, in the mythical fictional space of José María Arguedas, this is the common name used to refer to a wild animal.

I dare to say that sallqa encompasses the ecosystemic and ancestral relationship of botanical gathering in the Valley, where the human and the plant enter into a dialogue of care. If the human cares for nature, which nourishes and provides the plant (medicine), it in turn cares for and heals the human. In this cyclical exchange, a delicate balance between experimentation and precision, curiosity and moderation, and emotion and corporeal understanding is necessary to differentiate between what heals you and what harms you.

In Cusco, this human-nature relationship is preserved, shared, and sustained by peasant communities, especially by master curanderos and hierberas, who practice herbalism and traditional medicine.

The MIL immersion allowed me to experience the tension and enjoyment in the sallqa (botanical route) and sacha (chacra) relationships with the beings of the Moray ecosystem. Beyond the dialogue between cultivated and wild plants, ties of care are woven with various communities and their knowledge. The scientific language and the ancestral language coexist. Thus, Jan Brack (MATER forester) and Cleto Cusipaucar (leader of the Kacllaraccay peasant community) guided me around the restaurant and introduced me, among many others, to the Cabuya (Furcraea Andina). One talked to me about its ecology and plant physiology, while the other complemented the introduction with its traditional and medicinal uses. Both allowed me to understand the variety of dimensions of a being, which was later transformed into a drink by Manuel, and that upon ingesting it, we became one: botany, medicine, healing.

Medicinal plants gathered during the MIL Botanical Route in Moray – dry season
(Field herbarium - Personal Archive)

I invite you to be part of this dialogue:

Breathe.
Inhale to the top of your lungs, and exhale slowly.
Allow your body to get used to the altitude.
The wind blows strongly and flutters in the rings of Moray at 3,385 meters above sea level.
The Apus tutelares, Chicón and Verónica, bless us with fertile soil.
It is August; the fruits of the main harvest have already been distributed and stored.
The earth rests, and the fields display yellow, ochre, and brown tones.
The dry season is not barren; it simply has different rhythms.
Pay attention.
We are amidst the steppe mountains and the puna.
Plants at this altitude cling to the warm ground, developing deep and strong roots.
Among asteraceae and agaves, warm and cool plants, we recognize the medicine hidden among the wild grass.
The plants have shared their care for over 10,000 years with the curanderos and hierberas of the Sacred Valley.
Today, the daughters of their daughters preserve and share this knowledge; they know how to smell the terpenes and taste the flavonoids with the skill acquired in botanical gathering as an everyday and essential habit.

Listen, exchange.
It is six in the morning on a Wednesday at the Urubamba Wholesale Market.
At 2870 meters above sea level, we enter a river of carts, sacks, trucks, sales pitches, and purchases, singing the freshness of their products from different ecosystems in the valley.
The commercial current leads us to the space of the hierberas.
There they are; the plants adorn their hats, extend, diversify, and cluster in their cloaks: seeds, stems, flowers, bark, roots of water and earth.
Quechua taxonomies, plural in form as in healing properties.
There are herbal groups that cure cancer, and others that heal the heart. Taste, and weave relationships.
We return to the high laboratories, and at the bar, they extend a small glass to me.
A sweet, slightly bitter, and thick liquid – it is cabuya honey.
Up in the mountains, the deft hands of the master extract from the agave a fiber as fine as it is strong – the needle and thread of the Incas.

One last deep breath, slowly and gratefully…return.

[1] Mantilla Holguín, Justo (2018) "Revalorization of traditional medicine at the Archaeological Site of Wayna Tawqaray." Dirección Desconcentrada de Cultura de Cusco, Coordinación de Patrimonio Inmaterial.