The Quechua People: An Abandoned Race
By Mike Safley
The indigenous Indians of Peru are unique in the modern world. They are uniformly spiritual, uninterested in politics, and loyal to their families; they are not greedy or materialistic; they express themselves in shy smiles and rarely complain. Their pride is intact despite the almost inhumane solitude of the Altiplano and dismal treatment by the last 500 years of history. They have become a forgotten people, often abandoned by their government, exploited by the machinery of commerce and left behind by the advances of medicine and the march of modernity. It is Quechua Benefit‘s goal to deliver a modest measure of relief and hope to the everyday challenge of their lives.
None of the chronicles written, mostly by Spaniards, that document the hundreds of years of subjugation of the Quechua people reports any instances of redeeming or enlightened treatment of the modern day Quechua's ancestors. The conquering Spaniards succeeded in killing hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Quechua men and women by commanding their services as beasts of burden. There was silver ore to be mined and hauled from the mountains to the coast, tribute to be collected from the length and breadth of Peru, and military expeditions that required an endless number of human porters. Hernando De Santilla observed that "down there [Peru] there is one disease worse than the rest: the unrestrained greed of the Spaniards."
The Quechua Today
The abuses of colonial Spain have given way to benign neglect. Forced labor, small pox, cholera and malaria no longer kill the Quechua population. They subsist outside the modern cities in much the same fashion that their ancestors might have done without their colonial masters of the past 500 years.
The modern day Indian has adopted a measure of European dress, the children attend school and the main towns have electricity, roads, churches and political order. Agriculture sustains life mostly in the form of alpacas and potatoes. But the poverty that exists is hard to comprehend. Their homes have sod walls, dirt floors and thatched or tin roofs and little else. People live within feet of their alpaca, among guinea pigs, cooking pots, and the ever-present cold. Yet the shy smiles persist, the Quechua mother is ever attentive to her child, the families persevere, sustained in part by the love and concern of their blood ties and in part by their husbandry of alpacas.
The Need For Hope
In the United States, Canada, England, Europe, New Zealand and Australia people have hope for the future. I am not sure that's true for the Quechua. The mortality rate for children is shockingly high; four out of ten children die before they reach 10 years of age. Death from pneumonia, dysentery and infection are an everyday occurrence.
The most basic health delivery systems do not exist. Dental care is a luxury that is out of reach for many Quechua in the highlands. Low birth weight babies, cardiovascular disease, pneumonia, and diabetes are caused by oral infection, which studies suggest contribute to a wide variety of systemic diseases. The simple act of having an abscessed tooth removed is something a majority of Quechua families cannot afford. These untreated teeth turn deadly.
I was in Peru with the Quechua Benefit last year (November 2004) when a mother told me that her daughter had complained in June that her tooth hurt. The mother told the child, "don't worry the gringo dentists will be here in November." Can you imagine a circumstance where you would ask your child to wait five months to have their infected tooth pulled?
Dr. Mario Pedroza, Dr. Wayne Jarvis and the other dentists who travel with Quechua Benefit are often faced with a dilemma: which teeth to pull. The Quechua dental team tries to limit each patient to two extractions. This limit is forced on them because the lines of people waiting for care are so long that there would be no hope of getting through even a part of those in need if they stopped to extract every infected tooth. They have to practice a form of triage.
I have painted this dark picture from the everyday reality of the Peruvian people, who raise their alpacas in the harsh highlands of Peru. The images of colorfully dressed Indians, peacefully blending into the panoramic Peruvian landscape, that we often see in National Geographic or on the Discovery Channel belies the harsh reality of their lives. I once asked Lenora, a Quechua lady in the Colca, what she thought of the foreign tourists coming into her valley. She replied, "They come, they take pictures and they leave no money." I have often thought about what Lenora said, it occurs to me that between 1993 and 1998 we imported a fair portion of the animals that make up the foundation of a U.S. alpaca industry worth hundreds of millions of dollars. And, we left very little money in Peru.
Hope! What is Possible?
Quechua Benefit has been going to Peru since 1996. In the beginning, our only thought was to extract teeth, relieve the immediate pain and pass out some warm clothes. But, you cannot continue to make the annual trip without wondering how to effect, in some small fashion, a permanent change.
One night on one of our trips, Mario Pedroza lay in the cot next to me and, before we nodded off to sleep he said, "We can't extract enough teeth to make a dent in the problem." He wanted the hope of a long-term solution no matter how small. The next year we brought fluoride tablets but it was clear that the infrastructure was not in place to support the project. We added more dentists to our annual trips and they took more teeth. The generous supporters of Quechua contributed more money and we gave more blankets, jackets and shoes. By the end of 2004, Quechua Benefit had provided dental care for more than 10,000 patients in the highlands.
In 2002, Dr. Wilfredo Uscamayta (Dr. Willie), a Quechua dentist from the Colca Valley joined our annual trip as a volunteer. Dr. Willie is a man of uncommon energy; his passion to help his fellow human beings is evident in everything he does. He is the first one up in the morning and is always lobbying to see a few more patients at the close of the day.
At the end of our second trip with Willie, he proposed expanding his work with Quechua Benefit. He wanted permission and funding to take the mobile dental clinic we maintain in Peru into additional towns during the year.
As Mario, Willie and I talked, a plan developed. We expanded the dental mission from one to ten months a year, with ten days each month spent at ten different locations. In 2004 alone, Dr. Willie provided dental care for 3000. In addition, Mario and Willie worked out a plan to include the local schools in a program to distribute fluoride tablets to the children.
The fluoride distribution program is being paired with a system of incentives to encourage the children's participation at each of the schools. The classes that receive the best scores on their annual dental exams might receive soccer uniforms and balls for the boys, and volleyballs and uniforms for the girls. Individual alpaca breeders will be asked to contribute uniforms, branded with their ranch logos, to the winning classrooms. Every child loves to put on an athletic uniform just as you and I loved playing in the little leagues on Saturday afternoon.
Fluoride is the key to a long-term solution. It is the reason that systemic infection from tooth decay is almost nonexistent in the developed countries. Implementing such a program, even on a small scale, in Peru will take time. However, it is a hopeful path that may eventually, save lives and deliver, compounding benefits that will help avoid low birth weight babies, pneumonia, and lung disease and give some comfort to parents who want their children to grow up strong and pain free.
Charity is not the rule in Peru. There is little to give. The people we see often display a puzzled look as they observe the dental team. It is as if they can't quite understand why someone would want to help them. When you give a child, a small ball or a warm jacket they often look from the gift back to you as if they are trying to understand if they are free to keep what is in their hands. They leave quickly.
The Mayor of Illalli, a new town we visited in 2004, told me, "The mothers here don't want their children's teeth to hurt; they will go home happy tonight! Thank You." The gratitude expressed by the Quechua people is hard to explain. They are not loud or persistently grateful but when a child's eyes meet with yours as they glance up from the ground, and whisper, gracias; you know.
A Future Vision
The Quechua Benefit effort is becoming better organized. We have registered as a charity, which allows us to buy medicines and supplies at half price. We have adopted a strategy of working with religious organizations that are already on the ground in Peru operating successful programs. We work through Sister Antonia of the Mary Knoll Sisters in Yanque and Sister Jessie of the Sisters of the Cross, at the Mosoq Runa orphanage, in Macusani, where they feed hot meals, daily, to the poorest children.
Dr. Willie has expanded our relationships with local mayors and school officials in the towns we visit. They all lend their facilities and communication systems to support the effort. In 2005, we will be funding Dr. Willie to work 15 days each month, instead of 10. This has been made possible by your generosity and two extraordinary donations: 1) $20,000 from Ben and Lynda Fisco of Ohio and 2) $30,000 from the Flora Family Foundation of Menlo Park California. The generosity that the Flora Family Foundation and the Fiscos have demonstrated is overwhelming. We have also broadened our volunteer base by adding Lindy Huber and Cathryn Whitman to our advisory board and together we pledge to use your donations wisely.
The people at Grupo Inca and Michell Company in Peru are central to our ability to operate in the highlands. They move supplies, provide housing and feed us as we move about from town to town. We could not operate without help from Derek Michell, Alonso Burgos, Juan Pepper, Moisie and Juanita from Mallkini, Francis and Francois Patthey, and Sandra Carbojal of the International Alpaca Association.
Last year we supplied blankets and antibiotics, during the record-breaking freezes, to a group of towns on the eastern slope of the Andes, about five hours from Macusani. The central town of Quicho serves 180 families and is surrounded by eight additional communities that are accessible only by foot. The people there have been abandoned by the authorities. They lack everything, girls have babies at twelve years of age and 800 families in this local area live solely on potatoes and alpacas. We are going back again in July and Dr. Willie will be pulling teeth. In 2005, we will be supplying antibiotics to fight dysentery and pneumonia in a few additional communities and we are attempting to establish more relationships, on the ground, with people already successfully delivering care directly to people in need.
The Future
It is the hope of the volunteers at Quechua Benefit that one thing will lead to another. That the contributions and support of alpaca breeders in North America will shine a warm light on solutions for the gentle Quechua people in one of the world's most significant alpaca growing regions.
Just as we did not conceive of the path we would follow, after our first visit to Macusani in 1996, we cannot be sure of our destination. We learn more with each initiative and each visit. We now have a website and our second annual calendar has been published. We even have a logo. All of this made possible by donations of breeders like Susan Muther and Hazen Reed, who contributed their talent to create our new identity and internet presence. Visit us at www.quechuabenefit.org; we need your help.
The Quechua people need your help. Our pledge is that every dollar that you donate will be efficiently translated into aid and hope for the people who we owe for our alpacas. We do not use donated dollars to fund a bloated overhead, in fact, we have no overhead and your donations directly deliver basics to those who need it most. All of the Quechua Benefit participants volunteer their time and talent. Our goal is to provide a small measure of hope and to let our friends in Peru know that you care for them.