The way to Pelechuco in the heart of Apolobamba, one of the most attractive of all the Andean regions and cot of the remarkable culture similar to that of the Kallawayas, with the objective to revalue its cultural and historic patrimony, welcomes the commencement of the third part of the Expedition Madidi on the 11th of September 2003.

In order to arrive to Pelechuco, one must cross the pass of the Katantika hills, or as otherwise called in our time today “port of mountain”, that is the highest peak of Bolivia and therefore one of the highest peaks in the world.  It is situated totally in the mountain Range of Apolobamba (Cordillera Apolobamba) at the altitude of 5360 meters above sea level and 1700 meters higher than the Plaza Murillo in La Paz, which is the kilometer zero of the official Bolivian expeditions or 550 meters higher than the summit of the Monte Blanco (White Mount), which is the highest peak of the European Union.  Perhaps, similar demand explains the isolation of Pelechuco in the present days in relation with the rest of Bolivia. Nevertheless, following the history starting from the period of the Incas, and even before, from the beginning of the 20^th century, Pelechuco formed part of a macro territory of complementary ethnic economies and contacts that firstly arrived to the Amazonía and secondly to Cuzco, showing that it was the badly modernized understanding of those who prepared the regional space, leaving the entire zones out of the official maps and of the State politics but not from the illusions of the human beings. 

An appointment of Saignes

Mitre, the founder of the liberal historiography of Argentina, mentioned of a text where the Aymara Vicente Pazos Kanki had the idea to establish a monarchy as political solution for the government of the new independent American Republics that, at times, “a journalistic article is more important than a book”.  Summarizing, I want to transcribe a note at the foot of this page written by Thierry Saignes that encloses several books.  It says thus: “In my oral presentation on “Les chemins du vent: language, chamanisme originating from Kallawaya’ (Aix In- Provence, 5.  XII.  1989; under press as protocol of the 3rd international conversation of Andean studies), I dared to propose an etymology in the name Apollo conferred to the mountain range located among the Suches and Tuiche Rivers whose summit is the Acamani, ‘cabeza cerro’ in Pukina; the name ulo appoints the worms that ate the eyes of coca and we can ask if ‘Apu ulo’ would not be the ‘mister of the worms’ whose importance in that region, dedicated by the cultivation of coca, is vital. Another task of the historic geography will be to propose convincing etymologies to the main topography of the country ” (1)

Apolobamba, Carabaya: two names for a same mountain range that characterizes a region of the same cultural headquarters separated today only by a rosary of landmarks that mark the international limit between Bolivia and Peru. Crossing it with precision by the edge of the glacial gap that forms the thaws of the Katantika where the Rio Tuiche is born to the altitude of 5360 meters nearer to the sky and by a rapid road that reaches Pelechuco is the place we have planned to go.

Tunupa in the land of Chuncha

According to Teresa Gisbert, Carabaya won the Spanish meaning of the term Kallawaya, a name that keeps the culture survived to the present and whose members were the intermediaries among the Andean cultures and the Amazon. Settlers of the Antisuyu the hot lands of the forest, the Kallawayas are renowned by their knowledge on herbarium. They domesticated the coca and its territories; the people of Cuzco (cuzqueños) obtained their first sacred plants. Medical itinerants, wise curators of all, wizards dominating the climate, poets of the nature, having a history in these lands and appearing with one of the most beautiful myths of the Andean culture, the Tunupa.

The version counted me with the writer and former Mayor of Sandia, Mr. Juvenal Mercado Villca, one night when I reached his town, an old territory of the Chunchos, “savages” or adorers of the otorongo or tigre (name that adopted subsequently many Latin-American guerrilla warfare). That was a night of copious beer.  Tunupa, according to Bertonio, God of the Aymaras, started an incredible crossing of civilization since the summits of Carabaya/Apolobamba where dwelled. The cosmic father ordered him to descend farther to a place where the men lived to educate them.  He loaded a cross as it happened in the Nazareth of the Judaeo-Christian culture carved in chonta, a hard tree of wood that only grows in the mount. Causing raining fire to punish the disobedient and hiding the sun to frighten the incredulous, he arrived to Carabuco, in the north edge of the Lake Titicaca, where he left the cross to be thrown into the water by the evil settlers. Then, the fish-women or sirens appeared and with them he maintained sexual relations; afterwards, with his body and the force of Cyclopes opens so much the present strait of Tiquina as the river bed of the Rio Desaguadero; finally, he went to chase away the fighters of the altiplano (high altitude) and he arrived to a point of greater visibility of the salty tall Andinos. This is the volcano that carries his name at the shore of the Salar de Uyuni. 

Door of accessing the Paititi

Pelechuco was founded by missionaries to the order of San Agustín “as doctrine and door of the country of the Chunchos” on the 25^th of July 1560.  Its name originates from the Quechua: phuyu kuchu or “corner of fog”. Every day, around 2 p.m. begins a singular spectacle: the clouds that rise from the forest invade the town of stone, from where Pelechuco got its name. Pelechuco was the first Spanish foundation in the territory of Apolobamba, commonly known then as Caupolicán, a name that recalls the indomitable warlike and the chieftain of the Araucanians that maintained the line of the Europeans for three centuries. 

The Chunchos (more than 200 ethnic groups in the jungle) felt the same severity at the border of Bío Bío.  Some of those ethnic groups, as the Toromona of the Rio Amarumayu, conducted by the mythical chief Tarano were allies and protectors of the Incas when, before the Spanish invasion, many of them fled to the forest. This originated the legend of Paititi to be more fascinating and persistent of the Southern America. The Paititi was refuge of the last Incas and a place where they buried their treasures and Pelechuco became one of the ways of income from the soldiers and adventurers that went in search of it. This is one of the most heroic on one side and most terrible on the other side, pages in the history of the conquest of America. Paititi was never found but the legend intensifies to the present days.

The inheritance of Carlos Franck

The era of the boom’s exploitation of the rubber in the Amazonía (end of the 19^th, beginning of the 20^th century) left innumerable testimonies in Pelechuco with the inheritance of the great mister of those lands called Carlos Franck who was also the commercial owner of the greater house of those times. The urban area of Pelechuco still keeps this main immense house that is reclined on the river of the village and whose funds rest on an extraordinary rock of dimensions. A few hours of walk, passing through the pass of Sánchez (where the legend insists that it is a matter of an elder that hid a treasure), in the community of Queara, low at the edge of the marvelous forest of clouds of the sub Andean, one can find the remainders of what was Carlos Franck estate. 

This house had lodged several times the British colonel Percy Harrison Fawcett when visited the zone during his boundary work delimitation and his farther explorations in the area and is undoubtedly the place that reflects everyone’s memories immediately congenial with the owner. Franck introduced Percy H. Fawcett in the mysteries of the Andes. His sick daughter had been cured from the Kallawayas of Curve, after various unsuccessful attempts to be healed in Germany. Franck believed with conviction in the power and the wisdom of the medical gypsies (Brujos) and that enthused the British Colonel who also liked Carlo’s stories of condors that snatched children from the laundries of gold that is famous to the region of Carabaya/ Apolobamba until today. 

The most famous photo of Colonel Fawcett, whose stories inspired Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to write his “Lost World” was taken in the house of Franck in Pelechuco and has returned the memory of the world several times back in the period of Colonel Fawcett’s explorations who continued the impossible in searching the spirit that was impregnated in the zone until the day that was completely lost in the forests of the Brazilian Mato Grosso and never returned.

One night I received an unexpected prize. A descendant of the German Bolivian called Aldo Lino Ortuño revived from a document some old roles in a room whose the front observes the main plaza of Pelechuco. Under the light of a candle, I read its title: Caupolicán.  It was a sketch of the situation of the first and second section of this province and its economic and social problems in response to a letter of Mr. Gregorio Games. Carlos Franck signed this document in Pelechuco on the 15^th of January 1914. That period everyone knew that not only there was a press office behind the mountains of Apolobamba, but also the cocaine was a legal product of the market (as it is written in this document) and there was a bridge on the river Amantala that was destroyed by a flood in the 70’s and nobody reconstructed it.

Bound for Apolobamba

On the 11^th of September 2003, the third part of the Expedition Madidi initiates.  Its first tactical objective is to arrive to the town of Pelechuco. There, we will seek to record a document on all the histories and the patrimony mentioned in this article.

José Luis Rios Cambeses, Lino Jaén Chiri, Alberto Linares, Ricardo Solís and the one that subscribes are the names of the new members of the expedition. We will leave with the support of a group of persons that have always collaborated with this undertaking such as Felipe Hartmann, Gonzalo Guzmán and Giovanni Violetta, and also another new member that is the present Prefect of La Paz Don Mateo Laura and a group of industrials that believe in the development of the department of La Paz, in the preservation of its cultural, architectural, and archaeological patrimony and in the promotion of the same area as part of its tourist attractions.

Today the tourism is exactly one of the strong bets that goes through the new appearances and the people in this territory and is possible to retrieve Apolobamba its quite earned prestige to be the door of income to a world that fully resists of magic and mystery, of histories and so alive legends and, at the same time, is so absent in the rest of this planet.

Notes

(1) Thierry Saignes: Towards a historic geography of Bolivia: The roads of Pelechuco at the end of the 17^th century. In: Historical Processes of the Continental Amazonia. DATA, Magazine of the Amazon and Andean Institute of Studies, No. 4, 1993