Raising water and humans in the Andes: The experience of the community Fortaleza Sacsayhuaman in Cusco - Perú

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to explore the logical thinking of the community Fortaleza Sacsayhuaman in Cusco, Perú, which manifest itself through the relationship men- water in the Andean ancestral practice of raising water or unu uyway, as well as, how this practice has been used to face the drought of their springs.  Ethnographic methods such as participant observation has been applied, based on Ingold’s (2015) proposal that stands for a transformative ethnography in which data is not merely accumulated to be then  represented, but where the ethnographer is ontologically committed to sharpen his/her intellectual and moral faculties. The study revealed that in water nurturing, water becomes a person who is hierarchically superior to men and among the two exists a relationship based on interchange and mutual care. This way to perceive water, is in fact, what allows the community to guarantee its water source and to deal with the drought.