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THE UNVEILED WOMAN

"So Apu Kon Tiki Wiracocha made a couple of siblings and spouses named Manco Capac and Mama Ocllo to arise from the Titicaca Lake and seek for a place to found the capital of the future Inca's Empire. The man carried a golden staff that will sink into the ground at the right place. So they walked and walked until it went down at the foot of the Guanacure Mountain. There, Manco Capac founded Cusco, and taught the locals how to seed and how to harvest, how to build and how to fight, and how to live in peace".
Dear Readers,
The Manco Capac and Mama Ocllo myth is a common place and a perfect example of how the occidental culture impose itself with its paradigms, making the woman, in this case, an almost not perceptible image, a decorative figure. Today, we are able to know that both men and women were involved in a perfect and well balanced dance at the Tahuantinsuyu's society, and that many rituals where exclusively performed by women.
Take a ride on this new issue and give the woman her true place between the Incas and discover a special one, preserved in the snow for more than 500 years; learn about the Sican culture and follow the track of the vicuñas and their desperate wave of conservation. Finally, taste a universal dish: the "ceviche", raw fish prepared all around the world with different flavors and ingredients, everyone proclaiming originality everybody has every time we reinvent a recipe.
Regards,
José and Cynthia

GODDESSES, PRIESTESSES AND VIRGINS

In general, the chronicles and colonial documents have limited information related to the role that women played on the Tahuantinsuyu. Although, it is possible to rescue some important data from these and other sources, letting us to appreciate the dynamism and participation that the woman had on the Andean prehispanic society, as on the sociopolitical organization as on the religious ideology, without forgetting the central role that took place in the daily life. It seems that in the Tahuantinsuyu, as in other social organizations arisen on the Andes, the woman position not only was recognized and exalted, it was considered necessary and complementary to the masculine presence on every and different affair: government, war, worship activities and the agnate system. The introduction of the gender studies on the Andean history has let a wider approach on the investigations and it is making possible to claim the woman as a protagonist social actor inside the Andean world vision we hold as a whole.
Thereby, regarding the Incan history, many feminine characters had emerged from the chronicles, showing us their political, priestly and even warring qualities. We could se now, with much more clarity that on the cosmological schemes the Incas elaborated the masculine and the feminine represented indivisible forces, which complementary made possible the universal order.
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THE AMPATO MAIDEN

The mummy of the teenage Inca maiden now christened Juanita is one of the most important archaeological finds of the last few decades in the Americas. The first frozen female found from the pre-Columbian era in the Andes, her body, packed in ice and thus not desiccated like most mummies, preserved a wealth of information about her culture and life.
Juanita was discovered at the summit of the Ampato volcano in September 1995 by the American anthropologist Dr. Johan Reinhard, the National Geographic explorer-in-residence.
Juanita has been remarkably preserved in ice for more than 500 years, but hot ashes from the eruption of the nearby Mount Sabancaya volcano melted the snowcap on Ampato and collapsed the summit ridge, exposing what had been hidden for centuries. Reinhard at first saw only the feathers of a ceremonial Inca headdress. It took 2 days to descend the peak with the 80-pound mummy, fighting against time to conserve her frozen body and get her back to Arequipa and the Catholic University labs.
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SICAN CULTURE

The Sican culture, also known as Lambayeque, was developing between 750-800 and 1375 a.D. in La Leche, Lambayeque, Chancay and Reque Valleys in Lambayeque region.
CULTURAL INFLUENCE
By the north its extension was until the Motupe valleys, in Lambayeque, and until the Jequetepeke by the south. Sican born after the political weaken of Mochica culture and it ends when the Chimu domain starts. Just a few years ago it was used to think this culture had achieved a reduced influence scope which was demarcated only in the Lambayeque region. Although evidences show the cultural contacts of Sican include even the Tiahuanacos by the south and until some areas of Colombia by the northeast.
ORGANIZATION
The Sican culture was based in a theocratic government, which its political and religious center was, at the beginning, settle in the Batan Grande complex. Late 900 a.D., this center was relocate to Túcume. According with the investigations made in the area, this culture developed a structure divided in social classes, in this, the power was concentrate in a elite of divine origins, and also in family ties. The social groups were in charge of the management, handicraft and agriculture.
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RESCUING THE VICUÑA

As part of a plan to protect the vicuña in the upper reaches of the Colca Valley, the traditional rundup and shearing have been revived -this ceremony is called the chaccu.
The vicuña is a South American camelid and, like the guanaco, it remains wild, whilst the llama and alpaca were domesticated more than a thousand years ago. The marvelous vicuna was almost exterminated by indiscriminate hunting for its valuable fiber, exceptionally fine at 14 microns, which is hygroscopic and highly insulating as well as being light and very soft to the tuch. One expert says that it has an "indecent feel"
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