Andean Lives

Gregorio Condori Mamani and Asunta Quispe Huaman were runakuna, a Quechua word that means "people" and refers to the millions of indigenous inhabitants of the highlands of Peru and other Andean countries. Exploited and reviled by local power holders, neglected by the state, and silenced by dominant cultural discourses, the voices of this cultural majority are seldom heard in Peruvian or Latin American literature. For Gregorio and Asunta, however, that silence was broken when Peruvian anthropologists Ricardo Valderrama Fernandez and Carmen Escalante Gutierrez recorded their life stories. The resulting Spanish-Quechua narrative, published in the mid-1970s and since translated into many languages, has become a classic introduction to the lives and struggles of the "people" of the Andes. Andean Lives is the first English translation of this important book and includes a new introduction, annotations, and revised glossary. Working directly from the Quechua, Paul H. Gelles and Gabriela Martinez Escobar have produced an English version that will be easily accessible to general readers and students, while retaining the poetic intensity of the original Quechua. It brings to vivid life the words, worldview, and historical consciousness of Gregorio and Asunta, who impart their accounts with stoicism, humor, and anger. Their descriptions of life in rural villages, isolated mines, semifeudal haciendas, and the houses of their powerful misti masters in Cuzco are eloquent testimonies to the beauty and brutality of everyday life in the Andean highlands.