After my first week in Amaicha, my girlfriend Valeria and some friends from her hometown came up the 4 hours over the mountains to visit. It was nice to have a car to get around instead of relying on the local unreliable bus services. We headed out to the nearby zone of Los Zazos, which is a part of Amaicha that spreads out over 5 km of winding sand roads in the desert. Along the route are impressive vistas out over the desert valley, looking towards the Aconquija mountain range, and there are a few small grottos with local saints, including a stations of the cross carved into the hillside in one area.
At the end of the road is the dique, or dam, where the water for irrigation and household use in Amaicha is contained. It is channeled through small stone acequias which criss-cross the valley and can be opened and closed at strategic spots to supply water to fields, the plaza of the town, etc. A 2-km walk along the canal feeding the reservoir brings one to the Waterfall El Remate, which is an impressive cascade through a giant crevice in the rock. On the day we went, a large group of local people was gathered in the middle of the ice-cold water in a native wedding ceremony. Blessings were made with the water, and Andean-style music was played. It was a very nice scene and a break amongst the rock cliffs in the searing heat of the midday.
On the walk back from the waterfall, one could see an impressive desert vista looking westward towards the Quilmes or Cajón mountain range, which is higher than the Aconquija and is the beginning of the foothills of the Andes. Some of the peaks off in the distance were snow-capped, hard to believe in the heat and aridity of the valley.
Back towards Amaicha, there is a very interesting small NGO called Fundación Amauta. Amauta is the quichua word for mentor, and the idea of the centre is to pass along to the youth of the town some of the wisdom of the elders in the indigenous community. The building is set up as an alternative school and eco-museum, and has received a grant from a Buenos Aires based NGO to set up a small computer lab, as the foundation manager told me, in an effort to decrease the digital divide.
The museum itself hosts a small library, in English and Spanish, a theatre, a general purposes room, and the eco-museum with adjacent crafts room. Locals engage in numerous workshops here, and foreign visitors have included representatives of the Hopi and the Oglala Lakota tribes of the U.S. (the foundation has a partial grant as well from the U.S. Embassy).
On the day we went, children were preparing folklore dances for the upcoming Pachamama festival, and a few craftspeople were working away at woven and leather handicrafts in the back. In the museum section, apart from indigenous and criollo artefacts, there is ample information about some of the many archaelogical sites of pre-hispanic indigenous settlements that sprinkle the area. Besides these, children participate in sports teams locally. With more funding, the director said he wanted to set up a small plaza for the children to play, and to begin distance-learning courses via satellite with some of the national universities based in Buenos Aires.
All in all, it was a very interesting centre, and it was nice to see how some locals are revindicating their indigenous culture in a positive and informative way that can only benefit the local community.
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