Publications /  The Potato, Treasure of the Andes
From Agriculture to Culture

For ancient Andean civilizations, the potato embodied the very roots of existence. Today, its significance is kept alive in legends and myths, echoed in the broken voices of village elders who depend on them to complement the cold objective data provided by the senses and help them to interpret the world. Through these legends, the meadows, plains, fields, hills, springs, and rivers of the harsh mountain landscape come alive, recovering their lordly ancestral countenance. As they work the fields, farmers suddenly find themselves speaking to the gods and the ancient tribes. The potato is a mute observer, impervious to the passage of time.

GIFT OF THE GODS

One myth tells us of the birth of agriculture. Viracocha-Pachacamac, the creator and renewer of the world, the maker of matter and time, sent his two children, Imai Maman and Tocapu, to visit the realm where people lived. He ordered them to observe the plants that grew there, and to study and classify them. They would show people which plants were good and which were bad, which were nutritious, which had medicinal properties, and which were poisonous. They were to teach these people, who Viracocha-Pachacamac had created, the knowledge of sowing crops and how to use them properly so that they would never lack food.

For 8,000 years, farmers have dug deep into the furrows of the earth to extract the food and energy placed by the Creator at the service of humanity. During this time the potato has lived side by side with humans, playing a vital role in rituals such as the summer solstice festival and the sacred ceremony to honor the full moon. The ancient inhabitants of the Andes named the moon Mama Quilla, the lady and mistress who conferred fertility upon women and also made Mother Earth, Pachamama, germinate so that she could offer up her potatoes at harvest time.

Ancient rivalries over potato fields were settled with war cries and bloodshed. Doubtless some vestiges of these battles, both symbolic and real, have reached us today, driven by the notion of defending ancestral rights. We can easily imagine the great Inca warrior and king, Atahualpa, presiding over a harvest rite similar to those that are still carried out in the Andes today. There was a brief interlude in the vicious, fratricidal war that had been waged for years between the troops of the Inca emperor Atahualpa and his half-brother Huascar. During the pause, Atahualpa sent his troops on leave and put men and women to work in the fields. As befitting an Inca ruler - which he had fought hard to become - Atahualpa came to the potato fields at the end of the season for the harvest ceremony. He thrust his golden shovel into the soil and uprooted the plant that had been selected for the ritual, showing the tubers that hung from its roots. Then he plucked the potatoes one by one from the roots and placed them on a blanket that had been laid on the ground by the high priest. "Haicha! Haicha! Haillu! Haillu!" the people’s voices rang out, in rhythm with the movement of their spades as they rose and fell, breaking up the soil.

The scene took place against a backdrop of green maize planted on wide terraces and fields of beans growing in damp black furrows where a few late shoots still broke through the soil. The perfumed smoke of burning weeds drifted across the fields, blurring the vision of plots covered with maize, potatoes and quinoa. Nearby, finches trilled and fluttered their black and yellow wings, while in the warm sunlight, dyed wool shone in a thousand colors on the loom.

This is how life was then, and still is today, in the inter-Andean valleys and on the emerald strips of land along the coastal rivers. But on the highland plain, the weather is cruel; night time brings a biting frost and the noonday sun beats down mercilessly from the cloudless sky.

Near a cabin roofed with ichu grass, with walls made from roughly hewn stone, stands a small corral for llamas and horses. A few hens, their feathers ruffled against the cold, peck at the ground while a woman stirs a pot with chuño. The man of the house returns, tired, herding a few lean sheep and carrying the day's harvest, an armful of bitter potatoes called chiripapas, the only food that can be gathered on the puna at this time of year. The bitterness will be leached out during freezing nights and scorching days, the tubers stamped on by callused heels to make chuño and papa seca (dehydrated potatoes) products of age-old techniques.

COUNTLESS VIRTUES

The potato is not one, but many. More than 200 different species and 5,000 varieties grow in the Andean highlands: potatoes for every climate, every type of soil, every need, every tradition, every legend and poem. Over the past 150 years, a handful of naturalists have ventured into remote territories, tracking the diversity of the potato. These valiant men - of a rough and ready nature and keen intellect, like Nikolai Vavilov and Carlos Ochoa - traveled the highland plains and valleys, braving the freezing cold by night and the burning sun by day.

But the potato’s saga must also be traced in the labyrinth of myth, the fathomless depths of the centuries from which it reaches us in the form of magical tales. One such story is about a woman who was the sole survivor of the extreme poverty that ravaged the first inhabitants of the Andes. She eked out a living in the arid desert sands until one day she fell asleep under the scorching sun. As she slept, she was impregnated. She bore a son and did her best to feed and care for him. But the child died, and his remains were scattered across the land. Maize sprouted from his teeth, manioc from his long white bones; sweet potatoes grew from his brains and potatoes sprang from his testicles. His eyes, his hands and his head, likewise, sprouted food, and the land soon teemed with crops so that people would never again die from hunger.

People have found many uses for the potato, above and beyond its essential role as sustenance. They have cured gastric ulcers by drinking raw potato juice; stemmed bleeding wounds with poultices of raw mashed potato; relieved the pain of rheumatism with plasters of hot mashed potato; brought down swelling with a tea made from potato leaves; cured insect bites with slices of raw potato; eased the pain of burns with compresses of grated raw potato; dissolved kidney stones by drinking potato juice; soothed headaches by placing potato slices on their temples; and prevented facial wrinkles by wearing a mask of mashed potatoes at night.

The potato’s wealth of uses is a testimony to its close relationship with humankind. Over the course of 80 centuries it has sparked legends, romance and historic adventures all over the world. When the Spanish conquerors reached the Americas and ventured into the Andes, it took them a long time to discover the potato's real significance. Blinded by their dreams of gold and silver, they failed to see that the unassuming tubers harvested by the Inca farmers were in fact the real treasure of the New World.