Hatun Tinkuy: A Project That Was Always There, in the Peruvian Highlands

It is another freezing night in Chucuito, and in the restaurant where all the participants of the XV TSL Puno are dining, Jhony Chaves—better known as "El Gato"—tells us stories about impossible places, like Cerro de Pasco, a Peruvian mining settlement even higher, colder, and harsher than Chucuito. He then recalls a village lost in the Peruvian jungle that can only be reached by boat, where the mosquitoes seem as large as birds. Next, he jumps to describing Andean villages that flood and freeze almost year-round, until the weather finally gives a few months of respite to the families who live there simply in houses made of mud.

As El Gato goes through his inventory of Peruvian towns, it is impossible not to think of the magical realism of Macondo. Is all of this real? Indeed, it fits perfectly that this is also a concept coined decades ago, before García Márquez, by a European, for whom his own continent's nature had been entirely domesticated. Of course, Latin America remains a landscape, and our great victory is that we manage to live within it, despite nature and its disasters. Thus, the villages El Gato evokes bring a certain comfort to our shared table, even as the cold and altitude threaten to take their toll on us. "It could be worse," we think before spooning the steaming soup in front of us.

How, then, can we intervene and propose public space in rural, predominantly Aymara settlements like Chucuito, where nature constantly reminds us that it is the main protagonist?