The emotional structuring of the Andean territory: Mapping embodied narratives in Coporaque, Peru

Abstract

This research explores the subject of territory, understood based on the life world of Andean inhabitants of the Colca Valley (Arequipa, Peru), who are descendants of ancient local Indigenous groups that, since prehistoric times, have known how to adapt to the rugged geographical reality of the Andes. Through a phenomenological approach, which assesses the subjective experience, it was possible to corroborate the existence of routine patterns of spatiality that preserve the emotional essence of past territorial conceptions, which have prevailed despite the hegemonic impositions systematically forced upon the land ever since the Spanish conquest in the 16th century. Through carrying out coexistence fieldwork in situ, five layers of territorial sense have been registered, which, besides being very useful in order to optimize and give coherence to their agricultural and animal husbandry tasks, are periodically represented through verbal and corporal narratives, which have been mapped in this work in order to make their dynamics of symbolization visible and to conclude in the existence of an emotional Andean territory.