Photos from the collection of melynda thorpe burt, peru 2012

Shaman of The Street

Melynda Thorpe

Published in

Making of the film “Heart of the Andes”

6 min readOct 12, 2013

Part 11 in a series following: “The Weaver’s Plight” https://medium.com/heart-of-the-andes/24aad624fc53

Oct. 2, 2012

We meet him on the streets of Cusco, and like hundreds of other vendors who approach us to buy their native, woven, beaded merchandise, we flatly say “Gracias, no Senior,” and position ourselves to pass without making eye contact.

Penelope tells us it was in 2004 that she and her husband Tim first met Don Cesar, and that theirs is a beatiful story she must share with us.

Penelope, who leads us along the skinny curb of a one-way, cobblestone street stops abruptly. Then reaches back for his shoulder.

“Pa’qo Cesar,” she says, as he turns to her with the bright smile of recognition. He looks deeply into her eyes.

Warmly, deeply he speaks to her, “Señorita, oh my, oh my!”

They embrace and whisper sweet words of reunion. Then Penelope tells us that this is one of the great shaman of the Q’ero tribes. “Don Cesar is known throughout the region for his wonderful healing powers,” she says. She translates her words back to him and he bows to her in bashful appreciation of her compliment.

I have come to know that the Q’ero people rely on shamans. To a people deeply connected to the earth and their mountain home, the shamams are energy healers, medicine men, and the spiritual leaders who keep individuals, communities and all things in balance.

Penelope proceeds to translate back and forth between Don Cesar and the group of us. “On our first trip in 2004, we were right here in Cusco,” Penelope recalls. “Tim [Penelope’s husband and cofounder of the Heart Walk Foundation] was drawn to this great man.”

It was 2004 when Tim Eicher met Don Cesar on the streets of Cusco. Compelled to approach him, Tim received a gift from the shaman that has aided him in being physically able to attend to the needs of the high mountain tribes of the indigenous Q’ero people.

Penelope explains that Tim was born with a heart defect, and when he was in Cusco in 2004, he inexplicably felt compelled to cross a certain cobblestone street. As he did, the other travelers with him watched with curiosity as he made his way toward a man selling textiles. “He later told me that didn’t know why, he just knew he needed to see this man and one of the weavings he was holding,” Penelope says.

“The scene was somehow curious and we had no idea what Tim was doing,” she ads. “But it was somehow compelling to watch him, so much that others in the group started taking pictures without even knowing why.”

Penelope describes how Don Cesar put one textile over Tim’s shoulders and began reciting intense blessings and prayers. “It all unfolded in a very loving way, as this great man began touching Tim on his head and shoulders and chanted blessings to him,” she recalls.

“Then, in his last gesture, he put his hand over Tim’s defective heart and there was a powerful silence between the two,” she tells us. Penelope then puts her hand to her heart and Don Cesar clasps his hands to hers, and they look into one another’s eyes with rich, fond and knowing memory.

“Tim later told me that he was practically overcome by the pa’qo’s blessing on his heart without knowing anything of his condition, and he told me the power of the blessing was astonishing to him,” she said.

Tim has since made many trips to the high mountain Q’ero villages through the steep and rugged mountain terrain. The trek is vigorous and it takes days,hiking at high elevations, but he has endured and his health has been sustained.

Don Cesar proceeds to show Penelope the textiles and beadwork he has brought from the mountain to sell. Q’ero men must travel long distances from their high mountain villages to the city of Cusco to sell the women’s weavings. This is how they support their community and purchase things like oil and matches.

According to Penelope, it is a great sacrifice for the men to come to the city to sell. They must spend money to travel down from the mountains, find a place to stay and eat for a few meager soles, and they stand in the sun all day selling to tourists. The alternative is to to work in the mines of the Amazon where they are exposed to poisons.

“It brings them cash, but it is very dangerous work,” she says.

Penelope asks Don Cesar a question and he nods solemnly. “He says he often returns home having sold nothing or feeling like he has been taken advantage of by shop keepers who will often buy, but at too low of a price to compensate for the months of work the women put into the textiles and for his travel to the city.

Outdoor advertising on the streets of Cusco

Later Penelope explains to me the travesty of the situation. How the Q’ero women can spend months sitting prostrate on the ground creating just one delicate weaving. Using age-old traditions and techniques, their loom is nothing more than sticks posted in the ground to hold their precious and patterned artistry. Uninterupted by time and technology, the work of the high mountain Q’ero cannot be replicated by modern machinery, and their work is authentic, organic and pure. Knowing that the Q’ero are desperate to sell (it is not easy for them to travel from the mountain), buyers in the city have learned to take advantage. When offered nickels for their work, elders often accept in lieu of returning home with nothing at all.

According to Penelope, the travesty in the situation is that these very buyers often turn around and sell the artistry of the Q’ero women for great sums of money. “Their traditional weaving patterns are highly valued,” she says. “And the city vendors have learned to capitalize on their desperation.”

Penelope buys several items from Don Cesar and I can see she is giving him honorable value, He is pleased and he hugs her, whispering blessings into her ear, and he tells her in his native language to send his love and blessings to Tim.

As we walk away admiring the beadings she has purchased, she says, “It is so important that we do this to support the traditional culture of the Q’ero people.” By purchasing a few items on each trip, Penelope says the income helps the men buy much-needed essentials like cooking oil, matches, candles and food to bring back to their families in the Q’ero territories.

Penelope explains that selling textiles allows the Q’ero people to continue to live in their ancestral homelands. “By buying directly from the weavers and their husbands, we are supporting their culture and their native art as well as providing income and dignity,” she says. On each trip to Peru, Penelope says she purchases what she can, and returns to see the Q’ero textils through the Heart Walk Foundation web site.

“This is one way we can raise money to help fund schools and nutrition projects that benefit them in larger ways,” she says.