An ANDEAN LEGEND

On the waves of memory a prophetical story I heard sometimes in the Andes: here it goes.

“An elderly Andean priest, Kyana Chuyma, while the Spanish invaders were approaching, fled with the treasure of the Temple of Taytacha Inti, the Father Sun, and threw it into the sacred Lake Titijaja, on the Peruvian-Bolivian border, between the islands of the Sun and the Moon, to put it safe before being captured and subjected to ill-treatment and torture that left him half dead.

Taytacha Inti, in gratitude, asked him to express a wish that would have been granted; the old priest, at that point moribund, didn’t ask anything for himself, but that his companions were given the strength to endure the suffering to which they were going to be subjected by the invaders; Taytacha Inti, illuminating with his presence the chilly Andean night, showed the elderly priest some shrubs of small green leaves: the plant of Coca …

Kyana Chuyma called his companions into the hut where he was going to die and informed them about the gift of Taytacha Inti, telling them that those small leaves, used according to ritual modes during the years of oppression to come, would help them to survive, being source of energy for the hard work in the mines, in the exhausting walk and in endless vigils of the shepherds on the valleys and mountains.

He reassured them that through the use of Coca leaves they would endure hunger and hardships, the suffering would be changed into a sensation of well-being and they could also read the divine verdicts of  Coca, throwing the leaves to the wind.

The old Andean priest, however, forewarned his companions: if the white man would strive to get from Coca those same benefits for himself, the little green leaves in his hands would be transformed into an instrument of madness and death.”

Rarely a prophecy has approached so much the truth … and the reality.