Lessons from Mother Earth

Here we are, time traveling again, and this time to the Quilmes ruins. In this area of North Argentina, there is the largest indigenous population and so visiting the Quilmes ruins was a must! The Quilmes ruins are the remaining 15% of a pre-Inca city of 20.000 people (when its population was at the highest) which for a small tribe at its origin, is quite big! The Quilmes tribe was also the tribe that held out for the longest against the Spanish (for 150 years!). I thought that this was awesome! Apparently, when the Spanish finally conquered them, 2600 people of the tribe were cruelly marched all the way to Buenos Aires and only 800 survived! This, on the other hand, sounds too cruel to be true!

At the museum, we learnt about the tribe's everyday life, the tools they had and the skills they mastered, but the most amazing thing was certainly the ruins of the sacred city they built! Although we could only see a tiny proportion of the original city, it was still huge. Two forts were still standing and had an amazingly good view over the surrounding area! The city was all reconstructed, yet, like it had never fallen, it was in an astounding condition that looked old but was standing strong!

The skills, beliefs and traditions of the Quilmes people are still used today by their descendants, and we could definitely see this while travelling in this part of Argentina.  Like for example, the Pachamama museum we went after leaving the Quilmes ruins. Pachamama is "Mother Earth" for the indigenous people in South America. This was more like an outdoor art gallery, constructed over ten years by Hector Cruz, an indigenous artist.

The gallery was very impressive and included all sorts of different art forms: paintings, textiles, pottery but it is mostly famous for the sculptures which are huge representations of the indigenous gods! The scale of the sculptures was overwhelming (the smallest one was about as tall as 2 of me!) but they all looked like they belonged here, and they were a part of the landscape. 

The more we travel through South America, the more I learn about the indigenous cultures and how important their beliefs and traditions are to understand the world.