History of Malingas – Detectives of rocks

Two years after calling the attention about archaeological rests in Tambogrande’s Southeastern, answers began to break out.

 

By Luis Correa Castillo & Nelson Peñaherrera Castillo

 

 

TAMBOGRANDE, Peru – There are spread rocks across Malingas Community, and everyone has a story to tell. There are carved rocks, low-relief prints, and impressing petroglyphs about what began to make tales of dancing lights in the sky like signing their location in the middle of the night. Normally, the people used to hear this stories and passing them generation after generation with a touch of legend.

 

Eventually, the stories became vanishing, forgotten, turning them others told via satellite speaking the people about furthest realities, and few building in many cases for preserving their local identity.

 

In 2006, FACTORTIERRA announced the existence of many locations where intriguing petroglyphs are conserved, which to the modern eye, it was possible to contemplate a big star like a Sun, with a sort of feet oriented westward. At that opportunity, it was concluded asking for collaboration of specialists who could undisclosed the mistery and giving a scientific vision to the ancient explanation of Malingas inhabitants.

 

Missing centuries

Malingas Community is located in Tambogrande District’s Southeastern, Piura Province. It extends from the rim of Piura River to the first slopes of Andean Range, and from San Francisco Creek to the actual and undefined border with Chulucanas District, Morroppón Province.

 

We are talking about 250 sq mi where 20 villages are settled down and around 10,000 people (estimated to 2009)working in agriculture and little cattle. Those activities could be developed since many centuries judging a petroglyphs network aligned along San Francisco Creek. Also, far away it, in Malingas Alto (Malingas Heights), pottery rests were found in late years without any explanation.

 

The best conserved places were in the villages of Guaraguaos Alto, el Carbón, y Platillos. There are petroglyphs at the three places, but a huge rock was used in the third one like a big ceremonial table.

 

The only documented references of Malingas label it as one of the tambos or stops of the Coastal Inca Trail. Many istorians compiled by Miguel seminario Ojeda in Historia de Tambogrande (History of Tambogrande) state the track coming from Pabur passed by Yapatera, wwwent up to Paccha and entered Malingas, for going out later to Bonapira, Pelingará, and enrooting to actual Lancones.

 

A latest research was made by Anne Marie Hocqenghem focused on the unsuccessful search of Malinché Tambo, that could belong to actual Malingas. The historian has gave many clues about the probable place but it couldn’t match, at least, a vestige that answers the enigma.

 

In the other hand, National Institute of Culture (actual Ministry of Culture) periodically visited but, according to a local, only arrived, gather data, and leave the zone. There was just historical silence after that.

 

 

Turning the stones up

Indeed, what is relatively well documented is the Colonial past of Malingas that consisted in the sucessive change of ownership among many Spanish conquerors descendants who claimed their right to a piece of land, until the San Lorenzo Colonization was created in 20^th century, and fractioned the old Malingas Estate (Hacienda) into an entire valley where today grows export mango. Having this vision, the Committee for Zonal Development of Malingas launched the job to make its community most visible, so it summoned FACTORTIERRA for making a strategy to ease exposing its potentials.

 

Since May 2009, a research work was started that, for sure, included to re-build the ancient history of the community. Back to 1542 AD, things were relatively clear, but further back, we just had rocks. The next months were used for connections and pitching for specialists to visit the zone and answered, at least, a consistent explanation about who made them, for what, and when.

 

Nobody seemed to be interested until the Archeologist César Astuhuamán wrote saying he could take a day to visit the zone and support the effort. This specialist already had experience studying the existent archaeological rests along the Andean Range between provinces of Ayabaca and Huancabamba, and in 2005, while he did his specialization studies in England, he published a series of articles where he sustained the whole archaeological potential of the zone where the full Huaringas Complex and surrounding forests are located today.

 

On November 8th, 2009, Mr Astuhuamán, some Malingas leaders, and a FACTORTIERRA crew focused on the rests of Guaraguaos Alto, El Carbón, and Platillos for trying the first answers. Everybody got surprised learning that at least two of these locations are perfectly oriented to many ceremonial rocks that end at the peaks of the Andean Range, that can be seen from all those places too easily.

 

Those are the so-called seq’es (or imaginarian lines) connecting ceremonial spots among or to determined ápoos (powerful place or person), that in Malingas case might be the mounts of Frías, Vicús, or Pilán. But what really interested to Astuhuamán was Platillos [Plateeyos] that was named so due to dozens of bowls carved on a great rock rising 33 feet above the soil level.

 

The people say that as the bowls are perfect circles, were made by little lights accostuming to fly over the place. For Mr Astuhuamán, they actually may be about a simple movement made by rubbing a stone under many sand grains were put. Circling it repeated times, a hole on the rock is obtained by simple abrasion.

 

Add to this that a little temple could be located in Platillos, but the specialist didn’t explain why it had to be exactly right there. For clarifying his own doubts, he came back on December 5^th, 2009, with Archeologist Daniel Dávila Manrique to determine this could be one of the spots connected by the Coastal Inca Trail.

 

In fact, Astuhuamán and Dávila say this way usually took ancient indigenous shrines as encountering points. That same day, it was possible to detect the track that possibly started around el Carbón, reached the former Malingas Estate (today San Martín de Malingas), passed to Paccha, then Platillos, and from that point, it could go to Yapatera throughout actual Río Seco Bajo and Sáncor.

 

Mr Astuhuamán himself warned this visit was not conclusive and that really opened up a research line to explain in-depth what all the rests found across Malingas mean, because many of them, even connected by the Incas, could not be built by them but by people who populated the zone much before, and that is the question we are looking for an answer.

 

Coming next – the short documentary we did about the César Astuhuamán’s first survey. It’s in Spanish, there’s no subtitles.

 

More questions

The visit of archeologists to Malingas equals the same like opening and removing the dust of the most ancient book at a library. At the moment, there is already a place where Malinché Tambo could be located – between the actual CP8 and the road to Cruz Verde, but an aerial photograph and satellite prospection survey could discard or confirm such as that possibility. [For 2011, the hypotheses of Mr Dávila was the tambo seemed to locate in actual Malingas Grande Village.]

 

Let’s keep in mind the actual San Lorenzo Colonization locates over the zone and it wouldn’t be possible to detect buildings on the surface because they are covered by croplands.

 

It was clear that the existent petroglyphs in the zone had ceremonial purposes, probably to praise for abundant harvest in a zone where before the San Lorenzo Colonization, it only depended on rains and Andean underwater. What was not determined at the moment was who made them and when because there is no evidence that the coastal cultures worked on rock, or that the Incas left inscriptions in spaces or on isolate rocks.

 

[About this point, Archeologist Dávila theorized in 2011 that it may be about Amazonian migrants who arrived to the zone at some moment 3200 to 4000 years ago.]

 

Alto Malingas has many places where the people continue finding rests of pottery and carved rock, but the most intriguing reference is that a convent funded during 16^th century was promoted by the daughters of Catalina Illaqtanga, the same indigenous descendant wwho deserved the priviledge to own lands in actual Ayabaca District. It’s necessary to know if it’s about the same person or it was a generic name assigned to the daughters of the indigenous chiefs who governed before the Conquest.

 

It’s also known that in 1578 AD, a mega El Niño destroyed the zone and San Sebastián de Malingas Indigenous Reserve but the documents are little clear about its actual location. There is much history to emerge and to understand in this place but the advantage of people is they already have now persons interested in learning more and transmit them this information.

 

This research was co-produced by the Committee for Local Development of Malingas and FACTORTIERRA. Version edited by David Flores & Nelson Peñaherrera. The exploration of the Inca Trail was supported by the Fe y Alegría 48 Rural educational Programme.

© 2009 – 2011 Asociación Civil Factor Tierra. All Rights Reserved.