How we return the Tallans (and the other related)

 

 

By Nelson Peñaherrera Castillo

 

SULLANA, Peru – What happened in actual Piura Department before 1532 AD is a big unknown. What we know is explained in key of legend. The rest has consisted in a long forensic work: tracking, digging, extracting, comparing, assuming the gotten is just a piece of a huge puzzle which blanks continue to be as remarkable as the parts seeming to shape.

 

It’s the case of Tallans, as we know, people who evolved in parallel to Incas,which deadline seems to have ended when the Spanish conqueror Francisco Pizarro entered actual Chira Valley in 1532 through actual Lanconés District, after starting his march from actual Tumbés Department. We know that because there are written records from that point up after – the problem is from that point down before.

 

Skillful farmers and fishers

There is some consensus in historians and archaeologists the Tallans were not one only people but a kind of association of peoples with autonomous governments and very specialized activities those integrated because of the merchandise interchange (barter) Apparently, they were not a federation, neither a state, because that suppose all those peoples would recognize one only authority above their own communities’.

 

That process could have began circa 500 AD, it could have reached its most splendor between 1100 AD and 1500 AD. Neither, the pacific conquest by the Incas –apparently, the Tallans had no army—in 1470 broke its consolidation. In fact, they had accepted confederating to Cusco, but empire’s trials to assimilate them culturally failed, then frustrated when Spaniards arrived.

 

Another consensus is Tallans were skillful farmers and fishers, depending where your curacazgo  (native community) was located, what did not except other skills like cattle, metallurgy, civil engineering, goldsmith, and textiles. Do you like pumpkins, avocado, and fish? It seemed to be the basis of the daily diet. Again, the archaeological studies and the records by some Spanish chroniclers allow us to know all this, adding the actual Chira (Turicarami) and Piura (Lengash) Rivers influenced in their survival.

 

Additional anecdotal fact: the Peruvian dog (viringo) was the best friend of the Tallan inhabitant, or that reveals the pottery at least.

 

Andean, Amazonian, or what?

The controversy begins in the origin of Tallans. The specialists are divided in three parties: who propose an Andean origin, who propose an Amazonian origin then Andean,and who believe there were migrants from actual Peruvian Southern and actual Ecuadorian Southern who next to internal migrants created a mixed culture.

 

Another controversy is if it was a patriarchy or a matriarchy. The researches published since 2000 up to now suggest the first one, what could weaken the tradition of capullanas, who had been really regent curacas (deputy chiefs) only provided the firstborn was not a male. But the command line had been preeminently masculine.

 

Other point without a consensus is how many curacazgos were. We have clear Narihualá or Sechura, as well as Colan and Amotapé. And the rest? It whether could be Tallan, Chimú,or Inca. Example: Poechos. Any word to say, Walac God?

 

The Elim’s Proposal

However, cultural manifestations like the language features (not necessarily Sec language), the pottery, and the in-rescue-process records could propitiate the rescue of Tallan identity. Sullana-native anthropologist Elim Aguirre Domenak (1998), on her book El regreso de los tallanes (The Return of Tallans, EUNSA: Pamplona, Spain, 2021), focus on the music and the theater.

 

Since 2017, late teacher Eleodoro Terán Tello (Cajamarca, 1931 – Sullana, 2020) produced a more-or-less free version of the San Miguel’s Spanish foundation at the Tallan Town of Tangarará (currently, in Marcavelica District). Aguirre considers the play is very printed by Tallan symbolism we can save nowadays.

 

With the advisory of specialists as Luis Millones or César Astuhuamán, the anthropologist believes that starting up of that play (which can be seen by the activation of a QR code included in this story), the next step has to be incorporating it into the educational project of the province as well as every school purposed to that tradition keeps, incorporates to the actual culture.

 

Ms Aguirre has tried to call the attention of Sullana Province Municipality but she has not received an answer up to this moment. The next should be calling the attention of the Local Unit of educational Management, and, ultimately, of the school’s principals who want to work it like a transversal axis.

 

Some cultural advocates of Piura are holding the idea in a very good way after having contact with the specialist or her book. An interesting advocacy could be through that way, especially now we are less than a decade to commemorate the fifth centennial of San Miguel’s foundation. Up to that moment, the holes in the puzzle continue waiting for new researchers who find and match the pieces correctly.

 

This version: © 2022 Asociación Civil Factor Tierra. All Rights Reserved. Comment this in the box below or on our Facebook and Twitter accounts. Would you like to know the places quoted in this entry? Write us at factortierra@gmail.com for more information.