FACTORTIERRA

It looks like an enormous black egg embeded on the mountain slope. By Nelson Peñaherrera . Photos by Estany Tineo .   Cambia a español. SAPILLICA , Peru – “No, sir, the truck to Coletas departures tomorrow at five in the morning and gets back in the afternoon, assures us the driver of a motorcycle used as a taxi throough the tortuos dusty ways around this town. It is obvious that Juan, the driver, is trying to convince me for hiring the service.   It’s Thursday afternoon and since we have arrived to organize a minimum recognition logistics of the petroglyph our partner Marco Paulini reported last July , we’ve just found supporting promises but very few options for visiting the monolyth which highlights a spiral trace carved on basaltic rock. “ Are you going to The Devils’ Rock? That rock is bad! Pregnant women don’t pass over there,” a sixty-year-old lady warns me when she listens to my negotiation process with Juan. I take a little time to chat, hustle our producer ...

  Symbols what Piura and abroad could share. By Luis Correa   SULLANA , Peru – Beginning from

A trekking trail connecting at least three sites with archaeological evidence in Malingas.   Photographs gathered by Milton Garcia Navarro   TAMBOGRANDÉ, Peru – In 2011, FACTORTIERRA announced to the world the existence of an archaeological rests network that could be until 4000 years old, located at the central part of Malingas Community . Basically, it’s about evidences of art-on-the-rock on and around Malingas Cord, a branch formed by five mounts apparently caused by volcanic activity judging the basalt that mostly forms their slopes. More than a decade later, it’s starting to value the touristic potential the zone has, despite the sites have not officially confirmed yet, they just have a preliminary survey by the archaeologist Daniel Dávila Manrique , the first scientific explorer of the zone between 2010 and 2011. “I’d like to return, make a new survey of every site,” Dávila said to FACTORTIERRA, when he learned about the initiative of giving them a touristic...

By Nelson Peñaherrera . Photos by Estany Tineo . SAPILLICA , Peru – It is five kilometers to the southeast of Sapillica town, in Trujillo [pronounce “Truhiyo”] Community. The rock is very smaller (more or less one meter height and a meter and a half length), hidden among corn fields, but the drawings are relatively pretty conserved, performing anthropomorphic shapes and simplified faces and a cat, what gives the name to the site. From here, it is possible to look at Loma Alta . We could be in a seq’e , or a virtual line that connects two sacred sites. Unlike Loma Alta Petroglyph, what is in the heights and beside a way, Cat’s is slope down of Sapillica [pronounce “Sapijicah”] and walking for about 15 minutes from the same way that connects to the coast. However, according to the research by Sapillica District Municipality’s Alesban López, this petroglyph is the nearest to district capital. Another detail of this place is its closeless from any actual water flow, but for ge...

Now, the same community protecting its forest and exporting its cacao presents us oral tradition, rural tourism and organic chocolate.  By Marco Flores Acho , Marco Paulini Espinoza and Nelson Peñaherrera Castillo .  Photographs by Marco Flores Acho and Marco Paulini Espinoza . CHULUCANAS, Peru - The night when Miguel Rivera was watching his property in Palo Blanco Village, he noticed  two little lights appeared at the fence. His cousin, who accompanied him, supposed it was about people walking through the muleteers route going parallel to Yapatera River's upper course, so he let him to know. When Rivera spoke aloud to identify the ones carrying the lights, he got no answer, so he shooted up the air in disuasive mode. The lights froze.  Supposing the advancing ones had understood the message, he tried to contact them for knowing who they were. It was when the lights started to approach towards his cousin and him. The rare was while the shining spots g...

A Catholic cemetery keeps a… pantheistic shrine? By Nelson Peñaherrera . Photos by Alesban López .   SAPILLICA , Peru – “Cachirís Mount is straight there and Pilán Mount is mostly on the right,” Sapillica [pronounce “Sapijicah”] District Municipality’s Alesban López points me out, whom I am riding a motorcycle again , on our way to Tunal, 37 km away the southwest of the district capital. A local told him there are rocks “pretty identical” to those he featured on his Facebook account . We have to go down from Sapillica town until Timbes [pronounce “Timbehs”], then climbing up until 1617 meters altitude according to the GPS ( global positioning system ) device the crew carries within.   An hour 20 minutes, at least on motorcycle, by the west flank of Andean Western Range, viewing the coast along the full trail. In Tunal, we are on the spine of the mountain, the rocks are so little (1,5 meters by si, approximately) those just could carve one petroglyph per each one...