Guest Blog

In Chile, a country more than 4,000 km long, few things are constant. Its people, climate, and landscape present an ever-changing array of differences. But there is one thing that you can find everywhere you look: the Andes. This massive mountain range crosses our country and, to some extent, determines all kinds of activities that will take part in our beloved strip of land. One of these activities, perhaps the oldest, is transhumant pastoralism. Contemporary transhumance in the central and northern Andes of Chile starts with pre-Hispanic transhumant practices, carried out with camelid livestock by the Aymara, Colla and Atacameña people, inheritors of the nomadic past of the first human settlements that followed the migratory routes of wild camelids, including guanacos and vicuñas. The knowledge of routes and plants of these cultures was, for lack of a better word, adopted by the Spanish conquistadores, who also had a long tradition of...