The lady is walking to the market. I know because all the ladies in Juliaca use those bags except in malls where the staff is trained to give you disposables plastic bags. I guess is more environmental friendly to use bags you just can reutilize.
The potatoes are bought in pounds with the help of little roman balances. I don’t know why we use in some things the imperial system , perhaps from the times when Englishmen built the trains and introduced that style of hats used also for the lady in the picture. To the most of things we use the efficient metric system and for some, like measurement of fields, our own measurement units.
Speaking about the train also is true that the Inca Empire was criticized because there was no vehicles with wheels. Actually when Spaniards came, and also during the Republic until the train, the wheel wasn’t massively used because our hard topography. I understand llamas and mules were more important to the transport of goods.
Qhapaq 
Impressive photography. Plus an very enjoyable history lesson … :)
Thanks Salva, I’m glad you liked the story :-)
I really love such kind of information. And if it is for the sole reason that such things won’t get taught at school … :)
haha, they’re not taught in our Eurocentric schools neither. It’s pretty crazy, in school we have to use Spanish and learn about lions and elephants, European history, Catholicism, and customs from Europe but we are not told about our animals like suris (Rhea pennata, similar to ostriches), our traditions, religions or languages. hehe, I think the schools here consider themselves embassies from the EU XD
I didn’t know it is so bad, really. What a terrible shame! Why wasn’t this changed in the post-colonial era, I wonder?
Because there was two revolutions and the bad one won. Tupac Amaru II made a revolution inspired in the French Revolution with principle of equality to every race, so there were whites, natives and blacks; sadly he was defeated. The second revolution some years after was leaded by “criollos”, the descendants of Spaniards that couldn’t trade with other countries, just with Madrid, and couldn’t represent the crown in high places because that was legally just for Spaniards born in Spain, so they take advantage of the invasion of Napoleon to Spain to get the power they wanted, that was an economic revolution based in greed.
So after the independence black men still were slaves, and we the natives still had to pay more tributes for being natives, and even more they turned into slaves Chinese migrants, so actually the story went quite wrong. As they still considered themselves Europeans our education has to follow that irrational model (rational if you live in Europe) and they eventually exonerated those tributes when they saw that the real Europeans in Europe did that, so they had to do the same to still get considered Europeans.
Sorry for the long reply Salva, actually the answer cover centuries and is a bit complex, but I hope this glimpse can help :-)
Very kind of you to provide such deep insight. In short this means money and might are still in the hands of those conquistadores … racism really is such a bad thing …
I’m optimist, I believe in Goethe’s spiral. Life could seem a circle where everything comes wrong again but actually it’s an spiral where everything is not so wrong but it’s progressing.
Now everybody pays the same tributes; although still the education is Eurocentric at least it’s for everybody and not for a few like before; in school we’re forced to learn Catholicism but I never prayed or practiced it and they couldn’t do anything about that, an at University my works are based from our native thought, not European, I had the freedom to choose how to produce my knowledge.
And I can choose to use another language, that’s a big reason because the language I use here is not Spanish ;-)
Yes, one has to find the respective ways and means. )
Hopefully, all such heteronomy comes to an end one day, and prople might return to their own history and culture.
Yes, of course :-)
:)
It’s good to learn other peoples history, I know little of Peru but am learning more now :)
Love her hat.
I love the history of your country! In special the periods of the different peoples coming from continental Europe and the scientific advances.
Hooray for reusable shopping bags!
Hooray ^_^