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I used to be seated with 9 different artists in the midst of the Chilean desert, with volcanic Andean peaks forward of me and the Cordillera de la Sal, or Salt Mountains, behind me. I squinted towards the early morning solar reaching over the peaks, feeling small because it started to mild up the desert in each route. Carlos, our host, had laid out a blanket on the nice and cozy sand and was now setting down a bottle of crimson wine, a bowl of coca leaves and 4 cups.
As a gaggle we made plates of natural choices — edible fruit pods from an algarrobo, or carob, tree; chañar seeds; a couple of slices of apple and orange — earlier than taking turns kneeling within the grime, filling the cups with coca leaves and wine in a selected order. The cups on the precise represented girls, life, whereas these on the left represented males, loss of life — all the time a duality. We then moved over a small gap dug within the floor representing the boca de Madre Tierra, the mouth of Mom Earth, to depart our choices and communicate together with her as we wished.
Right here, among the many Lickanantay, the realm’s Indigenous individuals, we have been taking part in a reciprocity ceremony known as Ayni, a customary providing made to Mom Earth to ask for her invitation and safety upon our arrival. Carlos, a Lickanantay yatiri, or religious and medicinal healer, led us via the ritual, which was too sacred to be photographed.
I had arrived the day earlier than within the tiny neighborhood of Coyo, in a dusty nook of the Atacama Desert, in northern Chile, after having been accepted right into a three-week artist-in-residency program with La Wayaka Present, a corporation that focuses on the setting, neighborhood and up to date artwork. I used to be there to study from and take part within the Lickanantay tradition and {photograph} my expertise. Burned out from life in New York Metropolis, I used to be seeking to perceive how historical knowledge thrives on this a part of the world, and the way I might honor these values in my very own existence.
Coyo isn’t fairly a city; it’s extra a set of winding grime roads with homes manufactured from clay, rocks and branches which were pulled from the encompassing panorama. To get there, I’d flown from New York to the northern Chilean metropolis of Calama, the place 9 stranders and I boarded a bus and headed out into the desert.
As we approached Coyo, Dago, a geologist who served as our driver and information, instructed us that the air right here would “limpiar tus pulmones” — clear our lungs.
I took time after the Ayni ceremony to stroll the streets of the neighborhood, feeling the temperature start to rise because the solar burned away the morning clouds. At first look, the homes may need regarded worn and uncared for, with cracks and crevices that uncovered their inhabitants to the surface world. However I noticed them extra tenderly: Every was made with arms that have been deeply rooted within the earth. The ceilings have been supported with rocks and sticks, the fences tied along with plastic rope. Canines saved the dwellings safe.
My thoughts roamed to my dwelling in New York, to my condo stuffed with trinkets and furnishings collected over time, images amassing mud. I reside in a Brooklyn brownstone, the place the skyline of Decrease Manhattan is mirrored in my bed room mirror. I don’t know whose arms constructed that metropolis.
Pulled again to Coyo by the sounds of barking canine, I discovered it onerous to reconcile the truth that, someplace else on the earth, a metropolis was thriving with skyscrapers and lights that by no means dim. In New York, I spotted, I transfer via life in a means that’s alien to this neighborhood. And whereas that life exists, this neighborhood — within the driest desert on the earth — asks Mom Earth if we might go on. Could we come to you for solutions, Madre Tierra?
Time was hazy within the desert. Days swirled from one to the following. I measured its passage in sunsets and sunrises, within the walks I’d taken, within the individuals I’d met. Sandra, Carlos’s spouse, wove out and in of my days. Her power was contagious, and all the pieces about her was vibrant: her garments, her laughter, her energy.
Sandra comes from an extended line of shepherds. We spent a day shepherding together with her, speaking about life as we walked llamas and sheep throughout the desert. Every day, she and Carlos stroll underneath the blistering solar for hours to feed their animals, trekking on both facet of the pack, whistling to maintain them in line. Sandra carried Gaspar, her grandson, wrapped tightly on her again.
At some point, we paused underneath the shade of bushes, brushing the bottom freed from thorns and thistles to take a seat whereas the animals grazed. Sandra instructed us that our base in Coyo was their dwelling. Within the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, nevertheless, she and Carlos had determined to maneuver to the place they lived now, a 15-minute drive from Coyo, a spot reserved for shepherding households with miles of open land and bushes that drop seeds for the animals to eat. With no electrical energy, scorching water and little to no mobile service, the neighborhood of households there swimming pools its cash collectively to have potable water repeatedly delivered.
Though Coyo is a humble desert neighborhood, it was a consolation to Sandra and Carlos. I, too, had come to know this consolation. Sandra instructed us that adjusting to a brand new lifestyle was tough at first, however that they now felt extra linked to nature. As Sandra spoke, Gaspar rolled round within the grime, bringing rocks to his mouth to style them.
Once more, I considered my life in New York, with its comparable comforts and conveniences — a spot the place we’ve traded connection and respect for different beings for a selected type of bounty. However this life is bountiful, too. Sandra and Carlos stroll via the desert every day by alternative, feeling linked to the bottom beneath and the sky above. In Brooklyn I’d seen a mom reprimand her son for stopping to choose up sticks off the bottom. I considered Gaspar, of how fortunate he was to play with the earth so freely.
In keeping with the Lickanantay, yatiris like Carlos are chosen beings who’ve been struck by lightning, awakening their religious talents that the remainder of us can achieve entry to solely with using hallucinogens. Carlos was stillborn, he instructed us, till his mom felt lightning strike via the hospital partitions in San Pedro, which introduced forth his earthly cry.
In Lickanantay tradition, the time period “pachakuti” refers to a interval of societal upheaval and transformation. The photo voltaic eclipse in 2017 welcomed us into the fifth pachakuti, Carlos instructed us. For hundreds of years, the dominant social order had been that of the Western conqueror, to cover and disgrace the knowledge of Indigenous communities. This new pachakuti rids us of that power, he mentioned, and renews us with Indigenous data to convey again into existence a concord with Mom Earth and all her beings.
The Atacama Desert, ample in minerals, can be full of mines — for lithium, copper, magnesium, potassium. Specifically, the extraction of lithium, which is used for electric-vehicle batteries and is crucial to the world’s transition to renewable power, has been on the middle of ongoing debates about mining pursuits, local weather change and Indigenous rights.
We drove for miles down bumpy roads to marvel on the panorama — the desert, the lithium-rich salt flats, the mines themselves. Nothing, nothing, till instantly the panorama opened up and you possibly can see salt for miles, dusting the desert like contemporary snow. We parked the van, and I climbed up a craggy ledge to take a seat with this panorama, watching because the solar dipped behind the Cordillera de la Sal, turning the desert and the snow-capped mountains pink.
One morning the skies opened up. At first it was just some raindrops — however then the winds grew stronger and the skies grayer, and the rain started falling relentlessly. A gaggle of us threw on our raincoats and ran again out into the streets, arms outstretched, to let the rain patter off our sleeves.
I inhaled deeply, permitting the sweet-smelling air to fill my lungs — to scrub them, as Dago had instructed us it might. This, I lastly understood, was what he’d meant.
Irjaliina Paavonpera is a photographer who now lives between Sydney, Australia, and Paxos, Greece. You possibly can comply with her work on Instagram.
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