Peru's mountain people face fight for survival in a bitter winter

[Black-Eyed Susan]

A farmer walks with her son during a potato harvest in Huancavelica, southern Peru. Photograph: Martin Mejia/AP

For alpaca farmer Ignacio Beneto Huamani and his young family, life in the Peruvian Andes, at almost 4,700m above sea level, has always been a struggle against the elements. His village of Pichccahuasi, in Peru's Huancavelica region, is little more than a collection of small thatched shelters and herds of alpaca surrounded by beautiful, yet bleakly inhospitable, mountain terrain.

The few hundred people who live here are hardened to poverty and months of sub-zero temperatures during the long winter. But, for the fourth year running, the cold came early. First their animals and now their children are dying and in such escalating numbers that many fear that life in the village may be rapidly approaching an end.

In a world growing ever hotter, Huancavelica is an anomaly. These communities, living at the edge of what is possible, face extinction because of increasingly cold conditions in their own microclimate, which may have been altered by the rapid melting of the glaciers.

A consequence is that Quechua-speaking farmers and their families, who have managed to subsist for centuries at high altitude, believe they may not make it through the next southern winter.

...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/03/peru-mountain-farmers-winter-cold

[FarLeftRage]

1. It's actually summer there...

Now in the Southern Hemisphere, unless they are referring to last winter season.

[elleng]

3. 'Although designed to withstand the cold,

Huamani's house is crumbling and his roof, half-collapsed from the snowstorms that battered the village last June and July, offers scant protection from the freezing wind and rain.'

[virgogal]

2. It mentioned in the article that the alpacas are given better care than the children

because the people need the alpacas for survival.Many children are sick or dying.

Google then nicely placed the following ad. "Baby Alpaca Clothing
Only Fine Baby Alpaca Products Imported From Peru"

www.bestbabyalpaca.homestead.com


I couldn't believe it.