ANA CAROLINE DE LIMA

Vicuña it’s Peru’s national symbol; its image graces both the Peruvian flag and coin. At the height of the Inca Empire, roughly two million vicunas roamed the Andes Altiplano, the desolate, wind-swept plateau that stretches from southern Peru to northern Argentina.

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Incas believed vicuna had special powers: killing them was forbidden. And only Inca nobility was allowed to wear garments made of cloth woven from the vicuna’s extraordinarily fine, cinnamon-coloured coat.

 

The Sun Kings forbade the indiscriminate killing of vicuña. Instead, ceremonial hunts, or Chaccus, were held annually. These hunts were an enlightened form of conservation.

 

Thousands of people would form a miles-long half circle, beating drums and chanting, as the vicuña ran before them. With the human circle growing ever tighter, tens of thousands of vicuña were soon surrounded. The vicuña, once counted, were separated; the old and infirm slaughtered for their pelts and meat. The females, their cria, and the best male specimens were shorn and released.  The finished cloth was treated like gold and stored in imperial warehouses.

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When Spanish conquistadors arrived in 1532 and discovered the fleece, they began hunting the animals with guns. By the mid-20th Century, when vicuna overcoats were considered the height of luxury in the US and Europe, the vicuna population had plummeted to fewer than 10,000. They were on the path to extinction. It’s believed that by the 60’s there were no more than 7000 animals left in Peru.

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Peru’s government decided to create a plan to save the vicuña.  In 1975, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) declared the vicuna ‘most endangered’, and placed its own ban on all international commerce of vicuna products.But poachers, driven by the high prices on the black market – around $1,000 a kilo – were undeterred. Enforcement of laws was nearly impossible: the vicuna habitat was far too vast and remote to patrol. The population continued to disappear.

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Part of the plan was 'ressurecting' the  old Inca-style chaccu round-up was resurrected and declaring rural villagers the custodians of the vicunas that lived in their region and granting them  the rights to shear and sell the fiber.

The sustainable live-shearing generated income for some of the country’s poorest and most isolated communities, encouraging them to become warriors of the vicuñas, protecting them from illegal hunting. Their absence of hair becoming a shield against the poachers, because a shorn Vicuna has no value to the poacher.

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The population started to rebound and, in 1994, the ban on international trade was lifted. In 2008, the vicuna was downgraded to ‘least concern’ on the list of threatened species, becoming one of the few species in the world that has recovered from being endangered

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Nowadays, a few chaccus happens in rural communities throughout Peru. Some are open to tourists with costumes, music and dancing. This one though, was shot in a region that is not touristic (maybe because of it’s extreme altitude) 

In small communities, open to tourists, locals will set up two lines of wooden posts to create a bottleneck and fence in the vicunas. but in Picotani, all the adults will participate. First they will go on their motorbikes to try to corral the vicuñas. Once the animals are a bit more gathered, all the other people (women and men) will start walking in lines, shouting to scared the animals and push them  towards a bottleneck.

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Rangers monitor the chaccu to make sure the animals are not stressed or harmed in any way. 

In touristic spots, locals will make a ceremony offering vicuna wool to the Sun God, but with a lot of music to entertain the tourists. However,where the chaccu is not a show, locals will ask permission a day before the chaccu. In Picotani, usually only the shaman (healer) will go to the region’s apu - the Incas used to consider the mountains as sacred places and each mountain would have its own spirit. A mountain spirit would be called ‘apu”.

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The fleece will be then carefully selected and probably exported. The fleece is so delicate than only a few manufacturers in the world have the appropriate machines to proccess it. .To understand how the vicuñas it’s considered  one of the world’s finest natural fibres, in the world of textiles, the finer the fibre, the softer and more valuable it is. Vicuñas fleece is made up of individual fibres measuring just 12 to 14 microns in diameter, it’s(by contrast, cashmere ranges from 14 to 19 microns, and mohair, about 25 microns and vicuna goods sell for roughly five times the price of similar cashmere products.

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The main manufaturer is Loro Piana, an Italian luxury goods maker, which has the specialised machinery to spin and weave the delicate fibres, and which has played an active role in Peru’s conservation efforts, even establishing its own reserve in 2008 (another long story here). Among the company’s pure vicuna offerings are suits for over $25,000. 

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Locals now have an income from vicuñas, but obviously is not a ‘fair’ one. They earn around $150 per animal anually. By “they” , it means the village community. So the fulll amount of money will be divided into all the villagers. It helps when you think about a place where is not possible to grow trees or most vegetables due to the altitude (when we are speaking of Picotani, the village shown here)

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