Heirloom llamas

When the Spanish conquest swept through South America everyone already knows that it changed life here radically and irreversibly. With the spread of disease, new technologies, and the destruction of the Inca empire life, culture, and even the very landscape changed. Did you ever stop to think how the agriculture and very husbandry of animals was changed here too?

The Inca meticulously bred llamas and alpacas for the best traits, weather for fiber, food, or work much like modern livestock breeds we know as seperate highly controlled lineages. With the dissolution of the Inca empire all of this changed. No longer were llamas and alpacas controlled to be bred with distinct traits, and with time no longer did they even occur in some places. With the introduction of European livestock such as cattle and sheep, and with the encouragement of the hacienda system llamas and alpacas went almost extinct in Ecuador, falling out of use and favor and often seen as a symbol of backwardness.

Alpacas went extinct completely in Ecuador and believe it or not Stu himself was the first person to reintroduce them here, smuggling them over from Peru. Llamas on the other hand didn't quite go extinct and a small population survived in parts of the Northern and Central Sierra. The nature of genetics tells us this isolated population would have to be genetically distinct from those found in other places like Peru and Bolivia. With time and isolation these llamas would have concentrated alleles and a unique gene pool offering important clues to the origins of the ancient Inca heirloom breeds and that of their wild ancestor, the guanaco.

So, we are here today with Stu, Jorge who works on introducing llamas in the pueblos near Riobamba, and Cesar a young visiting Peruvian genetist to help unravel the genetic orgins of this unique population. We spent the entire day visiting the remote villages of the valley asking for their llamas. In some places many people showed up with their llamas. In others there was no one or everyone was in the fields. Some llamas we had to turn back, the discerning eye could tell the difference between those "pure" and uncorrupted by interbreeding with alpacas, and those with the face and colors of the wild ancestor, the guanaco. These llamas we held tight, measured, and helped Cesar extract blood samples from. By the end of the day we were far under our quota and goal of 60, but had met so many people and handled many bucking irrate, and sometimes spitting llamas. We even all smelled like llamas.....It was great fun, we learned so much, and our interest seemed to invoke a sense of pride in their animals by the villagers themselves.

In one pueblo we visited this gentleman stopped me to ask if I would take a photo of him and his granddaughter with their heirloom llamas. I could barely understand him because he mostly spoke Kichwa, but we both recognized in each other the sense of pride in a family heirloom...