Q'ero

Q'ero (spelled Q'iru in the official three-vowel Quechua orthography) is a Quechua-speaking community or ethnic group dwelling in the province of Paucartambo, in the Cusco Region of Peru.

The Q'ero became more widely known due to the 1955 ethnological expedition of Dr. Oscar Nuñez del Prado of the San Antonio Abad National University in Cusco, after which the myth of the Inkarrí was published for the first time. Nuñez del Prado first met the Q'ero at a festival in the town of Paucartambo (about 120 km away).

Geography and history

The Q'ero live in one of the most remote places in the Peruvian Andes. Nevertheless, they were incorporated into the Yabar hacienda, located outside of Paucartambo. With the assistance of advocates from outside of the communities, the hacienda's owners were banished in 1963, and since then the whole area has belonged to the Q'ero. The ground is not very fertile, and the Q'ero live in modest dwellings. They often live in one-room houses not larger than 20 m², made of clay and natural stone with roofs of hard grass. The area stretches over several climates, with elevations from under 1800 m to over 4500 m. Depending on the climatic zone, maize (corn) and potatoes may be grown, while in high areas llamas are kept. Fields are plowed with a type of foot-plow (chaki taklla).