Pukará de Lasana

The only places where the barren landscape of the desert is broken are in the few deep narrow cuts made by a handful of rivers and their tributaries. Here small indigenous groups practice the same form of collective labor that was practiced for centuries before the Inca Empire. They built extensive terraces and elaborate systems of irrigation to maximize the yield of these precious fertile places. Maintenance of the irrigation canals was a communal responsibility. These practices are still in use today. In the years before the flouresence of the Inca it became increasingly important to develop defensive strategies to protect these scarce and precious resources. The most common of these strategies was the Pukará. The Pukará was a defensive fortress built on the high cliffs overlooking these narrow valleys.

We road up one of these narrow cuts along the Rio Loa near Calama to visit a Pukará at Lasana near Calama. The Rio Loa is one of the few rivers in this area that flows all the way to the sea.

We weren't able to see this Pukará until we were nearly on top of it because of the way it blends into the surrounding cliffs.

In addition to living spaces and defensive fortifications, the pukará also served as warehouses for the community's harvested crops.

Here below the pukará at Lasana, Aymara farmers use the same techniques and grow the same crops that they have for centuries. The fertile valley floor is barely 100 meters wide.

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