ABSTRACT
Characteristic of Andean peoples, mobility is currently driven by several motives for the residents of Andamarca, a small peasant village in the Peruvian Andes (department of Ayacucho). Travelling across the Andamarcan landscape on foot, a practice that is still common nowadays mainly—but not only—due to herding and agriculture, allows for the development of different sensibilities, knowledge about the materials and textures that make up the surrounding environment, as well as a body fit for these journeys. Walking through the agricultural lands of the valley or the vastness of Andean highlands involves intersubjective relations between the traveller, the land, and powerful non-humans that can challenge those they find along the way and on whom, one must never forget, the success of all journeys depend. Although many portions of the landscape in Andamarca are remote and “desert,” in the sense of prevailing the absence of humans, other parts have been recently more travelled due to new modes of transportation (motor vehicles) and small-scale touristic flows that have increased, to some extent, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on ethnographic research, the purpose of this chapter is to show how these new dynamics of mobility and movement have locally impacted the relations with time and space.
