The Archive of the Cajamarcan Oral Tradition (ATOC for its abreviation in Spanish) was formed with the
records compiled from within the countryside itself since 1981. To begin
with, the records were gathered on loose sheets of paper, and then from the
notebooks which each member of the community managed.
With the first compilation it was possible to publish the Countryman
Library collection, which remains current today. We later turned to
recordings on cassette, which were then transcribed and similarly archived.
With the formation of the Countryman Encyclopaedia Project the process of
collecting loose papers was underpinned by the publication of our “Notebook of
Recovery”, containing blank pages so that pictures can be added, along with
thematic and methodological instructions, to provide extra points of interest
and guidance to the compilations.
As this process of
recovering the oral tradition of our communities involved teachers and school
children, as well as students and other people linked to the communities, the
archive grew to such an extent that it had to be considered a unique source in
its own right. Its expansion continues and information from the
countryside is continually collated, which results not only in the conservation
of Andean knowledge, but also facilitates the diverse publications of the
Network and the consolidation of our own wisdom as it is shared throughout the
communities themselves.
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