Alfredo and the Ñaupa

Alfredo Mires traveled the Apu Qayapuma for several decades, to the point where he knew by heart the location of each painting and the paths to reach them. He walked, went deep into the Apu and spent many nights to investigate in depth the relationship of each drawing with the environment, with the change of light and temperature. He spent entire days there, where our grandparents lived, to observe what happened during the time of rain and drought, because all that influences, he told us, nothing looks the same, everything changes according to the circumstances.

He investigated each space of the "Puma convenor", with the limitations of the Peruvian who dares on his own and whose budget, many times, is only his own spirit. And like this he went also to other places.

When he went to the communities, he would ask the community members who had made the paintings, the sanctuaries, the petroglyphs, the ceramics. The people answered him, he says, that Ñaupa had done all that. For that reason, he also tells that he decided to baptize with the name "Ñaupa", the recurrent character that he found in the callanas, those pieces of ceramics that are found in any sacred place of the Andes, and also in other representations of the Cajamarcan rock art. Based on these investigations, Alfredo completed and recreated El Ñaupa graphically, giving it a social, cultural and political meaning (El Ñaupa T1, p.8).

The Rural Libraries Network has published the books El Ñaupa (volumes 1 and 2), where Alfredo, with creativity and respect for the original drawings, shows us many other characters turned into ñaupítas, with provocative phrases, expressions of solidarity, encouraging reading, among others.

We will always be grateful to Alfredo for bequeathing us such a great cultural wealth.