No culture

I didn’t make it to the archaeological museum – it always seemed to be closed. The town’s other museum – of regional folklore - was a very odd place. In the window was a jumbled collection of small books, all by the same man, the magnificently named Sixto Vazquez Zuleta Toqo. In spite of claiming to be open every day it also was usually closed. I rang the bell every time I passed but nothing. One evening I succeeded in getting a response – the door was opened reluctantly by a little old man in a woolly llama jumper. It was clear that this was his home, that he was the author of all the books and that this museum was his personal collection of ephemera – however I never saw any of it. We stood awkwardly in the dusty hall, a glass cabinet piled high with bits of scrumpled paper. It was too late he said to show me round now. And the cost of the ‘tour’ was 20 US dollars. A lot of money in Humahuaca. Still I held on – I’ll come back tomorrow I said. But he wouldn’t answer his door the next day though I knocked and rang and knocked at it. I wanted to see his strange collection of folklore and hear his stories of ancient rituals and carnival rites – the little angel wake, the bull covered in explosives. He was, he proudly announced in notices all over his windows and door, a Humahuaqueno, an etnologist, an expert on the culture of the Quebrada de Humahuaca. Who better to drag information out of? But no joy.
I did though, climb the steps in the thin evening air to Humahuaca’s monument to Independence. In the form of a leaping man, it hangs dramatically above the town centre – the centrepiece of many tourist snaps. And I read the useful notice (there’s one in EVERY site of historical interest in Argentina – AO, Argentina Organisada yet again) in the main square which made sense of everything. Aha! Humahuaca was once home to 300 native tribes who “received the influence of the Upper Peru (Bolivia), Cusco and Tiahuanaca cultures”. So effectively my insistence that Humahuaca is more Bolivian than Argentine was in fact correct. And the notice also claimed that the townsfolk are still attached to deeply ingrained ancient Inca traditions. Aha even more.