Chuquisuso
Huarochirí · numen · Huarochirí traditional religion; continuing · Recorded classification
Chuquisuso is a woman of the village of Cupara whose beauty captivated Pariacaca. Finding her weeping because her maize field lacked water, the god dammed and enlarged her community's meager irrigation canal overnight, lining it and swelling its flow, and in return she granted him her love. After their union she was transformed into stone at the intake where the canal draws from its source. There she was venerated, and the yearly cleaning and repair of the canal was accompanied by rites in her honor, joining the memory of a divine love to the communal labor that keeps the fields alive. Her tale ties Pariacaca's power over water directly to the irrigation on which highland agriculture depended.
Domains
- irrigation and canals
Powers
- become the stone that guards a canal's source
Relations
- lover: PariacacaHuarochirí Manuscript, ch. 6 (Salomon-Urioste ed., 1991) (primary)
Sources
- Chuquisuso is the woman of Cupara loved by Pariacaca, for whom he enlarged an irrigation canal and who turned to stone at its intake.: Huarochirí Manuscript, chs. 6-7 (Salomon-Urioste ed., 1991) (primary); Gerald Taylor, Ritos y tradiciones de Huarochirí, 2nd ed. (Lima: IEP/IFEA, 1999), cap. 6-7 (secondary)