Quechua peoples

Quechua is less a single nation than a world of related peoples: highland farmers and herders, market towns, and now large urban communities, united by language and by the deep agrarian civilisation of the Andes, with its terraced fields, potato and maize agriculture, and traditions of reciprocal labour that still organise village life.

The language was the administrative speech of Tawantinsuyu, the Inca state, and its reach widened again under Spanish rule when missionaries adopted it across the Andes. The centuries that followed pushed it to the margins of public life; the 20th century added mass migration to the cities, where stigma broke the chain of transmission in many families without ever ending it.

Peru's 2017 census counted 5.18 million people who identify as Quechua, 22.3% of the country, and 3.7 million who speak the language; Bolivia's 2012 census counted 1.84 million. Quechua holds official status in Peru and Bolivia, is taught in schools and universities, and is re-entering public life in broadcasting, music and film, carried by a generation that refuses the old stigma.

This is an introduction, the first layer. A full collection, like the Mapuche collection that opened this atlas, follows as research and review are completed for each people.