Peru: Green-Eyed Descendant of Spanish Conquistadors

Green-eyed Morochuco boy of Peru’s Pampa de Cangallo, near Ayacucho.

The Morochuco are a little-known Andean mestizo tribe that claims descent from the followers of Diego de Almagro, companion-in-arms of Francisco Pizarro. As Inca gold fueled the greed of the two conquistadors, they went to war against each other. When Almagro fell in the hands of Pizarro’s men and was decapitated, Almagro’s army went into hiding among Indians. Some of the men had Spanish wives. Others took Indian wives.

     Until 60 years ago or so, Morochuco men wore long beards to distinguish themselves from surrounding Indians. And to this day they ride horses and breed cattle, though lately they have dedicated themselves more seriously to agriculture as well. They fought valiantly the Shining Path's terrorists.

     I first photographed the Morochuco during a 1971 two-month horse ride in the Peruvian Andes. I visited them again in 2007.

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Peru: Hiding Behind A Banana

It would take more than a camera-wielding stranger to disturb this banana-eating boy at the door of his house in Lima’s Cerro San Cristobal slum.

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Peru: Little Boy Caught Eating At Market

Boy eating at Ollantaytambo’s market in Peru’s Cusco Province. His poncho and pants were woven with his family’s sheep and alpaca wool. Wool was also used to shape his felt hat.

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Peru: Befuddled Little Girl

Faced with a camera-wielding type of men she may not have seen before, this little Indian girl of Pisac, in the Andes Mountains of Peru’s Cusco Province, is using her eyes and a finger to express her befuddlement.

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Peru: Lima Newspaper Boy

In this 1971 photograph of a street in Lima’s Cerro San Cristobal slum, a newspaper boy is showing me the latest news. It says, next to the picture of a military cap topping an iron fist, Low Blow to Workers. The military were in power then.

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Peru: Little Q'ero Boy Of The Andes Mountains

At the freezing heights of Peru’s Andes Mountains in Cusco Province, this little Q’ero boy is playing with a rope outside his family’s windowless stone house. All his clothes had been woven and knitted at home, using the wool of his family’s alpacas and sheep.

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Sahara: Tuareg Woman Processing Goat Skin

In this 1970 picture taken in the Sahara’s AÏr Mountains of Niger, a Tuareg woman sitting in the shade of a thorn tree is processing a goat skin with vegetal tar to help it waterproof it. Her family will use it to hold its water and, every few days, to refill it and other goatskin bags at a distant well. Two water-filled goatskins hang from the tree   behind her.

   The processed skin will remain somewhat porous, allowing some water loss. At the same time, evaporation through the skin’s pores will maintain the water cool even in scorching heat.

   Though water is essential to the survival of the Tuareg, they camp far from wells. They camp where they find enough vegetation to feed their herds. So many herds are watered at wells that they don’t leave as much as a blade of grass standing over large surrounding areas.  Staying away from wells also protect the Tuareg’s privacy.

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Sahara: A Glimpse Into Tuareg Life

For ten years, between 1963 and 1973, I paid repeated visits to the Tuareg nomads of the Sahara and Sahel, nearly always for several weeks or months at a time. I did this once for a Venture and Argosy magazine article, three times for National Geographic articles and book chapters, and once for a children’s book. I developed friendships with the Tuareg of the Sahara’s Tamesna plain, Ahaggar Mountains, AÏr Mountains, and of the Sahel’s Azaouak Valley. To the point that I was everywhere invited into the intimacy of the tents.

In this 1965 picture taken inside a tent, the woman is being deloused by a niece. Living as close to nature as those people do makes lice inescapable. And they passed them on to me, though not to worry. Once in a while, in the middle of a conversation or shoot inside a tent, a woman would grab me by the hair, pull my head down in her lap, and start a search-and-destroy operation.

My fascination with the Tuareg started in 1957, when at 24 I rode a small Vespa scooter from Brussels to Cape Town across the length of Africa.

In the Sahara I had to ride inside truck tracks because the sand outside them was too deep for my small wheels. But veiled Tuareg, their wide robes inflated by the wind, appeared from nowhere riding white camels to disappear again beyond any point of the bleak horizon. They became to me the embodiment of freedom.

Already the father f two, it would take me six years to save enough for my next African journey and enjoy the first of two thousand-kilometer camel rides, the second one two years later, with a salt caravan. I owe the Tuareg my career as a documentary photographer and writer. But in 1973, watching the Tuareg world disintegrate with the first of two great droughts that would kill many of my friends and considerably more of their animals, I did not find the heart to return to their once wonderful world.

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Sahel: Setting Sun On A Wodaabe Nomad Scene

Resting on a stick under a setting sun, a Wodaabe nomad is watching her mother milk a zebu cow. After her mother will be done, the girl will untie the calf behind her from a calf rope and bring it to the cow behind them. The suckling calf will get the milk flowing, and after a while the girl’s mother will take her turn milking that other cow.

Sahel: Wodaabe Girls Working On Decorative Item

In the shade of a tree in Niger’s hot Sahel, Wodaabe nomad girls are turning odds and ends into simple jewelry.

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