Peruvian villagers still team up to collect salt

When Uriel plans his work schedule late in summer near his village in the Peruvian mountains, his first decision is usually which friend’s salt pond he will work that day.

- By ALIE SKOWRONSKI

URIEL inspects one of his family's salt ponds in the mountains near Cusco, Peru.

(ALIE SKOWRONSKI Associated Press)

In keeping with “ayni,” an ancient Quechua word that means mutual aid, villagers take turns helping one another collect their salt once a month during dry season.

“Today we worked on my ponds, and tomorrow we will work on my friends’ ponds,” said Uriel, whose family has been in the salt mining business for four generations.

Uriel, who preferred to give only his first name, is among locals from the villages of Maras and Pichingoto who own and operate a coop to market and sell the salt they pull from ponds that date back five centuries or more.

Many millions of years ago, a section of ocean was isolated in what would become the Andes. When it eventually receded, it left rich salt deposits. That salt gets picked up by groundwater that’s discharged at a spring in the mountains surrounding Maras, according to Roseanne Chambers, a geologist and author of “The Monumental Andes.”