The Q'eswachaka Bridge

Transcript

Cold open

Every June, in Peru's southern Andes, about a thousand people turn grass into a bridge, by hand, in three days. The bridge is about thirty metres long. Along the way, they cut last year's bridge loose, and the river carries it off.

This is Ours to Keep. I'm Mira, and today: the Q'eswachaka bridge. I'm an AI voice; the facts come from official records and checked sources.

Four communities, one gorge

The Q'eswachaka is a rope suspension bridge over a gorge of the Apurímac River, in Peru's Cusco region, the same region as yesterday's Machu Picchu. It sits in the district of Quehue, about a hundred and eighty kilometres from the city of Cusco, at around three thousand seven hundred metres above sea level. It is made of grass, and it is the last Inca suspension bridge of its kind still in use.

At the height of the Inca empire, hundreds of suspension bridges like it carried the roads across the canyons of the Andes. When the Spanish arrived in the 1500s, they had never seen bridges like them. This one is part of the Qhapaq Ñan, the Inca road network. It has been renewed on the same spot since Inca times, for more than five centuries.

Four Quechua-speaking communities do the work: Huinchiri, Chaupibanda, Choccayhua and Ccollana Quehue. They live on both sides of the canyon. About a thousand people take part. They organise it through minka, an old Andean form of shared work for the common good. In return for long hours of work, the volunteers are given food and drink, including chicha, a drink made from maize.

Every household has a part. A few days before the work begins, people cut q'oya, a tough grass of the high Andes, also called ichu. Women and children do much of the twisting. They turn the grass into a thin cord called q'eswa. In Quechua, chaka means bridge. Each household brings its share, a length of cord measured in dozens of arm-spans. Children here learn to work the fibre while they are young.

Work on the bridge itself is for men only, by custom. While the men build, the women go on making cord. The work is led by the chakaruwaq, the master bridge-builders. UNESCO's record says the weaving is taught and learned within the family. For the master builders, the right to lead is passed down through family lines.

Victoriano Arizapana is one of these masters. He inherited the role from the men of his family before him, and he has directed the work for decades. Now he is passing what he knows to his children.

The craft has travelled, too. In 2015, builders from the four communities went to Washington, and wove a Q'eswachaka on the National Mall for the Smithsonian Folklife Festival.

Asking permission

Before anyone touches the old bridge, the communities ask permission. An Andean ritual specialist, a paqo, makes an offering to Pachamama, Mother Earth, and to the apus, the mountain spirits. The ceremony is called Tinkiya Apaykuy. It asks for protection for the people who are about to work above the river.

For years now, the ritual has been led by Cayetano Ccanahuire, a paqo from Huinchiri. A small fire burns at the end of the bridge. The offerings include maize and coca leaves, and a sheep is sacrificed for the apus, so that nobody is hurt. The offerings do not stop there. They are repeated at each stage of the work.

Then the renewal itself runs for three days, in a set order, and each day's work starts at about eight in the morning. On the first day, the women twist cord in the morning. In the afternoon, the men take it down to the old bridge, where they start twisting it into heavier ropes. The second day is called Chaka Chutay. This is when the new cables go across the gorge. The third day is Chaka Away. The master builders weave the new bridge together, from both ends, until they meet in the middle. On the fourth day, the communities hold a festival, with a dance competition for groups from the villages and the schools. The festival keeps its own count: in 2026 it reached its thirty-fourth edition. There is food and drink as well: roast guinea pig, and more chicha.

The grass does not last long, and the communities know what happens when the renewal stops. In 2020, the pandemic halted the work. In March 2021, its ropes worn out and overdue for renewal, the old bridge collapsed into the river. That June, the communities wove it again. You will often hear the Q'eswachaka called a five-hundred-year-old bridge. The tradition is that old. The grass in it is replaced every year.

From grass to cable

Here is how a bundle of grass becomes something people can walk on. It starts with the q'oya. Once it is cut, the grass is soaked in water and beaten with a stone, until it is pliable enough to twist.

The twisting builds up in stages. All of it is done by hand. Grass becomes the thin q'eswa cord that every household brings. On the first day, the men twist those cords together into thicker ropes. Then they braid three ropes into each main cable. Around a hundred thin cords end up inside a single cable. While they braid, others pull the line tight, so the braid stays firm. Each finished cable is about as thick as a man's thigh. It is carried on men's shoulders, down a hard path to the gorge.

The bridge needs six of these cables. Four will form the floor, and two will be the handrails, one on each side. The heavy floor cables are known by a Spanish name, duros.

Getting the first new cable across is the delicate part. A builder ties it around his waist and crosses on last year's bridge, carrying the new line with him. Once the new line is secure, the old bridge is cut loose. It drops into the Apurímac, and the current carries it away. Made only of grass, it breaks down in the water.

Now the cables have to be tightened. Men form lines and pull together, in rhythm, like a tug of war. Then each cable is tied to the ancient stone anchors on either side of the canyon. These anchors are large blocks of stone.

The last step is the weaving. Two chakaruwaq start from opposite banks. They sit out on the floor cables, balanced high above the water. Working forward, they tie smaller cords between the handrails and the floor, closing in the sides of the bridge. Bit by bit, the two of them come closer, until they meet in the middle, and the bridge is whole. Last, a mat of branches and cowhide is laid along the floor. The finished bridge is a little over a metre wide.

Why it's on the list

So why is it on the list? UNESCO inscribed the renewal on its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2013. The record notes that the work lasts only three days, yet it shapes the communities' life all year. The committee's decision says the knowledge is handed down through generations in the Quechua farming families of Quehue, who see it as part of their heritage. It puts harmony between people and nature first, and it keeps the communities tied to one another, to nature and to their history.

The committee also found that listing it could show what cooperation within a community can do, and encourage dialogue between communities. The skilled use of natural materials, it said, reflects human creativity. The families took an active part in drawing up plans to protect the knowledge, the materials and the places involved, with support from state institutions, and they gave their consent in writing and on video. Peru had already declared the renewal part of the nation's cultural heritage in 2009, in response to a file the communities prepared themselves.

The surprise

You might assume the communities rebuild the bridge every year because they need it to cross the river. A short distance away, though, stands a modern metal bridge, and that is the one that carries cars and supplies. The grass bridge is not the only way across, and these days most of the people who walk over it are visitors. The four communities still renew it every June, by hand, with about a thousand people on the riverbanks. UNESCO's record says they value it for the ties it keeps between them, and for their identity, not only as a way to cross.

Tomorrow, we go from grass to gravel: the Lines and Geoglyphs of Nasca and Palpa, scratched into the ground of Peru's coastal desert between about 500 BC and AD 500.