Llameros (lit. "people who drive llamas"; also known as pastores or caravaneros) are indigenous peasants who run

llama The llama (; or ) (''Lama glama'') is a domesticated South American camelid, widely used as a List of meat animals, meat and pack animal by Inca empire, Andean cultures since the pre-Columbian era. Llamas are social animals and live with ...

caravans throughout the

Andes The Andes ( ), Andes Mountains or Andean Mountain Range (; ) are the List of longest mountain chains on Earth, longest continental mountain range in the world, forming a continuous highland along the western edge of South America. The range ...

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a considerably smaller portion in the Northern Hemisphere. It can also be described as the southern Subregion#Americas, subregion o ...

. During the

Inca Empire The Inca Empire, officially known as the Realm of the Four Parts (, ), was the largest empire in pre-Columbian America. The administrative, political, and military center of the empire was in the city of Cusco. The History of the Incas, Inca ...

, llameros were high-ranking officials tasked with managing the emperor's llama and

alpaca The alpaca (''Lama pacos'') is a species of South American camelid mammal. Traditionally, alpacas were kept in herds that grazed on the level heights of the Andes of Southern Peru, Western Bolivia, Ecuador, and Northern Chile. More recentl ...

herds, and facilitating trade and communication throughout the empire. Nowadays, roads have reduced the need for llameros, and they now mostly serve isolated mountain villages inaccessible by road.

History

Llama caravans have been historically used by Andean people for transport of goods and people. With the modernization of transport in Bolivia, as well as climatic and economic changes, llamas have been significantly replaced by motorized vehicles. Llameros are usually fluent in

Quechua Quechua may refer to: *Quechua people, several Indigenous ethnic groups in South America, especially in Peru *Quechuan languages, an Indigenous South American language family spoken primarily in the Andes, derived from a common ancestral language ...

and Spanish. They do not use money for the exchange of goods, instead relying on

bartering In trade, barter (derived from ''bareter'') is a system of exchange in which participants in a transaction directly exchange goods or services for other goods or services without using a medium of exchange, such as money. Economists usually ...

alone. Some groups are composed of family members, including young boys and women.

References

Animal-powered vehicles Transport in Peru {{job-stub