Una tradición ética aceptada sin discernimiento y algunas seudo crisis que algunos consideran como nefastas para el buen orden social o para el futuro de las generaciones, hacen de la familia un tema de actualidad sobre el que cada uno tiene una idea, una palabra de experiencia personal más o menos profunda, casi siempre apasionada. La facilidad con que se habla de la familia debería hacernos dudar de la problemática que se expone y sobre todo de las soluciones propuestas. Porque unas y otras exigen más atención que lo que aparece en las descripciones corrientes de los tipos familiares, vagamente ordenados alrededor de la división en sociedad tradicional y sociedad moderna.

Neither the movement to "extirpate idolatry" in the 16th and 17th centuries, nor the ecclesiastical structure and apparatus that has prevailed in the Andes since the dawn of the 17th century, have been sufficient to eliminate rites, beliefs and myths that still constitute the background of the Andean religious discourse. The existence of a religious system specific to the Andean area is significant because the spread and imposition of Christianity was one of the constant concerns of conquerors and missionaries, Creoles and Republicans. How to explain the validity of ancient rites and symbolic expressions of their own if not for the fact that one and the other are fundamental for the existence of a people that is master of its own destiny?

The last thirty years have been so prolific in theories and analysis of myths, stories or simple popular stories that it would be unnecessary to remind Allpanchis readers of the great masters in the field, their theories or the schools they formed. Who today does not know the great theoretical synthesis of a Lévi-Strauss and his monumental work of analysis of American mythology? What is the researcher who studies the popular tale ignoring the pioneering works of Propp and the theoretical effort of the Russian structuralist school?

To study the Andean representation of time and space in the festival is to investigate the images, signs and symbols that Andean society produces to define two essential dimensions of its culture. What should we understand by representation? This word is generally used without precise meaning. A set of images grouped around a theme is often thus designated; more specifically, it corresponds to a first attempt to systematize social reality or a part of said reality.

Pocos han sido los autores que, en los últimos años, publicaron inventarios acerca de los estudios andinos con referencias explícitas a los temas religiosos, míticos y rituales. La mayoría de las veces los mencionados temas aparecen entre asuntos socioeconómicos o políticos. Es difícil explicar las razones que impiden a los más destacados andinistas evaluar periódicamente los trabajos que sirven de pretexto para estas páginas. Sin duda, los especialistas más conocidos entre los andinistas no se interesan por estas materias. O quizás juzguen poco importantes los estudios de todos aquellos que escriben sobre religión, mito y ritual.

Allpanchis, with this Pastores, Llamas and Alpacas issue, resumes contact with its subscribers and readers. Economic difficulties and changes in the direction of the IPA have not allowed it to be done in a timely manner. We apologize for this interruption and hope to be able, in the coming months, to publish the numbers corresponding to the years 1976 and 1977.

In its almost ten years of existence, ALLPANCHIS PHUTURINQA devoted numerous ethnographic studies to Andean rites and rituals. Today he dedicates another edition to them in order to underline some ignored or less studied aspects of the issue. In this sense, the pages that we consecrate to the ethnohistory and to the survival of certain Inca rites beyond the movement of "extirpation of idolatry" should be read. In the same way, we want to insist on the urgent need to face the Andean reality starting from its own history and not only from some more or less abstract, more or less theoretical notion, however legitimate it may be. We cannot fully understand the Andean rites and rituals if we separate them from the global context where they were born, from the reasons that make them endure and even from the reasons that decreed their extinction.

During several months of the year 1974, we collected some interviews in Quechua about rites and rituals of the Andean South. The cases that we transcribe directly from Quechua today are part of longer interviews. We selected only some parts of the interview, focusing mainly on questions of vocabulary and ritual gestures.

1. How to define peasant religion?, 2. Gregorio or the logic of Andean thought, 3. ... the Collaguas, vertically speaking..., 4. Andean ideologies in Huancayo, 5. Runes in the National Institute of Culture.

Desde que Arguedas y Roel Pineda publicaron sus versiones de los relatos del ciclo Inkarri, son numerosos los especialistas que se han preocupado por el tema. Pocos, sin embargo, procuraron averiguar en qué medida el héroe, para afirmarse, utiliza esquemas lógicos tradicionales y los transforman para expresar adecuadamente las nuevas situaciones vividas por el runa. En estudios anteriores (Urbano 1974a. 1974b, 1976, 1977, 1980a, 1980b, 1980c), insistí en el hecho de que la tradición andina presenta señales evidentes de cambios profundos. Los héroes contemporáneos recuerdas aún algunos de los gestos de los ancestros precolombinos. Pero el tiempo y el espacio ya no son los mismos y la memoria colectiva sufrió el efecto de las olas sucesivas de misioneros y administradores coloniales.