30 



INSTITUT1-; OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY— PUBLICATION NO. 



a cahudn costs about 8 soles, but a ready-made 

 article sells for 20 soles. The playa dwellers obtain 

 a certain income from making dip nets and casting 

 nets, which they sell to Mocheros of the campina 

 for fishing in the river and in the irrigation ditches 

 for shrimp and small fish about the size of sardines. 



The fishermen rise between 3 and 4 o'clock in the 

 morning. The night's catch and that of the day be- 

 fore are placed in baskets and their women carry 

 them by bus to the markets in Trujillo and Salaverry. 



The fishing community is apart from the rest 

 of Moche physically and to some extent socially. As 

 a rule the people are poorer than the pueblo and 

 campiiia Mocheros and are looked down upon 

 slightly. Also, they have a reputation of being very 

 irritable and hard to get along with (colcricos). 

 They do not seem to be united even among tliem- 

 selves and, in keeping witli the general Moche pat- 

 tern of individualism, are engaged in feuds and 

 quarrels. Several families living side by side on the 

 beach do not speak to one another, and refuse to visit 

 one another's houses. The seven houses to the north- 

 west of Las Delicias all belong to families named G.. 

 who are relatives. Five of the houses to the south- 

 east are occupied by families of the name of S. The 

 fishing occupation seems to be traditional and is 

 passed on from father to son. Most of the fisliing 

 families have a chacra somewhere in the cainpiha 

 and supplement their sulisistence from it. In a 

 number of cases, however, a single chacra has been 

 inherited by the heads of a number of immediate 

 families in common, a fact which seems to account 

 for some of the quarreling. 



Fishing has become a distincth- secondarv activity 

 in the economic life of Moche itself. In order to 

 round out a picture of fishing along tliis immediate 

 coast, some notes on the village of Huanchaco, where 

 fishing is the prim,-iry activity of the community, 

 are presented below. 



NOTES OX THE FfSIilXG VILL.\GE OF 

 HU.\XCH.\CO=' 

 Following the coast line about 17 km. northwest 

 from Las Delicias (the resort settlement on the Moche 

 playa) one comes to the fishing village of ?Iuanchaco 

 (pi. 1). By highway, passing throngli Trujillo, the 

 distance is about 21 km. In the region of Huan- 

 chaco it is considered that it is a "Moche village," 

 that it (together with Huaman and Moche ") is one 



^ My friend Senor Jose An^el Mifiano of Trujillo lias allowed me 

 to check his notes against my own, has discussed the material with 

 me. and, on one occasion, accompanied n.e to Huanchaco and put 

 nil- m touch wilh ni:iny persons I would not otherwise have known. 



(if the remnants of the prehistoric population, and 

 that certain aspects of its modern life are "survivals" 

 of ancient times. Since the natives of Huanchaco 

 are on the whole dedicated to professional fishing, 

 both deep-sea and inshore, a brief description of 

 their methods and organization is of interest from 

 a comparative point of view. 



At present Huanchaco is a village of about 700 

 inhabitants situated in a shallow and arid indentation 

 or bay of the coast. The beach slopes upward gently 

 for a distance of about half a mile from the sea to 

 the foot of an escarpment 150 to 300 feet above sea 

 level which rises to the general level of the coastal 

 plain stretching inland to the foothills of the Ancles. 

 A large church, rebuilt in modern times, sits on 

 the lip of the escarpment and dominates all views of 

 the town below, which is laid out back from the 

 beach. During the early years of this century the 

 town was developed into a port for the shipment of 

 sugar and as a summer resort for residents of 

 Trujillo. A railroad connected the port with the 

 Hacienda Roma and also, according to mv under- 

 standing, with Trujillo. The motivator of this 

 development was the late Senor Victor Larco Her- 

 rera, the well-known Peruvian millionaire and 

 philanthropist. He is still sf)oken of as the "patron" 

 of the pueblo. About 1925, however, Senor Larco 

 (lisi^osed of his plantation holdings. The railroad 

 tracks were removed and the summer visitors 

 abandoned their villas in Huanchaco. The town was 

 left once more to its native inhabitants and the sum- 

 mer villas stand now, mostly in a semiruined state, 

 along the street nearest the seashore. Seiior Larco's 

 house on the beach has been turned into a Govern- 

 ment-supported rest school for the underprivileged 

 and tuberculous children.-* A good pier with steel 

 supports and wooden flooring, also owned and main- 

 tained by the Government, provides tie-up facilities 

 for sailing boats and launches and is the central 

 feature of the beach. The sea bottom close inshore 

 is covered with cobblestones to which cling several 

 varieties of seaweed and shellfish, which are gathered 

 by the women of the community ; back of the high 

 water mark the shore is covered for the most part 

 with smooth sand, over which caballitos del mar 

 I -mall raft- made nf totora, a species of reed; see 

 fig. 2: pis. 8, lower (left), 9, loiver and middle 

 deft)) as well as wooden fishing boats of larger 

 dimensions can be hauled without damage. The 



-^ I wish to acknowledge the helpfulness and hospitality of Seiior 

 Daniel F. Ugarriza, Director of the Cotonia Victor Larco Herrera in 



ITu.mcii.aco, who entertained nie royally in the village. 



