Kallawaya

The Kallawaya are an Andean people of the steep valleys north of La Paz, around Charazani, in a transit belt between the high Andes and the Amazon whose ecological tiers, from snowline to lowland, gave them access to a vast range of medicinal plants.

They trace their healing tradition to the Tiwanaku and Mollo cultures, and as early as 700 their healers performed complex surgery and compiled one of the Andes' largest herbal pharmacopeias, long before the Inca rise. Under the Inca Empire they held a special status: itinerant physicians walking from community to community with their plants, they served the Inca and carried his litter, governing a far larger autonomous territory than their modern villages.

Their trade was guarded in a secret ritual language, Machaj juyay, built on Quechua grammar and Puquina vocabulary and taught only to initiated healers.