Chapter Four:  Modern Communities in an Ancient Chachapoya Landscape

It would be easy--indeed, it is tempting--to romanticize the existence of these rural people.  In certain respects, I deeply envy their communal existence, the simplicity of their lives, their daily physical exercise, their quarantine from technology, their immunity to information overload, and, above all, the depth of their emotions.

Yet the truth is also that they will grieve the death of one in every three of their children before the children reach the age of five, that the survivors will suffer from intestinal parasites for most of their lives, that some will die from curable diseases for lack of rudimentary medical attention, that hard labor will condemn others to an arthritic old age, and that they will always know of a more affluent world outside, which abandons them to their poverty.