Andean Llamas and Earth Stewardship - Earth Stewardship: Linking Ecology and Ethics in Theory and Practice - page 77

Fig. 7.1 A llama caravan transporting products to market near Lake Titicaca, Bolivia. Llamas
have been used as beasts of burden in the Andes Mountains for hundreds of years, making possible
extensive regional trade relations (Photo by Roy H. May Jr.)
My Aymara companions obviously had no problem at all sprawling out in llama
dung, but their doing so was subversive of my Western cleanliness ethic. However
for them, far from signifying something dirty, llama dung was part of the cycle of
life, a feature of nature worthy of respect and care. Llama dung not only expressed
life, it also symbolized future life through enriched soil for cultivation. Indeed, it
seemed to me that they saw a connection between themselves and the dung. They
knew themselves to be composed of the same organic material. Like the llamas that
produced important dung, they too were creatures of the earth. My Andean compan-
ions were true stewards of the environment: they respected and cared for llama
dung. Not only that, they had demonstrated many times during the half-millennium
since the Spanish conquest that they were ever ready to defend vigorously llama
dung and their own cultural integrity (see Cárdenas 1988 ; Stern 1987 ). Surely car-
ing and respectful mutuality for the Earth and its defense, are the basis of environ-
mental or Earth stewardship.
In recent years, “stewardship” has become a common way of talking about how
people ought to relate to the earth. Although it echoes positively among many differ-
ent social groups, the idea is especially important for Judaism and Christianity, reli-
gions that have had such an infl uence on the Western world. Indeed, using stewardship
as a model for how humans ought to relate to nature is a Judeo-Christian contribu-
tion. However most of the discussion of stewardship has taken place in the world's
affl uent nations. Any idea “must be investigated in relation to the praxis out of which
it comes,” as José Míguez-Bonino ( 1975 , p. 91) affi rms. So, how might the idea be
understood from the perspective of non-affl uent, non-Western people and how could
that perspective enrich an understanding of Earth stewardship? This chapter responds