|Volume 5, Number 138 1 December 2005 Flight of the Condor The
Indigenous Movement in Bolivia From ancient times, the Aymara
people have lived and farmed at 14,000 feet altitude in the
southern end of the fertile altiplano valley, a large flat plain
bordered on east and west by the massive snow-clad cordilleras
of the Andean mountains. Further north, beyond the calm blue
expanse of Lake Titicaca, lie the ancestral lands of the
Quechua-speaking people. Thousands of feet higher still in the
thin Andean air, flying over Aymara and Quechua alike, soar the
Andean Condors. These magnificent creatures, the largest of all
flying birds in the world, keep watch over all the peoples of
the Andes, since time immemorial a living symbol of the spirit
of the region. Two thousand years ago the condors looked down
upon the civilization of Tiahuanacú, a great city built of stone
on the shores of Lake Titicaca. Traders and merchants from
Tiahuanacú traveled north and south the entire 4,000-mile length
of the Andean ridge. Image