Object cross-reference in Leko

Abstract

"During the second half of the sixteenth century both civilian and missionary expeditions went in search of gold and converts into the lowland Moxos area, in Bolivia. They used the paths that had been followed by the Incas a century before to cross the Andean eastern slopes, a rough mountainous zone where the ‘Chunchos’ lived. The term chuncho was used as a cover term for any ‘uncivilized’ and thus ‘dangerous’ group of lowland Indians. Today, it reflects the general disdain that highland people, from Spanish, Aymara or Quechua background, feel for lowland Indians. The Leko were one of these ethnic groups that were contacted by the Spaniards early after the conquest, but nevertheless scarcely any information, ethnological or linguistic, can be found in the sources"