Chayar Project

Food Systems Research XL

This initiative looks for value and promote the food culture in the different indigenous people of Latin America, understanding them as live cultures and as a source of knowledge for an intelligent and harmonic relationship with the natural and cultural environment.

© Aníbal Fuentes, Valentina Arentsen, Carla Aravena & Cultivos Urbanos.

Year: 2014
Role: Producer & researcher
Team: Valentina Arentsen (Director), Carla Aravena (Researcher)
Project partially funded by Patagonia.


The Chayar project (from the Quechua ‘to wet’, ‘to splash’) is an initiative developed by the NGO Cultivos Urbanos, which seeks to collect, value and publicize the food culture present in the various indigenous peoples of Latin America, understanding them as living cultures and as a source of an intelligent and harmonious relationship with its natural and cultural environment. We understand by food culture the set of techniques, technologies, practices and worldviews developed from the relationships that a certain people establish with their food, from cultivation, harvesting, handling, storage, exchange, to forms of conservation, preparation and consumption of its products.

The collection of information is obtained from field work in two journeys through different locations of the Peruvian, Bolivian and Chilean High Andean agricultural sector.