Cutervo · Cajamarca · Peruvian Andes

Knowledge like this is not inherited. It is kept alive.

Earth medicine. Backstrap-loom weaving. Water blessed over a newborn. Neighbours who raise a roof together. We call this living heritage: knowledge that survives by being practised, not by being displayed. Today we are keeping it alive across the fifteen districts of Cutervo.

See the project Explore the heritage
  • 136 villages
  • 21 workshops
  • Since 2018
Non-profit organisationTax ID 20610014071 APCI Resolution No. 036-2023Exempt from income tax
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2018The year we began rescuing cultural heritage
15Districts of Cutervo and 513 villages
6,800People trained: 3,400 women and 3,400 men
53,382People who benefit indirectly

Why we exist

We are not here to save an object. We are here to return a dignity.

Peru's Ministry of Culture recognises more than 170 cultural expressions as Intangible Cultural Heritage of the Nation. Cutervo alone accounts for over thirty: callhua weaving, clay pottery, the cutervina box, traditional blacksmithing, living medicinal plants, fifteen patron-saint festivals and a literature performed in theatre.

Yet Quechua in Cutervo is on its way out. A people who lose its language lose its memory, and a people who lose its memory lose the right to decide its own future. That is why the Cultural Expressions Conservatory is not a museum. It is a workplace: a workshop, a kitchen with smoke in it, a square where a community becomes the owner of what it knows.

A home without books is a body without a soul. A village without memory is a village without a name.

Cutervo countryside wisdom
Meet the organisation
An artisan from Cutervo weaving a callwa cloth in earth colours

Four pillars, one commitment

What we hold up

Everything we do comes from one conviction: culture is not a decoration on development. It is the engine.

Three women artisans from Cutervo in their traditional dress 01

Living heritage

We rescue, document and promote Cutervo's cultural expressions together with the ancestral wisdom keepers who truly hold that memory.

An artisan weaving at the foot of the hill, textiles in bright colours 02

Women who decide

We equip women artisans to control their income, their time and their voice. Cutervo's local economy starts at a loom.

Offerings of the earth payment ceremony, with flowers and produce 03

Ancestral medicine

We train in the responsible use of medicinal plants and in healing ceremonies, within an ethical, moral and spiritual framework and never as a substitute for formal medicine.

Andean valley in the province of Cutervo with mist between the mountains 04

Land and territory

Reforestation, watershed management and solid-waste treatment: Cutervo is cared for on the ground, village by village.

The Conservatory

Twenty-one workshops. One promise: that nobody leaves.

We do not teach crafts to produce objects. We teach them to produce dignity, income and a future in a Cutervo village.

A five-year project with a technical file and a public timetable. Every target is counted in people, not in pieces.

Earth crafts 9
  • Callhua weaving
  • Textile dyeing
  • Clay pottery
  • Carrizo and cane baskets
  • Traditional blacksmithing
  • Wood carving and sculpture
  • Stone carving
  • Shoe repair
  • Tailoring
Sound and stage 5
  • Cutervina box and musical instruments
  • Traditional Andean dress
  • Music, song and customary dance
  • Cutervo theatre and dance
  • Traditional gastronomy
Knowledge and identity 4
  • Traditional medicine oriented to mystic tourism
  • Patron festivals of 15 districts
  • Family and community libraries
  • Training of local tourism guides
The future 4
  • Computer assembly
  • Electronics repair and maintenance
  • Managing community soup kitchens
  • Community school on civic education
Cerro Ilucan in Cutervo with the stream and the neighbours below

Cerro Ilucan · Mystic Tourism

There is a hill in Cutervo where people learn to listen.

Mystic tourism is not a show. It is a guided journey with ancestral healers: cleansing, ceremonies of payment to the earth, and contact with plant and water medicine. Tourism that leaves money in the villages and takes home silence instead of rubbish.

On Cerro Ilucan the medicine is in the air: muna, matico, dandelion, plantain, eucalyptus, paico, chancapiedra, horsetail and the San Pedro cactus. Living heritage, recognised as such by law.

And around it, a landscape that seems invented:

  • Cutervo National Park and the Guacharo Cave
  • Pilco Stone Forest
  • Laguna El Pilco
  • Pilco Canyon and its waterfall
  • Paccha-Chipuluc waterfall
  • Rejopampa chullpas and its stone-and-timber tower
  • Huichud cave
  • Ambulco and La Asuncion cave systems
Plan your visit

Intangible cultural heritage

Customs that are passed on through the hands

Each of these practices is a workshop. None of them is taught in theory.

El landaruto, the first haircut

A child's first haircut, with godparents who bring gifts. A rite of entry into community life.

El Cinco

On the fifth day after a death, the family washes the deceased's clothes at the nearest washing place, offering and praying. The soul needs letting go, too.

La minga

Collective work in a farmer's field, paid in reciprocity rather than wages. The luxury of the Andes: nobody works alone.

El pararaico

While a new roof goes up, the community shouts for more tiles, and the last word is won with chicha. Then there is dancing and cuy with potatoes.

The yunzas of Carnival

An alder tree hung with surprise objects, turned by couples and then cut down with a machete. The party runs until Holy Week.

The proposal and the dowry

The formal request for a bride's hand with a godfather, the entrance to her family's house, and the dowry that proves commitment. An Andean airport for marriage.

SCIENCE AND LAW

What your grandmothers knew, science is confirming. And Peruvian law backs it up.

For a long time it was called superstition. Today there are peer-reviewed journals studying it, and a Peruvian legal framework that recognises traditional medicine as part of the health system. It does not work against modern medicine: it is what the law calls complementary medicine, used alongside treatment and never instead of it.

WHAT HAS BEEN STUDIED

  • Muña or chancua (Minthostachys mollis)

    Its essential oil showed in vitro antifungal activity, and its metabolites were characterised in the Peruvian medical journal of the National Institute of Health.

    Cano et al., 2008 · Revista Peruana de Medicina Experimental y Salud Pública

  • Muña: the warning that matters too

    A 2019 study measured the essential oil and found a mild inflammatory infiltrate in 80 % of cases. Dose and preparation change everything, and natural does not mean harmless.

    Rojas-Armas et al., 2019 · Potential Toxicity of the Essential Oil from Minthostachys mollis

  • Cat's claw (Uncaria tomentosa)

    A 2024 systematic review and meta-analysis evaluated the anti-inflammatory and immunomodulatory activities of its extracts.

    Arado et al., 2024 · systematic review and meta-analysis

  • Northern Peru, documented

    In communities of the north, the use of medicinal plants against epilepsy was recorded: the same logic as your grandmothers, observing, testing and passing the learning down.

    Auditeau et al., 2018 · Journal of Ethnopharmacology 215: 184-190

And some prudence: the World Health Organization notes that less than 1 % of global health research funding goes to traditional medicine, so the evidence is still uneven. That is why the Peruvian framework asks for common sense: the knowledge is passed on, but it does not replace modern medicine.

WHAT PERUVIAN LAW SAYS

  • Legislative Decree No. 584 · 1990

    Created the National Institute of Traditional Medicine (INMETRA), the first attempt by the Peruvian State to bring traditional medicine into its public health policies.

  • Law No. 27300 · 2000

    Regulates and promotes the sustainable use of medicinal plants, and entrusts INMETRA with drawing up and approving the National Herbal Pharmacopoeia.

  • Law No. 27657 · 2002

    Creates the Intercultural Health National Centre (CENSI) within the National Institute of Health and extends recognition to alternative and complementary medicine.

  • Official INS definition

    The INS distinguishes three things: traditional medicine, alternative medicine — the kind that replaces conventional treatment and lacks evidence — and complementary medicine, used alongside medical treatment and with scientific backing.

And what the WHO says: the World Health Organization recognises traditional medicine in 170 of its 194 Member States. In 2025 it published its Global Traditional Medicine Strategy 2025-2034, and the 2018 Astana Declaration called for including these knowledges in primary care.

I want to see it up close

What is moving

Figures with names behind them

Every number in this project has a person behind it. Here are some of them.

3,400 Women over 18

Human rights, exercise of women's rights, civic education, citizenship, leadership and moral and spiritual ethics.

3,400 Men over 18

Exercise of women's rights, civic education, citizenship, leadership and moral and spiritual ethics.

136 Grassroots organisations

Milk-board committees, peasant patrols, people with disabilities and older adults.

5 years From pilot to replicable model

Cutervo as the pilot; then the fourteen remaining districts and other provinces.

Accountability and support

Every sol has a name. Every name, a future.

ANMETRA-PERU is a non-profit organisation, exempt from income tax and recognised by APCI. We do not sell promises: we account for them.

Write to us to learn more
  • Public identification and current registration
  • Project with a technical file and a public timetable
  • Accountability to the assembly of community representatives

Governance

Who we are

A board elected by assembly and a technical team of professionals from the region.

Board of directors

  • Gelasio Chilcón AltamiranoPresident
  • José Miguel Chilcón Altamirano1st Vice-President
  • Edmundo Flores Vásquez2nd Vice-President
  • Juan de Dios Ruiz Chilcon3rd Vice-President
  • Consuelo Mera ChilconSecretary
  • Crescencia Soberon TapiaTreasurer
  • Teonila Fernández GuerreroDeputy Treasurer

Technical team

  • Gelasio Chilcon AltamiranoPresident / general coordination
  • Ing. Daniel Campos OchoaTechnical assistant
  • Ing. Segundo Fernández RomeroTechnical assistant
  • Arq. Gerardo Ledesma MendozaTechnical assistant

Partners

We work with the State and with the people

  • Cutervo Provincial Municipality
  • Cajamarca Regional Government
  • Ministry of Culture
  • Ministry of Women and Social Protection
  • Ministry of Production
  • Peruvian Agency for International Cooperation
  • International cooperation

Let's talk

Write to us. A real person answers.

Do you want to join the project, visit Cerro Ilucan, collaborate with a workshop or fund the work? Write to us and we will tell you how.

Address
Jr. Esperanza No. 152, Cutervo district and province, Cajamarca region, Peru
Office hours
Monday to Friday, 9:00 - 18:00 (GMT-5)
Email
[email protected]
Tel.
+51 934 899 320