The trip from the village of Iruya, in northwestern Argentina, to Buenos Aires Province can take several days. “The truck carrying fresh produce takes between 24 and 35 hours to arrive,” says Raúl Viveros, a member of the community Kolla Colanzulí of Finca Santiago. That is the effort required for the country’s largest market to sell the small potato-like tubers known as papines, which have a unique flavor and are produced by the first indigenous community to have been recognized by the state of Argentina.
At the end of September, Viveros had just returned from Buenos Aires. He had descended from his village in the Salta highlands to expand the market and secure financing for his community’s organic products. His target was the Mercado Central (Central Market) in Buenos Aires, the country’s main fruit and vegetable distribution hub.
“Last year we sold nearly 30 tons of papines and other Andean tubers. We expect to increase that to 40 tons next year,” he says in a phone interview from the village of Nazareno. By eating them, he says, consumers are helping producers who protect and preserve the foods’ “symbolic, historical and cultural” value.
Capricious in shape and vivid in color, Andean tubers — underground stems from various botanical families that include the potato, oca and papalisa — fit in the palm of a hand and are noted for their earthy flavor with sweet undertones. They were essential to Inca diets, and more than 4,000 varieties still survive today.
The truck arrives at dawn and is received by Alta Red. “We bring together small and medium fruit and vegetable farmers across 19 provinces. They are agroecological and organic producers whom we also advise on issues such as packaging, transportation and the transition to more sustainable methods,” adds Leidy Ortiz, speaking from a warehouse at the Mercado Central on a rainy morning. She is the president of Argentina’s first Federation of Solidarity Marketing Cooperatives, founded a decade ago.
“Iruya is the most remote place from which we receive goods, and from here we distribute it to other provinces and to 60 wholesalers in Buenos Aires,” explains Ortiz. She estimates they receive around four tons a month from La Colanzuleña (the Salta venture), and any consumer can buy their Andean papines for $4,530 per kilo (€0.50 or $0.56).
The Kolla Community of Finca Santiago is located in the department of Iruya and extends to Orán, covering 125,459 hectares — equivalent to twice the size of the city of Madrid, Spain. It is made up of four communities or ayllus: Volcán Higueras, Isla de Cañas, Río Cortaderas and Colanzulí. The latter borders the village of Iruya and reaches elevations above 3,800 meters above sea level. The climate is dry, dominated by strong winds and sun.
The village of Iruya itself is one of Argentina’s tourism gems. Located in Salta province, 1,500 kilometers (932 miles) from the city of Buenos Aires, it sits on a mountainside and is home to around 2,000 inhabitants. The distance from other urban centers, which requires a three-hour trip along cliffside roads, means it is quite isolated, and that is a large part of the charm that captivates visitors and frequently places it in rankings of the world’s most “beautiful towns.”
A village with a history
The origins of the village of Iruya date back to the Inca Empire. This “valley,” like others on the eastern frontier of the Tawantinsuyu, had a multiethnic makeup. All of these groups came to be known as kollas, which means south. Until the early 2000s there were no tourists here. But soon the growers left their fields to serve the thousands of visitors who started to show up. Andres Gallardo recalls: “Today it is the base of our economy. If tourism falters, everything falters.” Then he adds: “In the last two or three years almost no one has come.”
About 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) before reaching Iruya is Colanzulí. The community consists of a handful of homes scattered over long distances under brilliant blue skies, which Marina Weinberg knows well. The Argentine anthropologist, now based in Chile, completed her undergraduate, master’s and doctoral theses on the formation of Finca Santiago and spent the early years of the century in the community.
“Colanzulí is the oldest of the four ayllus; I found it in the 1869 censuses. The others did not appear.” She has also long known Raúl Viveros and the ceaseless rattling of the trucks that travel the gravel roads to market their tubers with a distinctive flavor: “It was a precursor to what is happening now; in 2003 they were already selling in the local markets of Iruya and Humahuaca,” she recalls on a video call.
Regarding state recognition and the return of lands to indigenous communities, Weinberg notes: “In the 1990s there was a resurgence of indigenous identity with constitutions in many Latin American countries that admitted their preexistence.” It was in this context that the 1994 constitutional reform recognized these native peoples and paved the way for the expropriation of Finca Santiago, which took place three years later. The final step was the registration of the first legal personality for such a community in the country: the Indigenous Community of the Kolla people of Finca Santiago, after filing its own General Statute, which governs the four communities that make it up.
In 2021 Colanzulí obtained approval from the National Service for Agri-food Health and Quality (SENASA), which allowed them to operate legally with major urban centers such as Mendoza, Córdoba, Rosario and Buenos Aires.
At the same time, the creation of a new dehydrator will allow them to sell dried products. “Because of climate change, some products do not fully ripen or have deformities that prevent their sale. This way we avoid waste,” explains Viveros, enthusiastic about new production methods that will allow them to use up to 90% of the harvest.
The tourism dilemma
The number of visitors to the province of Salta fell from 755,198 in the summer of 2024 to 651,184 in the summer of 2026, a drop of nearly 14%. While Viveros and the province’s governor also acknowledge a sharp decline in tourism activity, they believe what is declining is conventional tourism — visitors who only want to see the village of Iruya. But these days, “tourists want to explore the mountains, hike and connect with agriculture; that is why we offer the Andean Papines Route. With visitor income, we can sustain the agricultural project,” explains the coordinator of the Kolla Council of Colanzulí.
The current tourism crisis runs counter to the sustained growth of recent decades, after the Quebrada was named a World Heritage site in 2003 by UNESCO. Tourist arrivals between 1994 and 2006 grew more than 15-fold, from 7,000 people to 110,000. This increase in visits and in overnight stays was accompanied by a rise and diversification of the offer in the Quebrada de Humahuaca (located in Jujuy province, a necessary stop to reach Iruya). “Iruya is one of the most dynamic localities in this area; its growth forced the multiplication of transportation services from Humahuaca for independent access to the village,” explains Claudia Troncoso, who holds a PhD in geography from the University of Buenos Aires, by email.
Distances shrink. The travel days that separate the high Salta mountains from the Buenos Aires plain are bridged by these ancestral tubers. From the Andean region they find their way into the mass market thanks to the work between Argentina’s oldest indigenous community and its first agroecological marketing network. Together they achieve something once unthinkable through a small productive feat: making possible the dream of enjoying a flavorful ancient food that otherwise might have been forgotten.
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