Cantagallo, wedged between a highway and the Rímac River at the foot of the Cerro San Cristobal, is a slum that was built on a landfill that has become the home and diasporic community of the Shipibo-Konibo, an Amazonian ethnic minority group from the Ucayali region of Peru. Founded in 2000 by indigenous Shipibo families who were part of a mass migration of immigrants pushed out of their communities by logging, illegal mining, and infrastructure development in the Amazon, Cantagallo has grown into a symbol of resilience and cultural center of indigenous identity and culture in Peru’s capital of Lima.

Home today to more than 320 Shipibo-Konibo families, Cantagallo has set an example of how an indigenous minority group can navigate urban life without losing its roots and cultural identity, challenging many assumptions about the rural-to-urban migration of indigenous peoples into Latin America’s cities that have struggled to preserve their heritage, customs, and native language in the midst of dislocations.

The residents of Cantagallo have maintained the essence of a native villages of their origins, where they cook and sew outdoors and open their doors to help their neighbors. Cantagallo is home to the only indigenous bilingual public school in Lima, a small elementary school founded in 2008 where the native language of Shipibo is taught. The school modeled on the bilingual schools in the Ucayali. The streets of Cantagallo are lined with art, murals of kene on wooden homes. Recently, they have opened a cultural center with hopes that visitors will come to Cantagallo and learn and purchase artisan handicrafts, the primary source of income for women in the community. Partnering with local NGOs, the community association has been able to also open its first medical post and community kitchen.

Cantagallo residents painting the new community kitchen

While they have made great advances leveraging community as a survival strategy, the Shipibo-Konibo of Cantagallo continue to face risk of eviction for private or government-backed development project as they continue to formalize their land titles from local authorities in Lima. Like many indigenous groups in informal settlements in Lima, they lack access to basic services, such as water, electricity, and medical care. This has made the battle against the spread of COVID-19 infections increasingly difficult, with over 320 families sharing two public bathrooms. According to the Pan-Amercan Health Organization, within two months of the national stage of emergency declared in Peru in March of 2019, Cantagallo became the worst hit hotspot of COVID-19, with over 72% of inhabitants testing positive for the virus. While the slum is a bastion of resilience, the community is still in great need of adequate housing and basic health services.

Painted murals in Cantagallo

Kené refers to the geometric patterns that are embroidered into every garment, and also as an ancient shamanic art form that is hand painted on a variety of mediums, such as ceramics, beadwork, textiles, and houses. They represent knowledge, culture, history and aesthetics of the indigenous tribe, Shipibo-Konibo.

Kene textile hand embroidered by Olinda Silvano

In 2008, kené was declared by the Peruvian Ministry of Culture as a symbol of ancestral identity and part of the national cultural heritage of Peru, to be protected, in order to ensure their cultural continuity, along with ayahuasca. Kené in the Shipibo language means “design” and refers to the design system of the Shipibo-Konibo people. Embroidery techniques of kené are passed down generations of women through rituals and the use of plant medicines. Each pattern has a different meaning. More than just lines and geometric shapes, kené represents the knowledge, culture, history, of the native indigenous group, revealing the origins and relationship between the Shipibo-Konibo community and their territory. The kenés are sung when the artisans go across the lines with the finger over the fabrics singing shamanic healing chants.

Kené are inspired by the healing visions of the tribe when they consume plant medicines, ayahuasca or pirí pirí. The kené patterns are also sung as ícaros, healing chants. The geometric designs are unique to each artisan. Many designs illustrate the flora and fauna of the Amazon, such as ayahuasca, and animals such as hummingbirds, serpents, jaguars.

To the Shipibo-Konibo, kené is a symbol of ethnic identity and agency in a country where they are an ethnic minority and their rights are largely marginalized. Murals of kené in public works of art have given the Shipibo-Konibo a new visibility in Peru, as their ancestral form of artistic heritage is becoming more known.