Yucay
| Yucay | |
 | |
 Cities of Nouvelle Alexandrie | |
|---|---|
| Official Name | Town of Yucay |
| Nickname(s) | The Temperate Vale |
| Region | Wechua Nation (Kuntisuyu) |
| Established | Antiquity |
| Founder(s) | Wechua people |
| Government | |
| Type | Municipal council |
| Population | |
| City Proper | 21,400 (1758 AN) |
| Demonym | Yucayano |
| Geography | |
| Elevation | 2,850 m (9,350 ft) |
| Climate | Temperate highland |
| Infrastructure | |
| Economy & Culture | |
| Major Industries |
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| Notable Landmarks |
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Yucay is a town in the Wechua Nation, a constituent state of Nouvelle Alexandrie, set in the Sacred Valley of the Wechua Nation, within Kuntisuyu in the highlands of central Keltia. It lies at a lower elevation than the regional capital at Parap, and its comparatively mild, temperate climate has long distinguished it from the colder heights of the surrounding country. The town has been associated with the Wechua monarchy since antiquity and served as a royal residence during the First Wechua Kingdom.
Since 1754 AN Yucay has been the seat of the Marquessate of Yucay, a title created by King Sinchi Roca II for his second daughter, Princess Urpi, and her husband, Prince Gerard. The marquessal residence, Quri Wasi, stands on the valley floor a short distance from the town. Yucay also figures in the Faith of Inti, which venerates it as a place watched over by an ancestral guardian spirit.
Name
The town takes its name from the valley it occupies, a usage that predates the written record and appears in the oral traditions of the Wechua people. The marquessal residence carries a separate name, Quri Wasi, which in the Wechua language joins quri ("gold") and wasi ("house"). The town's inhabitants are known as Yucayanos.
History
Yucay was settled in antiquity by the Wechua people, who favored the valley for the mildness of its climate and the fertility of its floor. Well before the consolidation of a Wechua state, the temperate valleys around Mount Lacara drew the elite of the "People of the Llamas", and Yucay was among the retreats they preferred to the harsher highland seats.
During the First Wechua Kingdom, proclaimed in 1657 AN under Sapa Wechua Manco Cápac I with its capital at Parap, Yucay served as a royal residence away from the affairs of the court. The kingdom was short-lived. From 1668 AN the White Plague and the civil collapse that followed reduced the Wechua kingdom to a failed state, and in the years of the Wechua Sorrow the valley lost much of its population and its royal houses fell into disuse.
The town recovered slowly. The Great Restoration from 1673 AN and the formation of Nouvelle Alexandrie in 1685 AN returned stability to the Wechua Nation, and Yucay resumed its quiet life as an agricultural town. Its association with the crown was formally renewed in 1754 AN, when King Sinchi Roca II created the Marquessate of Yucay for Princess Urpi and Major Gerard Skuryov-Spooner, investing them at the Palace of Carranza on 12.V.1754 AN.[1] The title was constituted to descend by Wechua customary inheritance, through the male or female line without preference.[2] In 1758 AN Princess Adelaide was born in the town, the first member of the royal house recorded as born at Yucay in the modern era.
Geography and climate
Yucay occupies a valley floor at an elevation of some 2,850 meters, lower than the 3,400 meters of Parap. The surrounding slopes shelter the town from the highland winds, and the valley holds warmth and moisture that the exposed heights above it do not. This gives Yucay a temperate highland climate, milder than the region as a whole, which historically made it a favored place of retreat and gives it a longer growing season than the surrounding highlands. The valley is watered by highland streams and given over largely to terraced cultivation, with maize and potatoes among the staple crops.
Religious significance
In the Faith of Inti, Yucay is held to stand under the protection of a wak'a guardian, the princess Quri Sisa, remembered in tradition as a daughter of the ancient Wechua royal line, whose preserved remains are enshrined at Quri Wasi. Tradition holds that she kept the valley as her retreat in the early days of the Wechua monarchy and asked to be laid to rest there, and her enshrinement is said to have begun the guardian cult. Intian belief holds that ancestors of exceptional standing do not simply pass into the ukhu pacha, the inner world, but remain bound to the places they loved in life. Because a preserved ancestor is itself a wak'a, a sacred thing charged with power, Quri Sisa is understood to remain present and active in the valley rather than merely commemorated there.
The site is regarded as a point of tinkuy, or sacred convergence, where three sources of power meet: the apu of the surrounding peaks, the ancestral spirit drawn up from the ukhu pacha, and the wak'a invested in the guardian's enshrined remains. Devotees hold that the balance of these forces keeps the valley fertile and its waters clear, and that the guardian's favor has long shielded the royal family who make Yucay their home.
The relationship with the guardian is maintained through ayni, the principle of reciprocity that governs Intian worship. The royal household and the local ayllu present offerings of coca and maize chicha at Quri Wasi, and a resident paqo, drawn from the ayllu that has tended the shrine since Quri Sisa's enshrinement, oversees the rites and mediates between visitors and the guardian's spirit. As ruler of the dead, Supay is invoked to keep relations with the ancestral dead favorable. The practice is one of veneration rather than sacrifice, honoring an ancestor long dead rather than offering up the living.
Royal estate
The marquessal residence, Quri Wasi, stands apart from the town on the valley floor. Long used by the royal house as a summer lodge and a place of family gathering, it was given by King Sinchi Roca II to Princess Urpi and Prince Gerard in 1754 AN, together with the marquessate, as a gift on their marriage. The gift was prized less for the property than for its associations, the King having made over to his daughter and her husband the retreat where the family had long held its reunions. Quri Wasi remains a popular gathering place for the extended royal house, and it serves as the setting for the observances associated with the town's guardian. It is a working residence rather than a grand palace, modest in scale beside the dynastic seats of the House of Inti-Carrillo, the Palace of Chinchero at Parap and the Palace of Carranza at Cárdenas.
Demographics and economy
Yucay is a small town, with a population of some 21,400 recorded in 1758 AN. Its economy rests on the cultivation of the valley floor, on handicrafts produced for regional markets, and on a modest trade in visitors drawn by the town's royal associations and its standing in the Faith of Inti. It has none of the industry of Parap or Rimarima, and its character remains agricultural and provincial.
Culture
The religious calendar of the Faith of Inti orders much of the town's public life, and the festivals of the solar year, chief among them Inti Raymi at the winter solstice and the royal festival of Qhapaq Raymi at the summer, are observed at the town's shrine and at Quri Wasi. Local observance centers on the guardian of Yucay, whose offering cult gives the town a devotional character distinct from the larger religious centers of the Wechua Nation.
