Amaranths Were Nearly Wiped Out by Colonization. Now, They’re Making a Return

"Around March, the valleys to the north and east of Cuzco, Peru, begin to gleam with pink and crimson — “crowned with amaranth,” the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow once wrote, “as with flame.” Native to South America, this scentless species of amaranth (Amaranthus caudatus), distinctive for its tentacle-like inflorescences, is prized for the nutty-tasting, protein-rich seeds that develop from its flowers. (Its leaves are also edible.) Known in Peru by its Quechua name, kiwicha, it was domesticated by Andean peoples some 3,000 years ago and later became a source of sustenance for the Incas and their contemporaries. (A different variety of amaranth was grown by the Aztecs of Mexico.) But the 16th-century Spanish colonizers, writes Jamaica Kincaid in “An Encyclopedia of Gardening for Colored Children” (2024), forced the Incas and the Aztecs to abandon their crops and replace them “with barley, wheat and other European grains.”

Still, kiwicha never fully disappeared from Peru’s Indigenous communities and, in the 1980s, the Cuzco-born scientist and engineer Luis A. Sumar Kalinowski led a campaign to increase its cultivation. It was then that Primo Tarco Challco started growing kiwicha on his land, located in the San Salvador district of the province of Calca, just as many other farmers did on theirs. Since then, he and his farmhands have spent two weeks every May cutting the tops of the stalks with sickles, drying them in the sun and then extracting the seeds with a thresher. This year, Tarco Challco’s farm produced approximately 3,300 pounds of grain in total.

Kiwicha is still a relatively niche crop in Peru. (Sumar Kalinowski says that more research is needed to develop higher-yield varietals.) However, its health benefits are making it ever more popular: The grain has an amino acid profile akin to that of cow’s milk and is high in fiber and iron; it’s often ground as flour or popped and eaten as cereal. In June, the San Salvador district hosts an annual kiwicha festival and, in Lima, Juan Luis Martínez — the chef of the award-winning restaurant Mérito and a frequent champion of local and indigenous ingredients — makes a tart with Popeye crab and kiwicha cooked in sunflower oil infused with palm leaf ash." [1]

1. Amaranths Were Nearly Wiped Out by Colonization. Now, They’re Making a Return.: T’s Travel Issue. Guadagnino, Kate; Ruiz, Stefan.  New York Times (Online) New York Times Company. Nov 14, 2024.