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Description
This research explores the development of the most important sports in Huanchaco, Northern Peru, surfing on traditional “caballitos de totora” or little reed ‘horses’. For more than 3000 years, this living legacy can be considered an important origin of modern surfing that transcends many generations and different cultural periods, from the Moche and Chimú pre-Columbian cultures until today. Crafted from reeds, the caballitos de totora were originally used for fishing but today, the narratives of deriving a livelihood from fishing, transformed by an industrialization of technique, and that of the development of Huanchaco as a surfing destination, combine to suggest that surfing is not such a modern sport, but has its historical origins in cultural and economic practice. Consequently, Peruvians assert that Moche and Chimú cultures were amongst the first wave riders who surfed for fun. Between economic development, sustainability, and the protection of a cultural heritage that derives from the reeds of wetland ecological reserves, this paper explores surfing activity in this coastal area by providing a short history of Huanchaco’s caballitos de totora and resort’s development of surfing-related tourism that manages cultural legacy and identity blended with the imperatives of economic and social demand.
