Her grandparents used to tell her that there was a time where the Rainbow Mountain was white. "There's nothing left of that" remembers Rosaurelia Yupanqui. When the snow melted, Vinicunca Mountain showed its true colors and became the second most visited tourist destination in Cusco (following Machu Picchu).

Rosaurelia is one of the creators of Ccapac Ñac, an association that gathers mashua farmers in the Chillihuani community in Cusco. Their objective is to rescue mashua, this ancestral tuber, and make it known among the tourists that pass through en route to the Rainbow Mountain.

Like the snow in Vinicunca, the soil degraded and tubers were lost. But mashua is resilient, millenary, and as such, it is of great importance in the construction of indentity for these communities. "If we lose our culture, it's like losing part of our lives", says Rosaurelia, while explaining that along with her community, she's working to recover mashua because of its nutritious and medicinal properties.

It's common in the Andes of Peru, for the younger people to migrate to bigger cities, and the same has happened in Chillihuani. According to 2019's Human Development Report (HDR) the district of Cusipata, where the community is located, has an income per capita of barely 80 dollars a month. "In the beginning, my family found it amusing that I wanted to work on the farm." Admits Rosaurelia, who is one of the few cases where a young woman stayed to make a change for the community.

Now, at 30 years old, Rosaurelia declares herself as a lover of organic agriculture, and she believes in the power of women to lead solutions and change in their communities. Her solution is, precisely, to integrate mashua in the growing touristic market of the mountain.

Early in 2019, this idea won a fund from the Small Grants Programme (SGP) from the Global Environment Facility (GEF), implemented by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) with support from the Ministry of Environment in Peru, which finances and gives technical support to community, nature-based, entrepreneurship that generate sustainable, climate-resilient, means of life.

Since then, they've managed to recover 30 varieties of this tuber thanks to the ancestral practice of exchanging seeds with other farmers. And that's not all. The association has started to branch out form farming and is now making jams, juices, and wines from the mashua. With this new venture, they hope to catch the attention and conquer the palates of the tourists.

"I remember when I was three years old and my mom brought me to the field to harvest mashua because that's how women worked in this community". Rosaurelia is inspired by these memories, "Us women, we are strong, we've been forged by the weather", and she is, undoubtedly, an example of this strength that is being born in the heights to be the seed for change.