Alberto Huaman Huamanhuillca is the current president of the Federacion de Porteadores del Camino Inka, an organization launched by the porters of Inca Trail in Peru to improve the conditions for porters on the trail. Alberto is also a leader of his Quechua community – Huilloc Alto – which is located on the mountainside overlooking the town of Ollantaytambo. Alberto worked as a porter for 10 years before becoming a cook which he has been doing for the past 7 years.
According to Alberto, there are 4,000 active porters on the Inca Trail. In his town of Huilloc and the surrounding vicinity, there are 500 porters and their families living there. Alberto notes that Huilloc was where the first porters of the Inca Trail originated from. And to this day, the region remains the hub for porters for Peru’s trekking tourism industry.
As the leader of the Federacion, he is concerned about the ongoing issues on the trails for the porters. His vision is to create a trekking organization that is run completely by the porters themselves, all of whom will be from his village of Huilloc and the surrounding areas. In conjunction, he would want the organization to jointly create a collective for the porters’ wives who are weavers in this community; thereby creating a trekking and weaving organization that will sustain jobs for both porters and their wives on a long-term basis. In that manner, the community will have its own form of sustainable tourism owned and operated by the locals themselves.