Part of El primer nueva corónica y buen gobierno, Diciembre is one of the 12 fine-line images created by Felipe Guamán Poma de Ayala to represent the Inca cycle of agricultural practices and the native people's connection to their ecological-agrarian rituals. Diciembre, or December, was the time for sowing potatoes and oca potatoes, pillars of Andean dietary habits.
The painting shows the collaboration between three people in the process of preparing the soil and sowing the potatoes. The man is responsible for opening some space in the dirt, while the women bury whole potatoes in there. Fun fact: one of the reasons for the popularisation of potatoes as a crop was the fact that they could remain planted until the time of consumption. With this, native communities were able to avoid greedy eyes from tax-imposing colonizers (and from enemy groups).
Native South and Central American peoples were responsible for many important agricultural achievements and developments, including the creation of maize as we know it today and the introduction of potatoes to the Europeans.
