El Chaccu

How Munay became part of it

Four days before the ceremony, Munay's team had nothing. The agency that had arranged the visit to the chaccu backed out and cancelled and the were already in Peru, with no plan and no way in. Stella Enriquez, the founder, wasn't going to accept that as the end of it.

She pushed. Through the district of Yanawara, she got the contact of the community's president directly and called him herself. She explained what Munay is, a brand built on the same fibers, the same mountains, the same people this ceremony exists to protect. He didn't just let Munay attend. He brought them in.

Stella became the marraine of the ceremony that year. In that community, that isn't a title you're given lightly, it meant they had actually accepted her, not as a visitor passing through, but as someone who belonged there for that day. She felt that acceptance more than words can carry. What started as a cancelled booking turned into a real, ongoing relationship with that community, the kind that outlasts a single trip.
Sometimes a no is exactly what needed to happen.

That's the chaccu Munay knows!

THE FINEST FIBER OF THE WORLD

Step 1 — The chain

The modern chaccu still opens the same way. Groups of people spread out across the perimeter of the reserve, holding ropes strung with colored flags. They form a human chain and begin closing in, calling to the vicuña in Quechua, moving in coordinated waves to guide the herd, never chase it, toward a corral built for the day.

Step 2 — The corral

As the chain tightens, the vicuña funnel into the enclosure. A single chaccu can bring in well over a hundred animals, one recorded event corralled around 170.

Step 3 — The shearing

Once an animal is inside, volunteers hold it gently on a blanket while electric shears pass over its coat. This is the only point of contact in the entire ceremony, and it's brief. A vicuña yields just 150 to 250 grams of fiber per shearing — among the finest fiber in the world, at 12 to 13 microns — and can only be sheared again after two to three years, which is why the fiber has always been rare, even under the Inca, when it was reserved for the Inca and his court alone.

Step 4 — Care, not just harvest

While the shearing happens, veterinarians move through the corral doing health checks, treating parasites, checking teeth, turning the day into as much a wellness check for the herd as a harvest.

Step 5 — The release

Every animal goes back into the puna the same day, unharmed, free.

WELCOMED, NOT ASSUMED

The whole community comes together for a ritual older than any of them.

ONCE A YEAR, THE COMMUNITY GATHERS

The questions we get most answered on the spot, at Prunelle, Carouge.

Why it still happens

This isn't nostalgia, it's the reason the vicuña still exists. By the 1960s, hunting had driven Peru's vicuña population down to around 6,000. Community-run chaccus, held every June, gave the animal more value alive than dead, and the population has since recovered past 200,000. A single event can raise as much as $10,000 for the community that runs it. For the people doing it, it's not just conservation, "these are our traditions, our history."