From palm-thatched settlements and sandbars along the Peruvian and Ecuadorian coasts, fishermen followed and revered the winds and currents. The ocean of the Incas was the home of Mama Cocha, protector of seafarers and source of the sardines, mackerel, and anchovies dragged by woven nets into reed boats. Whales were worshiped. Kon was the master of the rain and winds, and could be gentle or tempestuous, capable of rolling waves at sea or inundating the land with storms.

The sea and sky were places of the visible and invisible, and apprehending them meant life or death. From the sixteenth century, fishermen reported unusual winter seasons when fish disappeared and fierce storms battered the South American coast. At the same time, across the Pacific, rains disappeared and lands as far as Indonesia and India parched and burned under severe drought. In the twentieth century, researchers described a phenomenon in which irregular cycles in the winds and currents pulled warm water from the tropics to the eastern Pacific, diminishing the deep, cold, waters filled with plankton and algae that attracted fish to the region. As the fish migrated away, larger sea animals and human populations starved. More, the rising sea temperatures charged winter storms and unleashed devastating torrents and flooding. The phenomenon was called El Niño, for the birth of the Christ Child.