A Broad With A Book: Peru, after the fact

In 1532, at the time when Henry VIII was still looking at Anne Boleyn’s neck with affection, a group of 168 illiterate, greedy and ruthless Spaniards from Extremadura riding on horseback [the XVI’s century equivalent of a redneck motorcycle gang] arrived in Peru, met the Inca Atahualpa [ruler of an empire of ten million people that expanded the length of the Andes, from Ecuador to Chile] and his army of 80,000 soldiers, defeated him, took him hostage, and started the most brutal of all the conquests. In less than fifty years, the country would be firmly under the Spanish crown. Before getting there, Francisco Pizarro [leader of the horseback gang,] together with his brothers and partners, lied, manipulated, fought, killed and terrorized his way to power. The story, as written by Kim MacQuarrie in The Last Days of the Incas, is so plotted, full of twists and turns, populated by strange animals and weird fruits, with intriguing ceremonies and traditions, it almost reads like Harry Potter, except that almost no one is good.

Take Atahualpa, the fearless twenty-some ruler of an empire with more than twice the population of Spain at the time, for whose ransom the city of Cusco [the capital] produced fantastical amounts of gold that nevertheless failed to prevent his dying via “garrote” [a rope around the neck twisted with a stick to strangle the victim]. While in captivity, this same Atahualpa ordered the death of his brother Huascar, together with all his wives and children, after torturing him in ways that make Abu Dhavi sound like child’s play.

Take Manco Inca, puppet teenage ruler put in place by the Spaniards, who wised up in a few years, fled Cusco and started a rebellion that lasted decades and ended two Inca rulers later, with the beheading of Tupa Amaru in Cusco. Take his coya [main wife and direct sister] whom Gonzalo Pizarro forcedly took before Manco rebelled, and whom he tortured and gruesomely killed after Manco’s defeat, probably one of the few truly sympathetic and heroic characters from beginning to tragic end.

Take the Pizarros: Gonzalo [the youngest, womanizer, abusive, killed by a rival Spanish faction], Juan [handsomest, killed in battle with the inca], Hernan [ugliest, smartest, only one to return to Spain with fabulous riches for the king which didn’t save him from supporters of Diego de Almagro, whom he’d had killed in Cusco, and who put him in jail for most of his life], or Francisco [the oldest, experienced conqueror already settled in Panama before he set out for Peru in his 50’s, whose greed caused the rift with associate Diego de Almagro, whose followers ambushed and killed him in his house in Lima].

And let's not talk about the blood and fire hungry priests...

Imagine traveling to a galaxy far away [the only possible equivalent I can come up with] and finding that most people you meet are dressed with exquisite fabrics and weaves, and ornamented with precious metals and stones, that their cities and temples are sheathed in walls of pure gold, located in breathtaking valleys, where they’ve domesticated strange sheep (llamas, alpaca, vicuña) and eat strange fruits (corn, potatoes). Imagine the natives looking at you, riding high on a fierce animal taller than their own, able to trample them to death. Wondering at the strange contraption in your hands that can kill several people at once (the harquebus). Marveling at the golden and red hair, that also grows on man’s faces (the inca had no facial hair)…

Why am I telling you all this? If you go to Peru, any guide you hire will tell you some of this at different points, particularly what pertains to life, customs or architecture. They don’t go in detail in regards to history or who did what to whom. But you’ll get a good sense of what Peru was before the conquest because the inca ruins are everywhere. However, if you walk in the country with a greater sense of this history, I can’t tell you what a pleasure it is to feel it come alive in Cusco, in the Sacred Valley, in Lake Titicaca [the mythical origin of the incas], in Machu Picchu, with the images of all of its stories, big and small, that your feet are stepping on. As we were in Cusco for its biggest festivity, Inti Raymi [sun festival, with a massive reenactment of an inca ritual,] and the actor impersonating the Inca was carried on a litter for all to see, locals in the crowd suspended disbelief and shouted words of support to their ruler, to gods and traditions that Catholicism has not yet defeated in the Altiplano. If you've read all this before getting there, you almost want to scream with them.

We loved everything. From the oxygen we had to take in Puno to adapt to 12,500 ft above sea level. To the floating houses in the Uros and the islands of immense Lake Titicaca. To the spectacularly gorgeous road to Cusco. To the Sacred Valley with inca cities that defy gravity atop steep mountains in Pisac and Ollantaytambo. To the majesty of watching the sun come up over Machu Picchu. Mostly, we loved Cusco, precious city of mixed architecture and history, where we had our best ceviches and causas, pisco sours, and even a Guinness at Paddy’s Pub, the highest fully Irish owned Irish bar in the planet.

There is a whole lot more to read about Peru. Almost five hundred years have passed since the conquistadors arrival. The country has countless writers, among them a Nobel laureate (Mario Vargas Llosa), and many other areas to visit, and other cultures that contribute to what it is today. This trip, however, belonged to the incas. We got our money’s worth.