The standard of living in Chile is lower than in Argentina. On top of the very low wages paid in the south, unemployment is high and the authorities afford workers very little protection (although it’s better than what is provided in the north of the continent). Veritable waves of Chileans are driven by all this into emigrating to Argentina, in search of the legendary city of gold which cunning political propaganda has offered those who live to the west of the Andes. In the north, workers in the copper, nitrate, gold and sulphur mines are better paid, but life is much more expensive, and in general they lack many essential consumer items and the mountain climate is cruel. It brings to mind the meaningful shrug with which a manager at Chuquicamata answered my questions regarding compensation paid to the families of the 10,000 or more workers interred in the local cemetery.
The political scene is confusing (this was written before the elections in which Ibáñez triumphed). There are four presidential candidates, of whom Carlos Ibáñez del Campo seems most likely to win. A retired soldier with dictatorial tendencies and political ambitions similar to those of Perón, he inspires his people with all the enthusiasm of a caudillo. His base of power is the Popular Socialist Party, behind which various minor factions are united. Second in line, as far as I can see, is Pedro Enrique Alfonso, the official government candidate, who is politically ambiguous; he seems to be friendly with the Americans and courts almost all the other parties. The champion of the right is the tycoon Arturo Matte Larraín, the son-in-law of the late President Alessandri, who enjoys the support of all the reactionary sectors of the population. Last on the list is the Popular Front candidate Salvador Allende,4 who is supported by the communists even though they have seen their voting power reduced by 40,000, the number of people denied the right to vote because of their affiliation to the Communist Party.
It’s likely that Ibáñez will observe a politics of Latin Americanism, manipulating hatred for the United States to gain popularity; nationalizing the copper mines and others (although the fact that the United States owns huge Peruvian mineral deposits and is practically ready to begin exploiting them does not greatly increase my confidence that nationalization of these Chilean mines will be feasible, at least in the short term); continue nationalizing the railroads and substantially enlarge Argentine-Chilean trade.
Chile as a nation offers economic promise to any person disposed to work for it, so long as they don’t belong to the proletariat: that is, anyone who has a certain dose of education and technical knowledge. The land has the capacity to sustain enough livestock (especially sheep) and cereals to provide for its population. There are the necessary mineral resources to transform it into a powerful industrial country: iron, copper, coal, tin, gold, silver, manganese and nitrates. The biggest effort Chile should make is to shake its uncomfortable Yankee friend from its back, a task that for the moment at least is Herculean, given the quantity of dollars the United States has invested and the ease with which it flexes its economic muscle whenever its interests appear threatened.
In the Dominions of Pachamama
By 3:00 in the morning, the blankets of the Peruvian police had demonstrated their value, swathing us in restorative warmth. The policeman on guard then shook us awake—there was a truck heading for Ilave—and we found ourselves in the sad situation of having to leave them behind. The night was magnificent, if terribly cold, and we were granted the privilege of some planks to sit on, separating us from the foul-smelling, flea-ridden human flock below us, their potent but warm stink a virtual lasso. Only as the vehicle began its ascent did we realize the magnitude of the concession: nothing of the smell came close and it would have been difficult for a single, athletic flea to spring on to us for refuge. The wind lashed liberally against our bodies, however, and within minutes we were literally frozen. The truck continued to climb and with every minute the cold became more intense. To stop ourselves falling off we had to keep our hands outside the more or less protective blankets; it was difficult to shift position even slightly without coming close to head-first flight into the back of the truck. Close to dawn, some carburetor problem which afflicts engines at this altitude caused the truck to stop; we were nearing the highest point of the road, almost 5,000 meters. In some corners of the sky the sun was rising and a vague light replaced the total darkness accompanying us until then. The psychological effect of the sun is strange: it had not yet appeared over the horizon and we already felt comforted, just imagining the heat it would bring.
On one side of the road huge, semi-spherical fungi were growing—the only vegetation in the region—and we used them to make a pathetic fire which served to heat water from a little bit of snow. The spectacle offered by the two of us drinking our strange brew must have seemed as interesting to the Indians as their traditional dress seemed to us, because not a moment passed without one of them approaching to ask in broken Spanish just why we were pouring water into that strange artefact. The truck categorically refused to take us any further, so all of us had to walk about three kilometers in the snow. It was remarkable to see the Indians treading through the snow, their bare calloused feet not seeming to worry them, while we felt our toes freeze in the intense cold despite our boots and woolly socks. At a weary, steady pace, they trotted along like llamas in single file.
Saved from that rough patch, the truck continued with renewed passion and we soon cleared the highest pass, where there was a strange pyramid made of irregular-sized stones and crowned with a cross. As the truck passed, almost everyone spat and one or two crossed themselves. Intrigued, we asked what the significance of this strange ritual was but only the most complete of silences met us.
The sun was warming up and the temperature became more agreeable as we descended, always following the course of a river we had seen begin at the summit of the mountain and grow to a fair size. Snowcapped peaks looked down on us from all sides and herds of llamas and alpacas looked on without expression as the truck drove past, while several uncivilized vicuñas fled the disturbance.
At one of the many stops we made along the road, an Indian timidly approached us with his son who spoke good Spanish, and began to ask us all about the wonderful “land of Perón.” Our imaginations ignited by the spectacular grandeur we were traveling through, it was easy for us to paint extraordinary events, embellishing to our hearts’ desire the capo’s exploits, filling the minds of our listeners with stories of the idyllic, beautiful life in our country. Through his son, the man asked us for a copy of the Argentine constitution with its declaration of the rights of the elderly, and we enthusiastically promised to send him one. When we resumed the trip, the old Indian took an appetizing corncob from beneath his clothes and offered it to us. We finished it off quickly, democratically dividing the kernels between us.
In the middle of the afternoon, with the heavy, gray sky bearing down on us, we passed an interesting place where erosion had worn the huge boulders on the roadside into feudalistic castles. They had battlements, gargoyles observing us disconcertingly, and a host of fabulous monsters that seemed to be standing guard, protecting the tranquility for the mythical characters who surely inhabited the place. The slight drizzle which for some time had brushed our faces became stronger and turned into a heavy downpour. The driver called out to the “Argentine doctors,” inviting us into his cabin, the height of comfort in those parts. We immediately made friends with a schoolteacher from Puno, whom the government had sacked for being a member of APRA [American Popular Revolutionary Alliance]. The man, who clearly had indigenous blood and who moreover was an “Aprista”— which meant nothing to us—had many incredible stories of Indian customs and culture, delighting us with a thousand anecdotes and memories of his life as a teacher. Following the call of his Indian blood, he had sided with the Aymaras in the never-ending debates among the experts on the region against the Coyas, whom he qualified as cowardly ladinos.5
He also gave us the key to the strange ritual observed by our traveling companions earlier in the day. Arriving at
the highest point of the mountain the Indian gifts all of his sadness to Pachamama, Mother Earth, in the symbolic form of a stone. These gradually amass to shape the pyramids we had seen. When the Spaniards arrived to conquer the region they immediately tried to destroy such beliefs and abolish such rituals, but without success. So the Spanish monks decided to accept the inevitable, placing a single cross atop each pile of stones. All this took place four centuries ago, as told by Garcilaso de la Vega [the son of an Inca princess and a conquistador, was one of the chroniclers of the conquest], and judging by the number of Indians who made the sign of the cross, the religious didn’t make a lot of progress. The rise of modern transport has meant the faithful now spit out chewed coca-leaves instead of placing stones, and this carries their troubles to rest with Pachamama.
The inspired voice of the teacher rose to a resounding pitch whenever he spoke about his Indians, the once rebellious Aymara race who had held the Inca armies in check, and it fell to a vacant depth when he spoke of the Indians’ present condition, brutalized by modern civilization and by their compañeros, his bitter enemies the mestizos, who revenge themselves on the Aymaras for their own position halfway between two worlds. He spoke of the need to build schools that would orient individuals within their own world, enabling them to play a useful role within it; of the need to change fundamentally the present system of education, which, on the rare occasion it does offer Indians education (according only to the white man’s criteria), simply fills them with shame and resentment, rendering them unable to help their fellow Indians and at the severe disadvantage of having to fight within a hostile white society that refuses to accept them. The destiny of those unhappy individuals is to stagnate in some minor bureaucratic position and die hoping that one of their children, thanks to the miraculous powers of a drop of colonizing blood in their veins, might somehow achieve the goal they aspire to until their last days. In the convulsive clenching of his fist one could perceive the confession of a man tormented by his own misfortune, and also the very desire he attributed to his hypothetical example. Wasn’t he in fact a typical product of an “education” which damages the person receiving its favor, a concession to the magic power of that single “drop,” even if it came from some poor mestizo woman sold to a local cacique or was the result of an Indian maid’s rape by her drunken Spanish master?
But our journey was almost over and the teacher fell silent. The road curved and we crossed a bridge over the same river we had first seen early that morning as a tiny stream. Ilave was on the other side.
The Navel of the World
The word that most perfectly describes the city of Cuzco is “evocative.” Intangible dust of another era settles on its streets, rising like the disturbed sediment of a muddy lake when you touch its bottom. But there are two or three Cuzcos, or it’s better to say, two or three ways the city can be summoned. When Mama Ocllo dropped her golden wedge into the soil and it sank effortlessly, the first Incas knew this was the place selected by Viracocha to be the permanent home for his chosen ones, who had left behind their nomadic lives to come as conquistadors to their promised land. With nostrils flaring zealously for new horizons, they watched as their formidable empire grew, always looking beyond the feeble barrier of the surrounding mountains. The converted nomads set to expanding Tahuantinsuyo, fortifying as they did so the center of their conquered territory—the navel of the world—Cuzco [the center of the Inca kingdom]. And here grew, as a necessary defense for the empire, the imposing Sacsahuamán, dominating the city from its heights and protecting the palaces and temples from the wrath of the enemies of the empire. The vision of this Cuzco emerges mournfully from the fortress destroyed by the stupidity of illiterate Spanish conquistadors, from the violated ruins of the temples, from the sacked palaces, from the faces of a brutalized race. This is the Cuzco inviting you to become a warrior and to defend, club in hand, the freedom and the life of the Inca.
High above the city another Cuzco can be seen, displacing the destroyed fortress: a Cuzco with colored-tile roofs, its gentle uniformity interrupted by the cupola of a baroque church; and as the city falls away it shows us only its narrow streets and its native inhabitants dressed in typical costume, all the local colors. This Cuzco invites you to be a hesitant tourist, to pass over things superficially and relax into the beauty beneath a leaden winter sky.
And there is yet another Cuzco, a vibrant city whose monuments bear witness to the formidable courage of the warriors who conquered the region in the name of Spain, the Cuzco to be found in museums and libraries, in the church facades and in the clear, sharp features of the white chiefs who even today feel pride in the conquest. This is the Cuzco asking you to pull on your armor and, mounted on the ample back of a powerful horse, cleave a path through the defenseless flesh of a naked Indian flock whose human wall collapses and disappears beneath the four hooves of the galloping beast.
Each one of these Cuzcos can be admired separately, and to each one we dedicated a part of our stay.
The Land of the Incas
Cuzco is completely surrounded by mountains that signified less a defense than a danger for its Inca inhabitants, who, in order to defend themselves, built the immense mass of a fortress, Sacsahuamán. This version of the story, at least, satisfies the superficial inquirer, a version which for obvious reasons I cannot discount. It’s possible, however, that the fortress constituted the initial nucleus of the great city. In the period immediately after abandoning nomadic life, when the Incas were barely more than an ambitious tribe and defense against a numerically superior adversary was based around closely protecting the settled population, the walls of Sacsahuamán offered an ideal site. This double function of city and fortress explains some of the reasoning behind its construction, which does not make sense if its purpose was simply to repel an invading enemy, and much less so considering Cuzco lay defenseless on every other periphery. It is worth noting that the fortress is built in such a way that it controls the two steep valleys leading to the city. The serrated walls mean that when enemies attacked they could be held hostage on three flanks, and if they penetrated these defenses, they came up against a second, similar wall and then a third. The defenders have room to maneuver, enabling them to concentrate on their counterattack.
All this, and the subsequent glory of the city, creates the impression that the Quechua warriors were undefeated in the defense of their fortress against pounding enemies. Even though the fortifications are the expression of a highly inventive people, intuitive in mathematics, they seem to belong— in my view, at least—to the pre-Inca stage of their civilization, a period before they learned to appreciate the comforts of a material life; being a sober race the Quechuas didn’t achieve a level of cultural splendor, but they did make considerable advances in the fields of architecture and the arts. The continued success of the Quechua warriors drove enemy tribes further from Cuzco. Leaving the secure confines of the fortress, that in any case could no longer contain their multiplying race, they spread down the neighboring valley along the stream whose waters they used. Highly conscious of their present glory, they turned their eyes to the past in search of an explanation for their superiority. In honor of the memory of a god whose omnipotence had allowed them to rise to dominance, they created temples and the priest caste. In this way, expressing their greatness in stone, an imposing Cuzco grew into the city eventually conquered by the Spaniards.
Even today, when the bestial rage of the conquering rabble can be seen in each of the acts designed to eternalize the conquest, and the Inca caste has long since vanished as a dominant power, their stone blocks stand enigmatically, impervious to the ravages of time. The white troops sacked the already defeated city, attacking the Inca temples with unbridled fury. They unified their greed for the gold that covered the walls, in perfect representations of Inti the Sun God, with the sadistic pleasure of exchanging the joyful and life-giving symbol of a grieving people for the bereaved idol of a joyful people.
The temples to I
nti were razed to their foundations or their walls were made to serve the ascent of the churches of the new religion: the cathedral was erected over the remains of a grand palace, and above the walls of the Temple of the Sun rose the Church of Santo Domingo, both lesson and punishment from the proud conqueror. And yet every so often the heart of America, shuddering with indignation, sends a nervous spasm through the gentle back of the Andes, and tumultuous shock waves assault the surface of the land. Three times the cuppola of proud Santo Domingo has collapsed from on high, to the rhythm of broken bones, and its worn walls have opened and fallen too. But the foundations they rest on are unmoved, the great blocks of the Temple of the Sun indifferently exhibit their gray stone; however colossal the disaster befalling its oppressor, not one of its huge rocks shifts from its place.
But Kon’s revenge is meager in the face of the magnitude of the insult. The gray stones have grown tired of pleading with their protector gods for the destruction of the abhorrent conquering race, and now they simply show an inanimate exhaustion—useful only for provoking the admiring grunts of some tourist or other. What use was the patient labor of the Indians, builders of the Inca Roca Palace, subtle sculptors of angular stone, when faced with the impetuous actions of the white conquistadors and their knowledge of brick work, vaulting and rounded arches?