On the road in Peru: The Secretary’s travel journal
In 2015 the National Museum of the American Indian will provide visitors to the National Mall a chance to explore the story of the ancient Inka Empire through a groundbreaking exhibition that has been in the making for many years. Our knowledge of the Inka has been less than complete because the Inkas left little in the way of written records and the Spanish conquerors deconstructed the culture as they established control over Inka territories. Although the Inka Empire lasted only a bit longer than two centuries, it built remarkable cities, cultural sites and a road systems the likes of which had not been seen since Roman times. Recent research by teams of scientists and engineers, including colleagues from NMAI, has established new insights into the Inkas’ accomplishments.
The first image of the Inca in Europe. Pedro Cieza de Leon, “Cronica del Peru,” 1553.
My trip was taken in conjunction with the leadership of NMAI to reinforce relations with key political constituencies and potential donors for the upcoming exhibition. Although the Inka Empire extended over land that now forms six South American countries, our trip was confined to Peru, the home of the modern Inka people and the center of the empire. Meetings were scheduled with political and organizational leaders and a formal Memorandum of Understanding was developed with the Peruvian Government that will facilitate the work needed to bring the exhibition to completion. In addition, time was allotted for the group to visit key sites to see the works of the Inka and meet descendants of the Inka people.
My traveling companions included NMAI’s director, Kevin Gover; Brenda Pipestem, member of the NMAI Advisory Board; Associate Curator and Co-Director for the Office of Latin America Ramiro Matos; Jose Barreiro, assistant director for research and co-director for the Office of Latin America; Cameron McGuire, NMAI’s associate director for museum advancement; and Robert Leopold, director of the Smithsonian Consortium for World Cultures. My wife, Anne Clough, and Kevin’s wife, Anne Marie Gover, also accompanied us. Our guide for the trip was Roger Valencia, an expert on Inka culture.
The Qhapaq Nan: Road of the Inka
The Inka Empire
Imagine that all of the people of our nation disappeared, leaving little written history. What would future generations make of us and what would they see that reflected our civilization? You might begin by exploring the cities, but it would soon become obvious that there was a great network of highways that connected them. Our Interstate Highway System was authorized in 1956 and completed 40 years later at a cost of $425 billion. It extends for 45,000 miles, criss-crossing our nation, powering our economy and connecting our states and cities. While this impressive accomplishment is admirable, another nation long ago can be said to have achieved an even greater feat. The Inkas came to power in South America in the 14th century and built the largest empire in the Americas in little over a hundred years, only to see it largely overwhelmed and destroyed with the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors in the 16th century.
Yet for the people of the Andes, the Inka culture never completely disappeared. The great Inka Road remains as testimony to what was nearly lost to history. This ancient highway system extended over 15,000 miles, crossing some of the most barren deserts and highest mountains in the world. It traversed what today are the countries of Columbia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Argentina and Chile, linking Quito in the north to Santiago in the south. That in itself is remarkable, but in contrast to our Interstate Highway System–which was built with the latest in technology using massive petroleum-powered earth movers and paving machines–but it is truly astonishing when you consider that the Inka did not have access to steel, much less iron, had no wheeled vehicles, and had only llamas as pack animals.
The remains of the ancient Inka Road are still apparent today.
What inspired the Inka and their great road was not just the concept of a transportation network, but an idea and a belief system. The Inka, like the Romans before them, understood that an empire could only survive if there was a way to knit together the diverse cultures and nations that conquest brought together. Their genius was in seeing that a road could be more than a road. They instinctively understood that this road—like none other ever seen– could inspire awe, connect disparate cultures, allow rapid communications, provide the means for troops to move quickly to points of conflict, and link iconic sites so they spoke to a higher inner purpose.
Think of this: If you had to reconstruct the richness of our civilization based only on having seen the skyscrapers of New York City, the Washington Monument and remnants of our Interstate Highway System, you get some idea of the challenge in reconstructing the Inka culture from ancient buildings in cities like Cuzco, cultural sites like Machu Picchu and the Inka Road. Fortunately we are learning the Inka Road was much more than a road; increasingly, it is providing insights into a civilization, the fullness of which is now only being understood.
The Inka and their Rise and Fall
There is still much to learn about the Inka, but what is known is that beginning in 1200, when the Andean climate warmed enough to allow agriculture in the valleys around Cuzco to thrive, the Inka people who lived there began to build what would become an empire. A series of leaders gradually expanded the reach of the Inka to larger regions. In the early 1400s, Pachacutec Inka Yupanqui defeated the most important neighboring power and added substantial riches and prestige to his realm. Subsequent leaders used either military force or diplomacy to build the empire further until it was the largest in pre-Columbian America.
The ruins at Machu Picchu.
The Inka style of governance was inclusive, allowing for conquered states to have a degree of autonomy. Loyalty was handsomely rewarded but uprisings or revolts were ruthlessly suppressed. All along the Inka Road, sites were established to provide seats of local governance and locations where the Inka could maintain their provenance. Their prowess for engineering and architecture was demonstrated as they built impressive structures with large stones that were transported in some cases for hundreds of miles. The center of the development was Cuzco, the Inka capital, where remarkable plazas and temples were built. Other significant sites were built as shrines and retreats for royalty, the most well known of these being Machu Picchu. Thousands of walls were constructed to create terraces for agriculture and erosion control. While we increasingly appreciate the magnitude and scale of this work, it is not yet fully understood how it was accomplished.
As the Empire was reaching its zenith in the early 1500s, a force the Inka could not have foreseen arrived in the New World–the Spanish conquistadors. Sending expeditionary forces from their base in Panama, Spanish forces made tentative first contact with the northern portions of the Inka Empire. Even without military force, this early contact proved deadly as smallpox spread into the native populations, killing hundreds of thousands. In 1527, the Inka leader, Huayna Capac, died suddenly, throwing the Empire into the throes of a civil war between his two sons and their competing factions. It was during this time of turmoil that the bold and calculating Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizzaro arrived with his horses and armor-clad troops. The Inka forces, armed with traditional native weapons, faced Pizzaro with overwhelming numbers, but they ran in terror as the cannon fired and horse-mounted solders charged. Seizing the presumptive emperor, Atahuallpa, Pizarro set a ransom that called for a room to be filled with gold and silver. After receiving the ransom, Pizarro executed Atahuallpa anyway out of fear that he would subsequently rally his troops.
“Pizzaro Attacks the Inca Army” by John Rush. From”Pizarro and the conquest of the Inca,” commissioned by National Geographic Magazine.
Although the Inka continued to rebel from outposts high in the Andes and along the Amazon, the days of Empire were over. Many Inka and related people were enslaved by the Spanish to mine gold and silver and to grow the food needed to supply the growing Spanish Empire that supplanted them. Although they were conquered militarily, Inka descendants still live on through their cultural sites and the Inka Road. Upwards of 15 percent of the Peruvian population today speaks the traditional Andean language of Quechua, the official language of the Inka, and many continue to observe the religious traditions of the past.
October 2 – Arrival in Lima
Lima is a mega city of 8 million people, with another 6 million residing in outlying areas. This represents about half of the total population of Peru. Lima is our point of entry on our trip, and a brief one at that. We arrive at midnight and leave early for Cuzco, the capital of the Inka Empire.
October 3 – Cuzco. Weather: warm, around 65 degrees, hazy sunshine.
Our flight takes us across the high, largely barren mountains creased by deep canyons flowing with streams from melting of glaciers. Deeper inland, regal peaks crowned by glaciers loom above the brown hills. Human settlements appear in seemingly impossible sites–deeply isolated valleys, the steeply sloping sides of mountains laced by agricultural terraces, and high mountain plateaus.
Near Cuzco, Peru. (Photo by Lucia Abramovich)
At an elevation of 11,000 feet, Cuzco is one of the highest cities in the world, and arriving flights negotiate their way above mountain peaks and plateaus. The city itself lies atop a broad plateau, appearing from the air as thousands of roofs covered by red clay tiles. Cuzco is one of the oldest cities in the Americas, with evidence of habitation going back well before the time of Christ. During the time of the Inka, Cuzco served both as a seat of power and a sacred center for the empire. The Inka applied their engineering and planning prowess to the city, making it a showplace of well engineered roads, pleasing plazas that were used for public celebrations, and religious shrines and temples.
Our landing pattern routes us around the city allowing for a spectacular view. Upon landing we all breathe a sigh of relief as our bags arrive, a minor miracle. We are in good hands for our tour with the redoubtable Roger Valencia, tour guide par excellence and a scholar of Peruvian history.
Photo by Ramiro Matos
We start our visit with a pleasant lunch at an outdoor restaurant with an open air oven. An attractive display of Inka foods illustrates the fecundity of the surrounding land and the foods that were cultivated by the Andean civilizations. Hundreds of varieties of potatoes, chilies and corn were developed to create alternative tastes and to avoid catastrophic loss in the event of disease (the Irish potato famine can be traced to over-reliance on one type of potato that was vulnerable to a fungus). Many different colors of corn are grown, including a variety with a beautiful lavender color with kernels that pop on heating–the original popcorn!
Photo by Ramiro Matos
We all studiously stick to tea or water to help acclimate to the altitude. The recommended tea to relieve altitude symptoms is coca tea made from the leaves of the coca plant. For inquiring minds, this is the same plant that produces cocaine, but the tea itself is not a stimulant. Those of us who live at low altitudes feel the effects of the 11,000-ft. elevation as lightheadedness, shortness of breath on exertion, and occasional nausea and headaches. I take pills provided by the Smithsonian health services to help relieve the symptoms.
After lunch, we take a driving tour of the central city and its historical plazas, shrines and cathedrals. The Inka presence is everywhere: from the layout of the city itself, which was shaped to mirror that of the sacred mountain lion, the Puma, to the streets with their precisely shaped stone walls. The impressive ceremonial plazas and buildings make it clear the Inka intended to display to all that they had power and wealth. While the main roads are wide, the side streets are narrow, sized for pedestrians and llama caravans and framed by buildings built on top of Inka walls and foundations. Today’s cars have little room to spare but the drivers deftly negotiate the narrow streets while the ubiquitous Cuzco dogs lollygagging in the street use precision timing to avoid destruction. I particularly liked one dog that was sleeping next to a wall oblivious to the traffic that whizzed past his nose. A trusting soul. I also found what I referred to as “Cuzco trucks” to be a bit comical with their special narrow wheelbases designed to allow them to get around on Inka-designed roads.
This wall mural in Cuzco vividly displays images of the Inka civilization and the power of the supreme Inka, the ruler of the state. Cusco was the capital city of the Inka Empire, and was known to them as Tahuantinsuyo, the place where the four corners of the world joined together. (Photo by Barry D. Kass, State University of New York)
We only had time to make two cultural stops, but both were worth the effort. Located on the Plaza de Armas, the Cathedral of Santo Domingo was completed in 1654 and serves as a repository of Colonial art and artifacts. The cathedral is not the first to use the site. A pre-Inka civilization first built a religious shrine here and its walls are still in place. The Inka in turn used those walls to build a larger structure, one that served both sacred purposes and as an astronomical observatory. The Inka observatory was laid out so that 40 lines, termed seques, were established that can be followed for miles in the direction of important terrestrial points on the horizon.
The Inka were master stonemasons. (Photo by Ramiro Matos)
The Inka temple venerated Viracocha, the creator god, and Inti, the Sun god, so this edifice is called the “Temple of the Sun.”The stone work of the Inka was masterful, with large blocks stacked on one another so precisely the joints can barely be seen, and arranged so no vertical joint passes continuously from one row to another. Doorways were shaped like trapezoids with curved corners to provide a pleasing appearance and to be more stable in the event of earthquakes.
It is said the walls of the Inka temple were covered by more than 700 sheets of gold and the courtyard contained dozens of golden sculptures of animals and gods. At the center of the courtyard was a circular pool of water that was said to reflect the sunlight onto the golden walls in such as way as to create a shimmering golden light. Most of this is lost to history; the Spanish melted the gold and built their cathedral on top of the remains of the Inka stonework. In an odd co-mingling of civilizations, the work of both the Inka and the Spanish can be seen from the exterior of the structure.
Our last stop is a visit to Iglesia de La Merced, a church and convent built in 1536 on land donated by Pizarro. It was rebuilt in 1680 after being damaged by a large earthquake. Inside the entryway the visitor walks into a beautiful garden framed on four sides by the façade of the building. The façade is composed of repeating arches supported by graceful columns set both inside and outside of the walls. The late afternoon sunlight at the time of our visit graced the garden and its sumptuous blossoms with soft beauty.
Smithsonian Secretary Wayne Clough and Luis Florez Garcia, mayor of Cuzco. (Photo by Ramiro Matos)
We conclude the evening with a ceremonial visit to the office of the Mayor of Cuzco, the honorable Luis Arturo Florez Garcia. Our delegation was received by the Mayor in an elegant room graced by historic paintings of Cuzco with both Inka and Spanish heritages represented. Two flags hang from stanchions, one representing Peru and one, with all the colors of the rainbow, representing the Quechua people. We discussed the upcoming exhibit on the Inka Road and how it would help inform the millions of people who visit NMAI each year about the culture of the Inka and the history of Peru. Since tourism is important to Cuzco and the surrounding area, the exhibition will bring direct economic benefit. The NMAI exhibition is expansive in scope and plan. Like the Inka road itself, the NMAI exhibition is a major undertaking involving an international cross-disciplinary team of anthropologists, archaeologists, ethnologists, linguists and engineers. The Mayor applauded NMAI’s effort and expressed an interest in coming to Washington to see the exhibition.
(Next: Macchu Pichu)
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Posted: 2 December 2011
