Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
the notions of social Darwinism on the superiority of the “civilized races”; they are no
longer environmentally deterministic in the mechanically reflexive way of his earlier
identities,cultures,andeconomiesthroughinteractiveprocessesthattodaywemightcall
“co-evolution” or a kind of “socio-environmentalism.” Da Cunha's view of the interac-
tion of locality, culture, race, and livelihoods is more subtle than his earlier positions on
the“marchofhistory”andcomesclosertothemoderngeographicsubdisciplineofpolit-
ical ecology. Da Cunha explores national history and imperial trajectories as well as the
implications of the converging and tumultuous Amazon frontiers for Peru and Brazil.
“Contrasts and Comparisons” is the first of these essays:
Anyone tracking the itinerary of von Humboldt amongst the mountains and peoples of Peru notes
an interesting parallelism: People and landscape mirror each other. History there seems like a vulgar
plagiarism of Nature. It is noted in all periods: by the archaeologist viewing the bas-reliefs of the
crumbling temples, the geologists describing the strata that fold up in sharp escarpments, and the co-
lonial chroniclers andtheir moving narratives ofthe conquistadors. Wesee inthese jumbled contrasts
how the social facts imitate inorganic realities, reappearing, reproducing, and reasserting themselves
between two extremes: on the one, the Andes and civilization of the Incas; on the other, the Peru of
earthquakes and of edicts.
As one travels from the crumpled and demolished coastal lands, confined to the trembling filigree
of seismic faults and their periodic cataclysms, and then ascends the imposing immobility of the An-
dean Cordillera held in place by a rigid skeleton of dolomite, one moves from a rebellious and febrile
republic, periodically agitated by the irritable weakness of its caudillos, to the wreckage of a patri-
archal empire propped up by an inflexible theocracy and caste system. . . .
One can't disguise these differences and these identities. They are there in strip of the littoral with
ical past is counterposed to an undefined and deplorable present: they face each other, they repulse
each other.
DaCunhagoesontodescribethetriumphsoftheIncacivilization:sanctuariesworked
from living rock, the extensive irrigation systems, excellent roads, architecture, and
monuments to defy cataclysm:
From Cajamarca to Cuzco there is probably not a kilometer where a small pyramid, an obelisk, a
pillar, a bit of ruined portico, a plinth of granite with etched bas-relief, a phalanx of monoliths, or a
caryatid ofbluishporphyrydoesnotevokethat extraordinary race—one that wasinnocent ofironbut
that chiseled rockwith delicate bronze tools andcreated monumental sculpture fromblocks ofmoun-
tains.. . .[TheIncaalso]soughttheeternalglacialsprings,capturedanddirectedthem,sometimesby
adjusting the slopes, other times by punching subterranean channels through mountains or even—a
detail that considerably pushes back the beginnings of modern hydrology—connecting the flow from
one mountain to the next in numberless conduits. Finally, in places where they couldn't find solid
bedrock on which to erect their monuments they invented a kind of gigantic polygonal apparatus to
support them. The Inca created an architecture to resist catastrophe. . . . But they did not foresee the
calamity of the arrival of the sixteenth-century Spaniard.
Search WWH ::
Custom Search