Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Imbued with what sociologist Gilberto Freyre has called the mystique of the engineer,
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daCunhaclearlywasenchantedbythetechnocratic,constructive,andconstructingInca:
“Thatstrongandpeacefulracewhichgaveprideofplacetoitsagriculturalinspectors,its
engineers who opened roads and canals, to the architects who raised their temples—this
civilization was undone by treachery and the brutality of Spain.”
Comparing this edifying Inca civilization to the disintegration that attended the con-
quistadors: “Their history became an obscene copy of those temblors that in minutes
turned cities to rubble.” He contrasts the unity of the native race, its sure and ordered
methods,withthedisorderandchaosbroughtbythelarge-scalepillagepresidedoverby
“alltheracesoftheworld.”The“Peruvian,” hepointsout,“evenmorethanthe'Brazili-
an,' is an ethnographic fiction.”
Da Cunha describes the racial diversity of the Chinese, blacks, Spaniards and how all
were bent on plunder:
They snatched the gold, the silver, the nitrates, the guano, the mummies, and the stones from the
temples. . . . They hacked at the coasts and the islands, they clawed the flanks of the mountains, they
profaned the funeral pyramids and sacked the tombs and the
huacas
*1
of the ancients, prizes at times
more valuable than the richest mines: it is enough to note that that with a fifth of the gold from but
one of these, the town of Trujillo was built. . . .
Nothing characterizes better the parasitism, the contempt for traditions, the lack of solidarity, and
the unstable energies. . . . The past is only treasure for plunder . . . to be used in a strictly utilitarian
manner. Appropriating at random, the flimsy and turbulent society tangibly expresses in its debase-
ment, its contrasts to the dead Civilization: it is reflected in the miserable huts built chaotically on
the massive foundations of monuments, or even of cities: we cite only Huamachuco, built with block
ripped from temples, a dismal collection of old facades, huddled and humbled rearrangements of the
former metropolitan grandeur, broken up for hovels with sagging roofs and thick walls—a melan-
choly architecture of ruins.
Da Cunha goes on to argue that Peruvian imperial political culture was equally as im-
pulsive, sterile, and agitated by the constant intrigues, the battles, the endless proclama-
tions, the dangerous presidential successions done
à americana
—with revolvers.
In these differences, one almost senses that the Peruvian incursions into the remote frontiers of the
upper Juruá are a rebuff, a yearning to abandon that narrow sliver of land where a Nation whose Inca
origins presaged the loftiest destinies is buried, hemmed in between the vastest of seas and highest
peaks in lands convulsed by the disharmony that has so decreed its misfortune . . . After one has as-
cended, then crossed overthe second chain ofthe Andesthere unfoldsastable nature—one devoid of
catastrophes and ruins, one with its creative forces still intact, awaiting only the prodigious force of
labor. This tropical hinterland offers, through the discipline of toil in prolonged and mindful efforts,
and in its durable intimations of its own natural harmony, a refuge from the turmoil that was always
denied Peruvians in their other lands. It incarnates possibilities that could awaken the best aspects of
their character, aspects that today are displaced by a kind of belligerence that is both a weakness and
an anachronism. But this setting might further jeopardize them, creating yet greater misfortune, if in
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