The Cuzco of My Literary Imagination

by Daniel Cano

Author standing at the entrance to Sacred Valley

     As I travelled through the wonders of Peru, something kept nagging at me. At first, I couldn't quite put my finger on it. Okay, let me start at the beginning.
     It sounds silly, but in my mind, I carried the image of Cuzco, Peru, as Ron Arias described it in his 1987 novel The Road to Tomazunchale. It had been a long time since I read the novel, in my mid-forties, but Fausto, the protagonist, and Cuzco were engraved in my mind: he an old man facing his death, a Chicano Quixote, of sorts, while visiting a dream-like colonial Peruvian town with his niece during the time of kings, nobles, and viceroys. Though the novel was set in modern times, Fausto, like Quixote, often slipped from present to past and future without much effort, an East L.A. transcendentalist, right up there with Emerson, Thoreau and Whitman.
     When I arrived to Cuzco (which our guide insisted we pronounce Cozco) this past January on LATAM Airlines from Lima, I didn’t recognize the Cuzco of my literary imagination. Instead of a quaint, lovely colonial town based in the past, not unlike many colonial towns throughout Latin America, I found a large, thriving, modern city, looking more toward the future and less the past. And, in some ways, like Fausto, I, too, now in my early 70s, could see the bulk of the past behind me and only glimmers of the future ahead.
     Yet, Peru, with all its progress, like Fausto, also felt more past than future. I saw Inca kings and warriors, as well as Spanish conquistadores and governors. I’d read much of Peru, and Latin America’s history, so history’s ghosts travelled by my side, and I could see fleeting specters in the main zocalo, the churches, the ruins, and around the corners and alleys I’d creep through at night among the throngs of tourists, the Starbuck’s, KFC, McDonalds’, North Face, and Patagonia storefronts, prominent, international names, that appeared to deface rather than illuminate.
                                                                                 

Cuzco, a tourist's city

     In the distance, surrounding the city, hundreds of thousands of lights twinkled in the dark mountains, newly constructed homes, old neighborhoods, and illegal settlements founded by the poor on vacant lands outside the city limits, the same urban blight as in other Peruvian cities.
     The thing about Peru is that the entire country is in the midst of growth, one of the few Latin American countries progressing in a region of the world where we hear about nothing but failure, chaos and confusion. Yet, even as I caught my plane home three weeks later, I never could truly find my footing, my comfort level in the land of Atahualpa, not like I could in Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, or even Cuba, countries with strong identities, whether good or bad.
                                                                               

First full view of Machu Picchu

     To me, there was a sorrowful silence that permeated everything Peruvian, even the din of
metropolitan downtown Lima. There was something unsettling beneath the surface of Peru I couldn’t identify, as if the creature from the Black Lagoon was swimming on its back beneath our boat ready to pounce at any time, or perhaps the anticipation of living at the foot of hundreds of stewing volcanoes, maybe even the heartbreak of each new scandal corrupting legislators, young and old, and always, the people, no matter how hard they work, carrying the brunt of the sins.
     I couldn’t seem to find Peru. Instead, I recognized the weight of other cultures, including Asian, European, Middle Eastern, and North American dominating the once proud Incan empire rather than complementing it. It’s as if the Peruvian people are living on rented land whose landlords can hand out eviction notices at will, with Chile threatening from one side and Argentina from another. Everything seems temporary. With 2,000 varieties of potatoes, even the food tastes more European than Peruvian.
     Cuzco, a lovely, progressive city, is the jumping off point, in one direction to the heights of the Andes, where foreign mining companies exploit Peruvians working the gold and silver mines, and in the other direction to Machu Picchu and the depths of the Amazon, where oil and other natural resources are open to the highest bidder. On one side, ice and cold and on the other heat and humidity, with remnants of the great empire everywhere. Since 2007, and the induction of Machu Picchu as a World Heritage site, tourists flood the mountains, canyons, valleys, and jungles bringing in much needed income to desolate regions.
                                                                               

Construction beyond comprehension

         For a vulnerable Latin American country, like Peru, gold, silver, ore, or uranium, as one tour guide explained, is like having a beautiful daughter, sometimes more a curse than a blessing. In Cuzco, and other Peruvian towns, many of the modern buildings are constructed atop ancient foundations laid by Inca and other Quiche speaking people, stone foundations of such strength and magnitude that to destroy them would have been nearly impossible, a poignant metaphor, as if the Peruvian people are propping up the outsiders who come in, extract anything of value, and place heavy burdens on those who remain.
     Like Fausto, as I climbed steep, cobble stone streets and pyramid steps, I could feel my own mortality, each beat of my heart pumping, the blood moving through my veins, the pressure in my head, the weight on my feet, and the curling of my toes. So many in much better shape than I have succumbed to the gods of heights. Cuzco is 7500 feet, Machu Picchu 4,000, Puno (and the infamous and enormous Lake Titicaca, with its 41 inhabited islands) 12,500 ft, and the upper levels of the Andes 16,500 ft. It is a beautiful country.
     Carlos, our guide from Cuzco to the Sacred Valley, told us only those who are sensitive to the country's mystical energy will experience it. Others see only antiquated ruins. As I watched condors with eight-foot wing spans fly, at 16,000 feet, I was cognizant of the fact that 2,000 feet above me, the illegal, nightmare of a town called La Rinconada, operated by a U.S. mining company, was destroying a wonderous landscape in its quest for gold, sending women and children, whose sleek, tiny bodies fit neatly into the narrow, frozen rock crevices. The Peruvian government turns a blind eye to the slaughter of innocence. There is no regulation, as in other industries.
     In an essay, Marie Arana wrote of Rinconada’s streets, “Mercury levels in those public spaces are 5,000 percent higher than what is permissible in regulated factories. But, here, no one is measuring. Women and children hurry through the murky haze, hawking their food and water. The sick struggle in and out of doorways, breathing the deadly air. At night, when the drinking establishments turn into brothels, La Rinconada descends through every circle of hell.” Of course, La Rinconada, as well as other mining sites, where atrocities occur daily, are not on the tourist route.
                                                                                 

Tourists bearing gifts to children living at 16,000 feet

     "18 million [children] are engaged in hard labor in Latin America.... More than 2 million are in Peru, which accounts for the highest ratio of child laborers in all of Latin America."
     Miners are not paid a salary. They work 30 days for contractors and on the last day whatever they can pull from the mine on their back is theirs. "On average, a miner in La Rinconada earns $170 a month--$5.00 for every day of grueling work. If he has a bad month, he earns $30.00." And when one considers, "At 14,000 feet, the human body can experience pulmonary endma, blood closts, kidney failure; at 18,000 the injuries can be more severe." Working at La Rinconada is akin to indentured servitude. Many of the miners forfeit their identity cards and cannot leave until their contract has been completed.
     This type of systematic exploitation isn't only in Peru, or South America, but also in the fields of Central America and Mexico. Latin American governments receiving huge payouts by foreign governments and corporations, bribes couched as legitimate loans or government assistance, keep Latin American legislators' eyes turned away from the atrocities.
     So, when Americans see caravans of migrants heading north, seeking asylum, most are escaping, not just gangs, violence, or extortion, but ungodly working conditions under which they are required to toil. "For every gold ring that goes out into the world, 250 tons of rock must move, a toxic pound of mercury will spill into the environment, and countless lives--biological and botanical--will struggle with the consequences."
     As I enjoyed my lunch in the magnificent "white city" of Arequipa, dined in fine restaurants, and visited monasteries and museums, I came to understand why the nagging was more than just the altitude.

Arana, Marie, "Dreaming of El Dorado", from Virginia Quarterly, published in The Best American Travel Writing, 2013.