on cusco…

El ombligo del mundo “The belly button of the world”, that’s what some poet…was it Llosa?…called Cusco.  And for an empire that was, and for a diverse group of tribes and peoples brought together by force and by diplomacy over the centuries, it was indeed the navel of the world…the center of all things.
“But then the Spanish came”…theres a line that could follow an infinite number of stories and moments in North, Central, and South America.  The Aztecs, the Native Americans of what is now the U.S.A., the Maya of the Yucatan, the Mapuche of Chile and Argentina, the Telhuelche of the patagonian plains, the Yahgan of Tierra del Fuego, and the Inca of Perú, those who built the mightiest empire in the “New” world.
Every one of their histories were, in effect, cut short, chapters that should have been, instead torn out of their cultural tomes by the arrival of the Spanish.  So many of these societies were just on the cusp or in the very middle of huge leaps in their societal evolutions in those opening years of the 1500’s when the “Hey, Columbus just stumbled onto some new land” bandwagon got into full swing and all those pallid, bearded, disease-carrying conquistadores like Cortés, Pizarro, De las Casas and others sailed out to seek fame and fortune. 
It was just devastating.  Hell, the Spaniards really didn’t have to do much to conquer many of the places because smallpox, measles, influenza and other illnesses which the New world had never seen, wiped out anywhere from 30-90 percent of the local populations before the Spanish could almost hop off their boats.
Why am I saying all of this when the title of this post is “on cusco”?  Well, to know Cusco today it helps to know what it was for many centuries, and what a drastic and tragic change of fortune it and the entire Inca Empire suffered when the Spanish stepped out of the bushes and beheld it.
Rome wasn’t built in a day, nor was Cusco.  It wasn’t even much more than a one llama town until sometime in the 12^th century when a guy named Manco Capac became the first “Inka” (supreme ruler), gathered a few tribes together and took over Cusco Valley.  Where did he come from?  Well, he was either (depending on your take on things) pulled forth from the depths of Lake Titikaka in a sort of “Son of God” type way or, more humbly, grew up about 20 miles South of Cusco where he and his brothers (who he purportedly betrayed and killed a bit later on) decided it was time to pull an Alexander the Great, South American style. 
He ruled for 40 years and set up a system of laws and societal norms that were carried on for another 400 years.  Law school would have been easy back in those days.  Manco kept things simple and direct, laying down only 3 unbreakable rules: Ama suwa, ama llulla, ama qilla in Quechua, which translates to: don’t steal, don’t lie, don’t be lazy.
And lazy they were not.  Slowly, through the centuries, succeeding Incas expanded into new territories, allowing conquered tribes to continue worshipping their own gods, and to maintain their own culture, as long as they swore to serve and help nurture the Inca and his empire.
DIGRESSION:  I always thought that the word “Inca” referred to all the people who made up the empire of that name.  Wrong.  “Inca” basically means “supreme leader” or “ruler” and the only dude who anyone back in the day called “inca” was, well, the inca (or inka).  Everyone else were called by their tribal or ethnic names: quechua, aymará, and a ton of others.  END DIGRESSION.
And so the decades and centuries passed, and all the while the peoples of the Inca Empire (even though it was more of a city-state at that time…but jesus, let’s not get so specific) honed and shaped their culture and their skills, becoming over time incredibly skilled stoneworkers, farmers, weavers, civil engineers, and potters.  They also got pretty damned close to creating their own way of recording language using quipu, a series of knotted cords of varying colors.  The combination of knots and colors signified various data, usually numerical and were used to keep track of tributes, crop quantities, populations, etc.  There is still a lot of mystery surrounding the quipu and many experts continue to believe that they were also used to record language, although no “rosetta stone” has been found to help them decipher them.
Who knows, but given a few more centuries, or less, the people living within the Inca Empire might very well have created a New World version of ancient Greece or Eygpt.  In fact, in an incredibly productive 70 year span, the “official” Inca Empire expanded so rapidly that by 1530 it stretched from Colombia all they way down to central Argentina and Chilé..  And many of the ruins that now make the city of Cusco and this part of Perú a hotbed of tourism, date from that cultural and geographical explosion.
“But then the Spanish came.” And in the blink of a generational eye, the Inca and his relatives were killed, millions upon millions of native peoples died, and a once mighty civilization became nothing more than a series of beautifully crafted stone walls, intricate blankets, and broken shards of pottery.
Cusco, at the time of Francisco Pizarro’s arrival in 1533, had several incredible architectural monuments.  One was the Qoricancha, meaning “field of gold”, another was the nearby Sacsayhuamán,  an incredible fortress that also sported giant towers holding the city’s water supply, and another, the twisted, organic sacred site called Q’enko that held the mummies of all of the 15 Inkas to have ruled the empire.
Qoricancha was a series of temples to the sun, moon and stars all hemmed in by a polished black wall capped with gold foil.  In the garden below the temples stood life-size figures of animals and plants…made of and/or encased in gold.  Imagine Pizarro’s greedy eyes nearly popping out of his lice-ridden head upon seeing all that wealth just sitting around being pretty.  He and his ilk proceeded to pillage the area, even tearing down much of the complex’s walls to get at the ties made of gold and bronze alloy used to hold some stones together.  Some time afterward, a convent was erected on the site, often using inca-made walls as the base for their colonial structures.  Some of the temples were left intact, where they still reside in one of the convent’s courtyards.  In a testament to inca stone working skills, a series of earthquakes in the past few centuries have time and again thrown down the colonial portions of the convent, but the inca walls have barely even shifted.
Sacsayhuamán, an imposing fortress that stands high above the actual city of Cusco, was built way back near the time of the founder of the Inca Empire, Manco Capac.  Quarrying stones from the very site, workers erected a monumental fortress in such a way that it resembles the head and jagged teeth of a puma.  Some of the stones used in the construction weigh over 100 tons, and every one of them are fitted together in that unique inca way, somehow seeming organic, more permanent than natural stone itself. Not even a piece of paper would fit in the seams between the stones.  Two giant towers, probably over 60 feet high, served as cisterns, holding the water supply for the entire city. 
The Spanish conquistadores were more than happy to tear down Sacsayhuamán, using the stones to erect their cathedrals, offices and homes.  This pilfering of the site, often with the aid of dynamite to separate the perfectly joined rocks continued until 1934, leaving us today with only 10 percent of the original site…and what a 10 percent, man.  It’s an epic place, on par in my opinion with the pyramids of Egypt and Mexico, with St. Peter’s Basilica, with the Parthenon.  To stand next to an 80 ton stone hewn in curves and angles to fit the rocks around it, to touch its 900 years of history, to witness its survival through countless earthquakes…
It’s one of those “shiver” moments…goosebumps all over.
And then Q’enko  a big lump of rock exposed in some distant glacial past.  The inca stoneworkers enhanced and played with the natural cracks, caverns and  twists in the site, creating a serpentine entrance through a narrow chasm that leads into a low-roofed cave.  Inside the humid darkness there, carved into one of the walls is a rectangular niche, just about big enough to sit in.  There, up until the arrival of the Spanish, rested the mummy of the founder of the Inca Empire, Manco Capac.  Knees drawn to his chest, arms wrapped around his legs, he sat there for hundreds of years, accepting the offerings of those who came to visit him: the coca leaves, the food, the llama fetuses, the chichi (a beer made from maize)…he answered prayers, proffered advice, settled disputes, and generally just hung out.  Outside and up, in a rough semicircle around a stone that resembled the hunched mummy of their founding father, in their own niches, rested the mummies of the 14 succeeding Incas.  There were also empty niches, awaiting future leaders, but they were never to house them, for they never came. 
Manco Capac’s new Cusco was built in such a way that from the mountains above, it would appear to be a puma.  This was a common practice in Inca town planning.  First the town would be laid out in a predetermined fashion, usually in the shape of an animal, and later the entire town would be built in one go.  The residential areas would be made of stone using a mortar made of mud, llama hair, and the juice of a cactus.  The temples would be built with more care; polished stones, sometimes of massive proportions, joined together in seamless fashion, with no mortar…doors, windows, niches, and even the walls in a trapezoidal shape, a very stable form of construction…seismically resistant. 
The centuries passed, and with each one, the Incas gathered more and more territory.  The big expansion came when the Inca Pachacuti or “world-shaker” came on the scene in the middle of the 1400’s.  In the next 70ish years he and his successors kicked some major booty, ballooning the empire to about 750,000 square miles, or about a quarter of the size of the U.S.  All without horses, written language, or the wheel…just a whole hell of a lot of walking, talking, and bopping people over the head when necessary.
The Cusco that the Spanish found was an incredibly well-organized and wealthy city, a place to inspire awe…and greed.  They stripped the homes and temples of anything of value, built a bunch of churches, convents, government buildings in their “colonial” style and all watched as Cusco slowly faded into a dusty dormancy that lasted until the late 1970’s.
In 1911, a guy named Hiram Bingham, a historian and archaeologist from the States, in a search for a famed lost city, was led by some locals to what is now the single most visited attraction in all of South America, Machupicchu or “old mountain”.
He’d “found” a resort city sitting about 40 miles from Cusco, that had been used by the inca nobility since it was built during the reign of old “world-shaker” pachacuti himself.  Hiram spent years excavating the site, writing books about his “Lost City of the Inca” and pilfering thousands of priceless objects out of Perú and into the U.S., where they still reside, much to the distaste and ire of current-day Peruvians.
His books were instant best sellers and National Geographic even dedicated an entire issue to the ruins of Machupicchu.  Their words and photos, and the stories of those people who had the means and desire to see it with their own eyes, increased the site’s mystique and legend, unknowingly giving birth to what is today a massive tourist industry dedicated solely to the ruins of the Inca peoples.
And that’s what Cusco is today, a tourism engine…a layover on the way to Machupicchu and the other ruins in the area.  In the last 20 years it’s population has tripled, now exceeding 300,000 people (and growing every day).  The owner of the hostel where I’ve been staying told me with a hint of bitterness “You know, 10 years ago, on this street, there were 3 hostels.  Now…” he paused, shaking his head “…now, there’re over 17…just on this street!”  And it’s true.  It seems like every other door says “hostel” or “hotel” or “lodging”.  And all the other doors lead to restaurants, cafés, adventure agencies, tour agencies and knickknack shops.  A walk down the street in the heart of Cusco is like running a gauntlet of offers, promotions, sales pitches, and discounts for this, that, and the other.
(in a thick Peruvian accent) “Hey, friend…tourist information?  It’s a winner”
“No, thank you, though”
“Hey, mister, you want dinner?  Good place, free nachos, beer on draft!”
“Uh, No, thanks, not right now.”
“Excuse me, sir, maybe you like to go raft?…great time!…don’t be frail”
“No, thanks.”
“Mister!  You want to do Inca Trail.  Very cheap, your only chance!”
“No.”
“Hey, friend, want to dance?  Happy hour, no prices set.”
“…” a shake of the head, silence.
“Friend, internet?  Very fast, many fixture.”
“…” no head shake, a mild glare.
“Mister, you like picture?  Look!  Many kind.”
“…” a direct glare that lingers.  Finally snapping with a yell
“I don’t want info, it’s not a winner, and I don’t want any of your dinner
 with beer on draft, and I surely don’t want to raft
(and I’m NOT at all frail), and no, no, no to the Inca Trail,
Because I will have a chance, and no way do I want to dance,
with or without the prices set, and I’ve already surfed the internet,
and what the hell do you mean by “fixture?” and a big NO to your blurry picture
…no, no, no to this giant scam, I don’t want anything sam I am!”
 
That’s what it feels like…a crazy Dr. Seuss nightmare of people accosting me from all sides at all times until I just want to yell (in very un-dr. seuss-like fashion) “Shut the fuck up, already!  I don’t want anything that you might offer me.  Do you understand ‘NO’?”  but what I do instead is shake my head grimly, maybe mumble a “no thanks” and plow ahead.  There’s one particular street, informally called “gringo alley” by most tourists, where maybe a hundred local people wait on the sidewalk, menus, fliers, and cards in hand, and as I walk along, it’s like pushing through a wall of pleas, offers and entreaties…but there’s one more product offered on this street to anyone that even vaguely fist the “profile”…drugs.
“Psst…friend….cocaine, blow, sniff, marijuana…X…whatever you want.”
These are always whispered urgently as I pass, sometimes with a restaurant card handed to me to make it look on the level. (do I look so much like a druggie?  I wonder in these moments),
And many young people who work in several of the bars and nightclubs actually make their real money selling drugs, as there’s no lack of eager customers looking to get fucked up on their journey…which just strikes me as odd, really.  Why not stay at home and use the plane and lodging fare to buy massive quantities of whatever it is you want, instead of stumbling around some foreign local like a pathetic Keith Richards with Charles Manson eyes, overdosing in some lonesome, humid hostel room…when you can do that in the comfort of your own home, for christ’s sake.  Anyway, all that can be avoided with a clean shave, no hand-sewn wool hats, no piercings, tattoos, or hemp necklaces…and maybe by just wearing a nun’s habit.
Cusco in 2006 is a never-ending fusion of ancient inca ruins and colonial and post-colonial architecture.  The aforementioned qoricancha has a convent built on and around Inca temples, the cathedral is paved in stones pilfered from sacsayhuaman. On one street, San Blas, a colonial era building that now houses a museum is built atop an exquisite green-granite inca wall. One of the stones in that wall, about halfway along the narrow street has been carved with 12 angles so that surrounding stones can fit into it snugly.  Of course, it’s impossible to miss, only because half a dozen children under the age of 10 tug at sleeves saying “mister, look at the stone of 12 angles!  It is magic!” etc.  And there are countless other examples of the Spanish re-builders of Cusco taking advantage of the seismically resistant, beautiful ruins of the long-dead Inca peoples.
The casco viejo or “old town” of Cusco is a maze of tight-hipped cobbled streets, winding through colonial architecture bowing, bending, and leaning at sometimes crazy angles. Most of these buildings have what look to be original wooden balconies that have lost all sense of balance, lurched drunkenly above the street, not a plumb line to be seen.  All of the roofs are made of long red “U’s” of  ceramic, stained with mold and lichen.  The whole, seen from the hills above seems like a rough, freeform ochre chalk drawing.  In that almost uncanny way of many old town centers, all the streets of the casco viejo eventually snake there way down to the plaza de armas, the main plaza of the city.  Even on hot dusty days the cobbles and paving stones gleam with a dull polish, the result of so many scuffling feet and gripping tires.  And when it rains, that polish leaps brighter, reflecting sky, streetlamp, and headlight.  There are only a few, low trees in the plaza, a conscious decision by the architects so that the view of the cathedral, another church and all of the colonial balconies that hem the public area in won’t be obstructed.  Instead, grass, flowers and hedges fill out the unpaved portions of the square, and police with whistles patrol the area day and night, bleating out a chastisement to any and all who dare step on all that greenery. 
The nightlife, at least in the high season, is a smorgasbord of European, Asian, Latin American, Middle Eastern, North American, and Australian travelers.  The nightclubs are packed almost all week long, offering free salsa lessons and happy “hours” that should be more aptly called “happy-all-friggin-day-and-night-long” During the day, these clubs morph their spaces into mini cinemas, showing as many as 8 movies a day (of course they’re pirated dvd’s being shown for profit…basically breaking every single copyright law written since the day’s of hammurabi.) Many travelers come here to take Spanish classes, volunteer with orphanages and other N.G.O’s, visit ruins, raft deadly rivers, risk their lives in other adventure sports, or just hang out (like me…well, I dug the ruins, too).
In short, Cusco is the epitome of travel in this day in age…if you want to visit living history, if you want to see ruins about which you’ve been reading since you were a child, if you want to touch and walk through one of the “wonders of the world”, you have to deal with everything that comes along with that: scam artists, high prices, a ton of other gringos, noise, crowding, and knickknacks…I guess traveling, in its purest sense, is a fusion of two worlds…it’s as seamless, organic, and permanent as the stone walls of the Inca…the only problem being that you have to carry the weight of all that slapdash, thrown-up-in-a-rush crap that’s been built upon and around it…
Regardless, it is still and always will be worth it.