from: Dilwyn Jenkins: The rough guide to Peru; Rough
Guides, New York London, Delhi; 6th edition September
2006; www.roughguides.com
Cusco and Machu Picchu
Offering access to Machu Picchu - the biggest tourist
destination in the Americas - CUSCO has become one of the
most popular destinations in Peru. Located in a highland
valley, fed by two rivers, the city's unique layout was
designed in the form of a puma by the Incas hundreds of
years ago (p.244).
[The Incas were a belligerent and strong people and -
compared with other pre-Inca cultures - did not enjoy life
too much. The dictatorship of the system was absolute, and
spiritually only a tiny upper class had access to the gods.
So the Inca system was not at all "romantic" but stupid.
That's why many other cultures helped the Europeans to
destroy the Inca leader state].
Some history about Cusco (Cuzco)
Killki temples - Inca
temples on Killki temples
The Cusco Valley and the Incas are synonymous in most
people's minds, but the area was populated well before the
Incas arrived on the scene and built their empire on the
toil and ingenuity of previous peoples. The
Killki, who dominated
the region from around 700-800 AD, while primarily agrarian,
also built temple structures from the hard local diorite and
andesite stones. Some of these structures still survive,
while others were incorporated into later Inca constructions
- the sun temple of Koricancha, for example, was built on
the foundations of a Killki sun temple.
The foundation of the Inca
empire capital of Cusco - the legend and the wars - the
puma form - stone houses of Inca terror and slavery
According to Inca legend, Cusco was founded by
Manco Capac and his
sister Mama Occlo around 1200 AD. Over the next two hundred
years the valley was home to the Inca tribe, one of many
localized groups then dominating the Peruvian sierra. It
wasn't until
Pachacuti
assumed leadership of the Incas in 1438 that Cusco became
the centre of an expanding empire and took the Inca army,
gaining religious and political control of the surrounding
valleys and regions. As Pachacuti pushed the frontier of
Inca territory outwards, he also master-minded the design of
imperial Cusco, canalizing the Saphi and the Tullumayo, two
rivers that ran down the valley, and built the center of the
city between them.
Cusco's city plan was conceived in the (p.244)
form of a puma, a sacred animal:
Sacsayhuaman, an important ritual center and
citadel [fortress about 2km on a hill near Cusco], is the
jagged, tooth-packed head;
Pumachupan
[lower part of Cusco] the sacred cat's tail, lies at the
junction of the city's two rivers; between these two sites
lies
Koricancha,
the
Temple of the Sun,
reproductive center of the Inca universe, the loins of this
sacred beast; the heart of the puma was
Huacapata, a ceremonial
square approximating in both size and position to the
present-day
Plaza de Armas,
then Aucaypata. Four main roads radiated from the square,
one to each corner of the empire.
The overall achievement was remarkable, a planned city
without rival at the center of a huge empire, and in
building their capital the Incas endowed Cusco with some of
its finest structures. Stone palaces and houses lined the
streets which ran straight and narrow, with water channels
to drain off the heavy rains. So solidly built, much of
ancient Cusco is still visible today, particularly in the
stone walls of what were once palaces and temples.
[The big majority in the Inca system were slaves of the tiny
upper class. The slaves never had stone houses].
The colonial occupation by
the Spaniards
In 1532, when the Spanish arrived in Peru, Cusco was a
thriving city, and capital of one of the world's biggest
empires [with a huge slavery and repression]. The Spaniard
[who came with the help of the natives who were suppressed
by the Incas] were astonished: the city's beauty surpassed
anything they had seen before in the New World, the
stonework was better than any in Spain and precious metals,
used in a sacred context throughout the city, were in
abundance throughout Koricancha. They lost no time in
plundering its fantastic wealth [with the agreement of the
natives who were not Incas so the terror regime was gone for
ever].
Atahualpa, the
emperor at the time was captured by Spanish Conquistadors in
Cajamarca while en route to Cusco, returning from bloody
battles in the northern extremity of the empire. [Many
natives never wanted the Inca terror]. Hearing from the
Emperor Atahualpa himself of Cusco's great wealth as the
center of Inca religious and political power,
Francisco Pizarro
reached the native capital on November 15, 1533.
Refounding of Cusco under
Spanish terror - civil war - siege of Cusco by the natives
- Spanish occupation of Sacsayhuaman
The Spanish city was officially founded on March 23, 1534:
keeping the same name as it had under the Incas, Cusco was
divided up among 88 of Pizarro's men who chose to remain
there as settlers.
Manco
Inca, a blood relative of Atahualpa (who was
murdered by Pizarro, see pp. 577-578), was set up as a
puppet ruler, governing from a new palace on the hill just
below Sacsayhuaman. After Pizarro's departure, his sons Juan
and Gonzalo came out on top of the power struggle, and after
a year were free to abuse Manco and his subjects, which
eventually provoked the Incas to open resistance. In 1536
Manco fled to Yucay, in the Sacred Valley, to gather forces
for the
Great Rebellion.
Within days the two hundred Spanish defenders, with only
eighty horses, were surrounded in Cusco by over 100,000
rebel Inca warriors. On May 6 Manco's men laid siege to the
city. After a week, a few hundred mounted Spanish soldiers
launched a desperate counterattack on the Inca base in
Sacsayhuaman and, incredibly, defeated the native
stronghold, putting some 1500 warriors to the sword as they
took it.
White rival Almagro in
Cusco - Pizarro lets execute Almagro - Inca rebellion in
Vilcabamba
Spanish-controlled Cusco never again came under such serious
threat from its indigenous population, but its battles were
far from over. By the end of the rains the following year, a
rival Conquistador, Almagro, seized Cusco for himself until
Francisco Pizarro a few months later, defeated the rebel
Spanish troops and had Almagro garroted in the main plaza.
Around the same time, a diehard group of rebel Incas held
out in Vilcabamba until 1572, when the Spanish colonial
viceroy, Toledo, captured the leader Tupac Aymaru [Tupac
Amaru] and had him beheaded in the Plaza de Armas.
Cusco earthquake in 1650 -
Bishop Mollinedo's leadership in rebuilding the town
From then on the city was left in relative peace, ravaged
only by the great earthquake of 1650. After this dramatic
tremor, remarkably illustrated on a huge canvas in La
Catedral de Cusco,
Bishop
Mollinedo was largely responsible for the
reconstruction of the city, and his influence is also
closely associated with Cusco's most creative years of art.
The Cusqueña school (p.245) (see box, p.256), which emerged
from his patronage, flourished for the next two hundred
years, and much of its finer work, produced by native
Quechua and
mestizo
artists such as Diego Quispe Tito, Juan Espinosa de los
Monteros, Fabian Ruiz and Antonio Sinchi Roca, is exhibited
in ["Christian"] museums and ["Christian"] churches around
the city.
[At the same time the "Christian" regime was killing any
resistance with stakes and hanging against the natives up to
independence - and since then the mestizos in the towns are
governing against the pure natives in the villages].
1911: Detection of Machu
Picchu - Cusco becomes a tourist center - festivities and
political disaster
In spite of this cultural heritage, Cusco only received
international attention after the discovery of Machu Picchu
by Hirham Bingham's archaeological expedition of discovery
in 1911. With the advent of air travel and global tourism,
Cusco has been slowly transformed from a quiet colonial city
in the remote Andes into a busy tourist center with scores
of decent hotels, restaurants and shops retailing local
peasant craft and also some fine jewelery, much of this
replicating Inca style and design.
[Tourist profits are going only to the government and the
profit is not spread to the people in Cusco. The hotels in
Machu Picchu only belong to members of parliament in Lima,
and all profit is kept by the government and not given to
the people!]
Today, Cusco possesses an identity above and beyond its
architectural and archaeological legacy. Like its renowned
art, Cusco is dark, yet vibrant with (p.246) colour: one
minute you're walking down a high, narrow, stone-walled
alley listening to the soft moans of a blind old busker,
then suddenly you burst onto a plaza full of brightly
dressed dancers from the countryside, joining in what, at
times, seems like the endless carnival and religious
festival celebrations which Cusco is famous for.
It's a politically active, left-of-center city where street
demonstrations organized by teachers, lecturers, miners or
some other beleaguered profession are commonplace [because
of cuts of salaries which ruin the people. It's a disaster!]
The leading light of Cusco's left, in the early 1990s, mayor
Daniel Estrada, with
the help of local architect
Guido Gallegos, contributed to the city's
legacy with elegant Inca-like modern fountains and statues,
such as the Condor and Pachacutec monuments and the new
plaza in San Blas. Since then a huge, largely concrete and
circular sundisc monument has been erected on the lower part
of Avenida Sol, near Huanchac station and Cusco's largest
artesanía market. (p.247)
[Well, statues are not helping against poverty, and the
railway is in the hands of Chile. Peruvian government is
selling the country].