BOOKS Ghosts in the Andes

COLIN MacINNES

The Inca conquest was sudden, brief, ex- tensive and horrible. By 1530, the Incas ruled seven million Amerindians in an empire stretching 3,000 miles, and comprising what is now south Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and north Bolivia and Chile. Fifty years later this vast area, lying chiefly in formidable moun- tains or on coastal desert and Amazonian jungle, had become a Spanish colony of less than two million souls.

Accounts of the conquest—of which John Hemming's The Conquest of the Incas (Macmillan 105s) is the latest—arouse equal revulsion and amazement, alike at the event and its bizarre hero. Francisco Pizarro, mid- dle-aged, illiterate, and already a Panama- nian nabob, embarked on his final adventure with less than two hundred men after two earlier abortive expeditions. Within the decade before his death, he had overthrown kings, conquered huge armies, founded cities and destroyed or profoundly altered the social customs of centuries.

The reasons given for this achievement never quite seem adequate to explain it. The Inca empire was of recent creation—the rise of this minor tribe from Cuzco began about 1440, and civil wars were raging' when the Spaniards landed. Nothing had prepared the Incas for the irruption—no explorers, missionaries or traders gave warning of the wrath to come. The earlier struggles against the Moors made Spaniards the foremost warriors of Europe, and disease, especially smallpox, was a potent ally. The arms, armour and cavalry of the invaders were devastatingly effective, yet their hundreds took on armies of tens of thousands. Kid- napping, judicial murder and torture were used freely, and captured Amerindian poten- tates manipulated to undermine resistance. Most compelling to the conquistadores was their lust for loot, and an absolute conviction they were instruments of their God.

The first motive was the stronger, and Mr Hemming re-tells the miserable tale of the Inca Atahualpa's ransom of 'a room of gold', in which eleven tons of art works were melted into ingots. 'Much of this consisted of

. the masterpieces of Inca goldsmiths ...its destruction was an irreparable artistic loss.' Even previous objects sent in triumph to Seville were melted by the royal jewellers, so that much of the little which survives is of pre-Inca periods.

After paying his colossal ransom, Atahualpa was garrotted, being first bap- tised. On and up into the huge Andes marched Pizarro, with his brothers, rivals, auxiliaries and priests. Cuzco, the ancient In- ca capital, was refounded, Pizarro declaring, 'To mark the foundation I am making and possession I am taking, today, Monday 23 March 1534, on this gibbet which I ordered built a few days ago in the middle of this square, on its stone steps which are not yet finished, using the dagger which I wear in my belt, I, Francisco Pizarro, carve a piece from the steps and cut a knot from the wood of the gibbet.' Shortly after, he removed the capital to Lima, for its more congenial climate and maritime communications, and settlers soon arrived to whom impounded Amerindian lands were granted.

Rebellions were crushed, puppet Incas

made and broken, civil wars arose between rival conquistadores, and Gonzalo Pizarro, the youngest brother, attempted the first Peruvian UDI, which the vigilant Spanish government suppressed. By the mid-I500s, near-chaos reigned, in which a primitive col- onial culture arose painfully from the ruins of the complex Andean civilisations.

The viceroy who brought stability, and the consolidation of Amerindian peonage, was Francisco de Toledo, who reached Peru in 1569. The sole surviving enclave of Inca power at Vilcabamba, in the remotest eastern Andes, was invaded on a pretext, though with incredible difficulty, and now `the Peruvians had been torn from the shelter of a benevolent, almost socialistic, absolute monarchy into the cruel world of feudal Europe.' Toledo brushed aside any pretence that Indians enjoyed the rights of free citizens. His legislation defined their position as that of 'a docile proletariat, inferior sub- jects, but people with certain legal rights that should be protected by the authorities.'

Potosi, with its silver mines, in which con- ditions were so appalling the wonder is any metal was extracted at all, became, with a population of 150,000, the fourth city of Christendom (only London, Paris and Seville were larger). 'Collaborating' descendants of deposed or slaughtered Incas intermarried with their conquerors, and landowners of In- ca origin survived till at least the eighteenth century. Mass conversions involved a holocaust of sacred sites and shrines, and mountaineering clerics scaled alps and gorges armed with holy hammers.

Disputes over the leyenda negra—the degree to which priests defended their Amerindian flocks, or failed to—have raged since the conquest, and still do. As in all col- onial situations, the laws of home governments were ignored, and material motives for cruelty by colonial adventurers

were compulsive. Nor, in that age of absolutes, was the poor body considered of much value, provided the soul was saved. Mr Hemming concludes, however, that 'com- pared wTlh other colonial regimes the Spaniards were distinguished by their efforts on behalf of the natives; and they did not suffer from sexual or racialist prejudices that corroded the colonial efforts of some northern European countries. The majority of the inhabitants of modern Peru are Quechuit-speaking descendants of the In- dians of the Inca empire, and there is a flourishing class of mestizos.'

Mr Hemming includes a chapter of particular interest to any who may know Peru, or who propose to. For strange though it may seem, many key Peruvian sites were not revealed till the present century, and some of the most sensational were unknown to the conquistadores, though they were to the Amerindians and their descendants. In 1911, the American explorer Hiram Bingham found, in deepest mountain jungle, the celebrated ruin of Machu Picchu, and, within a near-miraculous month, two further sites of almost equal historic interest. In the 1960s, in denser jungle, fresh finds were made by helicopter and parachute. South and central America are possibly the last places in the world where the past still holds some secrets.

This mass of material—historical, social, religious and artistic—Mr Hemming has mustered and deployed with immense skill and assurance. The narrative is enhanced with a chronology, genealogical tables of Spanish and Inca notables, a glossary of re- levant Quechua and Spanish terms, a mas- sive bibliography, and extensive notes as fascinating as the text. For any who may find Latin American studies daunting, his book is an open sesame.

Mr Hemming's study is especially welcome at a moment when we seem to have turned our backs, in something of a sulk, on South America. In the nineteenth century we were there in force, if not always for the lof- tiest motives, but today travellers are fewer. This is a pity, if only because in modern Peru, however developed it is in other ways, the Inca presence is still palpable : even more so, I would say, than any ancient ghost elsewhere. This is partly because the scenery is so fantastic that one has no difficulty in visualising the geography of the Inca empire; and also because Peruvian Amerindians still seem close, in shape and spirit, to their ancestors.

Nor, one may feel increasingly, have they altogether given up the struggle. Between Alaska and Patagonia there are some eighty million Amerindians whose varied cultures _ were annihilated four centuries ago. But the Amerindians tenaciously survive, and in many Latin American countries are a ma- jority in numbers, if not in 'government. It may therefore be that Rod Power of a new kind will be a feature of forthcoming decades, and that Andean cultures will arise again.

If so, greater justice may be done to the achievements of these civilisations. Four thousand years old at least, and unaided, as cultures of the old worlds were, by cross- fertilisations, they achieved, in isolation, ex- traordinary heights. Propaganda, justifying the conquest, has told us too much of their cruelties, and their creations have been denigrated or destroyed. Yet Spain itself became a victim of the conquest, for its power and spirit faded shortly after; so that only the young nations of South America, of a blended culture, have the possibility of redeeming its disasters.