Abstract: Abstract Many Inka sites in western South America were abandoned in the early sixteenth century following the Spanish invasion and colonisation of the Andes. Their ruins provide a starting point from which to consider the discourse of mystery commonly enshrouding ruins today. Despite the fact that the ruination of Inka sites was witnessed and documented, and despite decades of work by scholars to understand Inka technological and cultural practices and belief systems, questions continue to be asked that, in fact, have long been answered. Yet many visitors prefer imaginative speculation and unverifiable postulations over reasoned hypotheses, and so actively work to prolong, rather than solve, the mystery of ruins. Focusing on the Inka site of Saqsaywamán, the author seeks to understand how the discourse of mystery itself, born out of the process of Spanish colonisation, still exerts a powerful influence over visitors to Inka ruins today. Keywords: SaqsaywamánAndescolonisationconquistadorCuscoCuzcoIncaInkaPeruruinsstonework Notes 1. For further discussion of Inka beliefs concerning stone, see Carolyn Dean, A Culture of Stone: Inka Perspectives on Rock, Duke University Press, Durham, North Carolina, 2010. 2. Graziano Gasparini and Luise Margolies, Inca Architecture, Patricia J Lyon, trans, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1980, p 195 3. The Spanish reads ‘ni el puente de Segovia, ni otro de los edificios que hicieron Hércules ni los romanos, no son cosa tan digna de verse como esto’. Pedro Sancho de la Hoz, ‘Relación para su Majestad’, Biblioteca Peruana [1534], vol 1, pp 275–323, Editores Técnicos Asociados, Lima, 1968, p 329. 4. See, for example, Pedro de Cieza de León, The Incas [1553], Victor Wolfgang von Hagen, ed, Harriet de Onis, trans, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1959, pp 154–55, and Joseph de Acosta, Historia natural y moral de las Indias [1590], Edmundo O'Gorman, ed, Fondo de Cultura Económica, México, 1962, p 297. 5. Bernabé Cobo, Inca Religion and Customs [1653], Roland Hamilton, ed and trans, University of Texas Press, Austin, 1990, p 229 6. Typical is the mitigated exaltation of conquistador Miguel de Estete who in 1535 wrote that ‘all the stonework of this city [of Cusco] compares very favourably to that of Spain, even though they [the buildings] lack roof tiles’ (toda la cantería de está ciudad hace gran ventaja a la de España; aunque carecen de teja); see Estete, ‘Noticia del Perú’, Boletín de la Sociedad Ecuatoriana de Estudios Históricos Americanos (Quito), vol 1, no 3, 1918, pp 300–350 at p 330. For a discussion of Spanish responses to indigenous Andean architecture, see Valerie Fraser, The Architecture of Conquest: Building in the Viceroyalty of Peru, 1535–1635, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1990. 7. El Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, Royal Commentaries of the Incas and General History of Peru [1609], 2 vols, Harold V Livermore, trans, University of Texas Press, Austin, 1966, p 471 8. Juan Polo de Ondegardo, ‘Relación de los fundamentos acerca del notable daño que resulta de no guardar a los indios sus fueros’ [1571], in Informaciones acerca de la religión y gobierno de los Incas, Horacio H Urteaga, ed, Colección de Libros y Documentos Referentes a la Historia del Perú, vol 3, pp 45–188, Imprenta y Librería Sanmartí, Lima, 1916, p 107 9. Cobo describes the method of dragging large stones to construction sites and then the use of earthen ramps to elevate them, saying, ‘I saw this method used for the Cathedral of Cuzco which is under construction. Since the laborers who work on this job are Indians, the Spanish masons and architects let them use their own methods of doing the work, and in order to raise up the stones, they made the ramps mentioned above, piling earth next to the wall until the ramp was as high as the wall.’ See Cobo, op cit, pp 229–230. 10. Juan de Betanzos, Narrative of the Incas [1557], Roland Hamilton and Dana Buchanan, trans and ed, University of Texas Press, Austin, 1996, pp 157–158 11. Carolyn Dean, ‘Creating a Ruin in Colonial Cusco: Sacsahuamán and What was Made of It’, Andean Past, vol 5, 1998, pp 161–183 12. Francisco de Toledo, ‘Carta al rey’, La Imprenta en Lima (1584–1824) [1571], José Toribio Medina, ed, Casa del autor, Santiago de Chile, 1904, p 174 13. Diego de Córdova y Salinas, Crónica Franciscana de las provincias del Perú [1651], Lino G Canedo, ed, Academy of American Franciscan History, Washington DC, 1957, pp 45–46 14. Vasco de Contreras y Valverde, Relación de la ciudad del Cusco, 1649, María del Carmen Martín Rubio, ed, Imprenta Amauta, Cuzco, 1982, p 4 15. Richard L Kagan introduces the notion of ‘signature buildings’, structures that were held to represent entire cities; see Kagan, Urban Images of the Hispanic World, 1493–1793, Yale University Press, New Haven, 2000, p 138. Of Cusco, Kagan opines that the cathedral was the closest thing to a ‘signature building’; Saqsaywamán, which he describes as ‘the crumbling Inca fortress’, served as a symbol of Cusco primarily to ‘foreigners and outsiders’, p 185. I do not wholly disagree with Kagan's interpretation but suggest that the cathedral represented Spanish and Christian Cusco while what was left of Saqsaywamán represented the city's Inka past. 16. Dean, ‘Creating a Ruin in Colonial Cusco’, op cit 17. Santiago (Saint James the Greater), the patron saint of Spain, was also said to have ridden to the aid of the Christians astride his great white charger. For a colonial-period version of the event, see Martín de Murúa, Historia general del Perú, [1613], Manuel Ballesteros Gaibrois, ed, Historia 16, Madrid, 1986, p 235. 18. Ibid, pp 35–36; see also Diego de Esquivel y Navia, Noticias cronológicas de la gran ciudad del Cuzco, [1749], 2 vols, Félix Denegri Luna, ed, with Horacio Villanueva Urteaga and César Gutiérrez Muñoz, Fundación Augusto N Wiese, Lima, 1980, p 99. Esquivel reports that ‘the Queen of Heaven’ (la Reina de los Cielos) appeared at night on 21 May 1536, the seventeenth day of the eight-month siege. 19. ‘cyclopean masonry’, www.dictionary.com, WordNet® 3.0, Princeton University, http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/cyclopean+masonry, accessed 18 May 2011 20. Carolyn Dean, ‘The Trouble with (the Term) Art’, Art Journal, vol 65, no 2, 2006, pp 24–32 21. Vocabulario y phrasis en la lengua general de los indios del Perú llamada Quichua y en la lengua española [1586], Guillermo Escobar Risco, ed, Instituto de Historia de la Facultad de Letras, Lima, 1951, p 21 22. Jean-Pierre Protzen, ‘Inca Quarrying and Stonecutting’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, vol 44, no 2, 1985, pp 161–182; and ‘Inca Stonemasonry’, Scientific American, vol 254, no 2, 1986, pp 94–105 23. According to Garcilaso, stonemasons worked their blocks with ‘some black pebbles… with which they pounded rather than cut’; see Garcilaso de la Vega, op cit, p 131. 24. While the load-bearing, horizontal joins of nibbled masonry usually fit perfectly throughout, vertical seams sometimes fit closely only to the depth of a few centimetres with mud or gravel used to fill the internal gaps that are not visible from the exterior of the wall. 25. Dean, Culture of Stone, op cit, pp 112–121 26. Percy Harrison Fawcett, Exploration Fawcett, Brian Fawcett, ed, Hutchinson Books, London, 1953, p 252 27. An episode of Nova entitled ‘Secrets of Lost Empires: Inca’, 1997, produced for American public television, documented a failed experiment by Watkins in which he attempted to ‘thermally disaggregate’ rocks of the sort used in Inka construction by using parabolic reflectors to concentrate solar rays; see also Watkins, ‘Rock Chips: How did the Incas Create such Beautiful Stonemasonry?’, Rocks and Minerals Magazine, vol 65, no 6, 1990, pp 541–544. 28. Protzen, Inca Architecture and Construction at Ollantaytambo, Oxford University Press, New York, 1993, pp 175–183 29. The Nova episode entitled ‘Secrets of Lost Empires: Inca’, op cit, carried out experiments designed to show how, using only human labour, the Inka moved megaliths from a quarry and down a steep slope, across a river, and over the cobblestone plaza in the town of Ollantaytambo. 30. Betanzos indicates that the ropes were made of ‘braided sinews and braided sheepskin’; see Narrative of the Incas, op cit, p 157. See also Pedro de Cieza de León, Crónica del Perú (primera parte), [1553], Promoción Editorial Inca, Lima, 1984, p 145, and Crónica del Perú: segunda parte, Francesca Cantù, ed, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Academia Nacional de la Historia, Lima, 1985, p 190; and Garcilaso, op cit, p 464. The textual descriptions of moving megaliths match the illustration by indigenous author and artist Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, showing the Inka moving a large stone; see Felipe Guamán Poma deAyala, El primer nueva corónica y buen gobierno [1615], John V Murra and Rolena Adorno, eds, Jorge L Urioste, trans from Quechua, 3 vols, Siglo Veintiuno, México, 1988, p 159, 161. 31. Betanzos, Narrative of the Incas, op cit, p 157 32. Cieza de León, Crónica del Perú: segunda parte, op cit, p 148 33. Protzen, Inca Architecture, op cit, pp 178–183 34. Maarten Van de Guchte, ‘El ciclo mítico andino de la piedra cansada’, Revista Andina, vol 4, no 2, 1984, pp 539–556; Dean, Culture of Stone, op cit, pp 50–53 35. Martín de Murúa, Códice Murúa: Historia y genealogía de los reyes Incas del Perú (Códice Galvin) [1590], 2 vols, Juan M Ossio, ed, Testimonio Compañía Editorial, Madrid, 2009, vol 2, fol 66r 36. Dennis Ogburn, ‘Power in Stone: The Long-Distance Movement of Building Blocks in the Inca Empire’, Ethnohistory, vol 51, no 1, 2004, pp 101–135 at pp 123–124 37. Ogburn identified these so-called legendary stones at the northern end of the Saraguro Basin in the southern Ecuadorian highlands; see ibid. See also Ogburn, ‘Evidence for Long-distance Transportation of Building Stones in the Inca Empire, from Cuzco, Peru to Saraguro, Ecuador’, Latin American Antiquity, vol 15, no 4, 2004, pp 419–440, and Ogburn, ‘Dynamic Display, Propaganda, and the Reinforcement of Provincial Power in the Inca Empire’, Archaeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association, vol 14, pp 225–239. 38. Fawcett, op cit 39. Harold T Wilkins, Mysteries of Ancient South America, Citadel Press, Secaucas, New Jersey, 1974, pp 191–194 40. Shirley MacLaine, Out on a Limb, Bantam Books, Toronto, 1983, p 247 41. Ibid, p 254 42. Alfonsina Barrionuevo, Los Extraterrestres, ¿Construyeron Saqsaywaman?, Servicios de Artes Gráficas, Lima, 1989, p 12 43. E H Gombrich, Meditations on a Hobby Horse and Other Essays on the Theory of Art, Phaidon Press, London, 1960, pp 181–191. The Inka occasionally identified rocks that were naturally and serendipitously shaped like other animate beings (animals and people) as sacred. It is clear, however, that the Inka did not require most of their sacred rocks to be resemblant. Their preference for essence rather than appearance means that most embodiments of the sacred will not be resemblant. To look for resemblance, then, is to see things that the Inka did not look for themselves. 44. Fernando E Elorrieta Salazar and Edgar Elorrieta Salazar, Cusco and the Sacred Valley of the Incas, Beverly Nelson Elder, trans, Tanpu, Cusco, 2001 45. Juan Carlos Machicado Figueroa, When the Stones Speak: Inka Architecture and Spirituality in the Andes, Inca 2000 Productions, Cusco, 2002 46. Homi K Bhabha suggests that in the discourse of dominance subalterns are always rendered the same, but different. It is in the difference that dominance is asserted. See Bhabha, ‘Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse’, October 28, 1984, pp 125–133.
Publication Year: 2011
Publication Date: 2011-11-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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